Are You Ready to BREATHE Through Worry?

Pink Dinosaur, pink dinosaur, pink dinosaur, pink dinosaur.  What are you thinking about right now? More than likely, you are thinking about a pink dinosaur. The interesting thing is as you keep reading you will probably continue to think about pink dinosaurs.  So, let’s stop thinking about pink dinosaurs. Can you do it just because you’ve been asked to stop?

The possibility that you are still thinking about pink dinosaurs is pretty high. That’s the unfortunate thing about thoughts. We can try to tell them to go away, but sometimes that can make them worse rather than better.

Understanding Worry

Thoughts are persistent and work like a boomerang. The more we resist the thought, the more we reinforce it. Now we have created a movie in our mind that is cued up for replay.

To understand our thoughts, let’s use the idea of a movie as a metaphor. If you can remember a time you watched a movie that was meant to scare you, do you remember the feelings while the movie was playing? Movie makers are very gifted at turning our thoughts into feelings by playing music that tells us to be concerned, or darkening the lighting on the screen to create fear. That is because our human instinct is to protect ourselves from danger by moving into thoughts of flight, fight or freeze.

When we are in reaction mode, we can’t think clearly, and without stopping the process, it can sometimes lead us to a place of worry or panic.

Just like the way it was difficult to stop thinking about a pink dinosaur, once our worry and anxious thinking takes over, it’s hard to break away. Instead we find more reasons to continue the fear, boomeranging us right back into our fear-based movie we have created.

Getting Rid of the Pink Dinosaur

So how do we get rid of the pink dinosaur? One effective way is to begin to break apart our thoughts by applying the BREATHE principle:

B = Be present; acknowledge the thought and the feeling

R = Reduce reaction with a deep breath

E = Enter the here and now

A = Accept knowing the thoughts and feelings will subside

T = Talk out loud to yourself; question whether you are in danger or are you in a state of discomfort?

H = Honor the opportunity to be kind to yourself and implement self-care

E = Evaluate how you can respond differently

The movie we play for ourselves is a part of who we are and how we have learned to survive. The benefit of having the strategy of BREATHE is knowing it is OK to have the thought, and OK to move on to a movie where the star is you, controlling your thoughts. Goodbye pink dinosaur.

For Professional Support, Contact Sound Mind Therapy

Are you in need of a professional therapist to help you manage worry? From our office in Creve Coeur, the staff of Sound Mind Therapy offers innovative counseling services from the heart. Call us today at (314) 499-9144 or complete our online request form to schedule an appointment.