3 questions I journal when anxious

The Questions

1. What is the best-case scenario?

2. What is the most likely scenario?

3. What can you do about the worst-case scenario? What do you not have control over and will choose to let go?

The reason behind asking these questions

What this graph means

• If we pretend the x-axis shows how "good" something is, with negative events occurring on the left side and positive events happening on the right side

• And on the y-axis we count the # of times something happens out of, say, 100 simulations of that example

• What this graph shows is that: the most likely situation is a neutral situation, in the middle

• The best-case scenario occurs very little of the time, but so does the worst-case scenario

Best case scenario

• when in panic mode, my brain fires up and looks at all the worst-case scenarios to prep us to fight it

• but in reality, the best-case scenario is JUST as likely to happen usually, and we should give it equal weight in our thinking

• that's why, in addition to your body automatically prepping us by thinking of the worst, we should ask ourselves, are we prepared for the best-case scenario? did we consider what that would look like?

Most likely scenario

• when in panic mode, our brains also gloss over all the middle parts, all the neutral non-black & white possibilities

• asking myself what the MOST likely situation to happen is important because we want to be prepared for this scenario the most (rather than the worst-case scenario)

Worst-case scenario

• we also don't want to entirely ignore the worst-case scenario because your body is alerting you to this for a reason

• I like to split the journalling for this into two categories

• [1] what CAN I do about this situation?

• This is to acknowledge that oftentimes our brains worry about things and there are tangible next steps you could take. Make a plan and schedule those steps. The brain worries because it's an internal notification system reminding you to do things all the time when actually, we can just isolate the reminder to just the 5 minute period before you have to do the thing.

• [2] what are things that I have no control over that I should make time to honour and then let go?

• acknowledge that anxiety serves a purpose to warn your body of something and to spur it into action to DO something, but there isn't always something it can do. When this smoke detector accurately detects that something is on FIRE, you have tangible next steps to evacuate. When the smoke detector goes off just because you ever so slightly burned your omelette, it's an annoying alert system that sets of all these unpleasant reactions (loud sirens).

• for me, I take the time to be like, thanks smoke detector (thanks anxiety), you tried, I can't do anything about this slightly burned omelette. You (anxiety/ smoke detector) served a purpose and instead of focussing on letting it ring eternally, I'm gonna press the button that shuts it up

• The hard thing about panic is that it doesn't have a single button like the smoke detector, but there ARE ways to curb anxious thinking and anxious bodily reactions (feeling clammy, out of breath, heart palpilations)

• Calming your anxious thinking: mindful sushi train, mindful leaves on stream

• Calming your anxious body: deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, visualization

An example

Scenario: I'm pitching a new research idea to my supervisor and I'm nervous because I REALLY LIKE THE IDEA and it's my first time pitching anything to her.

What is the best-case scenario?

• She says yes! Let's do this! So excited!!!

• Part of writing this journal entry will feel empowering, trust me. Writing the answer to this question will feel energizing. When I do this it feels like a burden is lifted off my shoulders because previously I only automatically considered all the potential embarrassing endings and that's such a burden to hold tbh.

What is the most likely scenario?

• She says maybe, sounds interesting, but has some qualms. Her advice is to please gather more information and answer these n questions about feasibility and rationale and let's discuss again!

• Writing this ALSO made me feel a burden lightening. Instead of just assuming no, I'm expecting that most likely, my "baby's first research idea" will have some flaws and her role is to give me constructive feedback. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time, and having that scaffolding for making this project feasible and convincing for funding is a good exercise to hone key research skills.

• The neutral scenario can so easily be framed as a negative scenario (oh, she said no, "I'm a failure") as a positive scenario (ah, I see movement and forward motion in this project and see tangible steps forward). How you frame the neutral/ most likely scenario is so important.

What is the worst-case scenario?

• She says no, please finish all of your existing projects first.

• Actually, as I write this out I realize this isn't the worst-case scenario but when it's swimming in my head it fEELS like a downright "no" and a rejection, which hurts. In reality, it's a "not yet", with tangible steps for what you have to finish next (stuff on your plate) and a reminder to revisit this idea as it grows (set a calendar reminder).

• She says no, this is a terrible idea let us never revisit this again.

• Honestly, my first worst-case scenario thoughts about this make me feel terrible. It's the bulk of the "burden on my shoulders" feel. Imagine how embarrassing this could feel, how this feels like rejection!

• I think in the past I would have just jumped to part 2 of the question, "what can we acknowledge and let go of"? It hurts when an idea gets scrapped because like I said in the beginning, it's something I valued, and losing the opportunity to do something you valued does hurt. It might take some time to let go.

• Because of what journaled in question 2 about the most likely situation, I actually discovered that more than I value 100% acceptance of an idea, I value feedback from a supervisor and that's really what I'm investing in when I do this degree. If she flat out just shuts it down (which is honestly out of character), I would ask specific questions about why because part of what I value is learning how to chisel down a dumb idea into a shining, feasible one.

• If she still declines I would respect that boundary, of course, do some reading and reflection on my own (ideally) and go back to part 2 of this question of letting it go. In this scenario I have already tried the best I could to a) pitch the idea and b) learn from pitching the idea and there were no further steps I could have taken. Honour your effort and allow yourself to let go of things that don't budge.

Why stop here?

• Another post about how I'm managing my anxiety during these anxiety-provoking times

• My journalling routine this year !!!

{ staying present } { staying mindful }

It is March 17th, 2020.

& welcome to your morning announcements.

For reading this in the future,

or those living under a rock,

a virus that looks like a suction ball

{ covid19 }

is spreading across the world.

---

In other absolutely unrelated news,

in the last week I'd been reading up on mindfulness

as part of a presentation I was doing about anxiety.

Mindfulness

• Staying present

• Observing the moment by moment experience

• Being non-judgmental; staying curious

Last week, when I presented the information,

it was just information.

It was just sharing the how-to from

a very objective pov

and I didn't really question about how

I was practicing mindfulness in my own life

because to me, it came easy,

it was something I'd been practicing.

Here is what I shared:

Why mindfulness?

• If you're like me, you have an internal monologue, and that internal monologue is a professional Time Traveler

• to the past: ruminating thoughts about how I said something, how I did something, regretting something I did in the past

• to the future: worrying about the stuff I have to do in the future, whether I'm prepared enough for the future, thinking about all the steps that have to be done

• & this internal monologue rarely sits there and thinks about the now, except for very fleeting moments (i.e., wow I'm hungry)

• We think about the past to help us learn lessons, so it's a useful thing to do in moderation, but if we do it too much, we're stealing from our experiences now, and are we truly then using what we learned and applying them now? Or are we forever regretting the moment that JUST passed us by?

• We think about the future to help us prepare, so again, useful to help us live our lives functionally, but if we do it too much, we're so focussed on preparing for the future that when it arrives, are we even enjoying it or are we already time travelling to the NEW future for MORE planning?

• The idea of mindfulness is to ensure that the here & now get equal spotlight in your day, so you get to live & experience the now too!

It has a bunch of different forms,

you've probably heard of a few...

Mindfulness in activities

• goal: focus on all aspects of your experience of DOING the activity and noticing each piece of sensory information coming into your body

• mindful eating: paying attention to every aspect of eating -- tasting the flavour, feeling the crunch and texture, smelling the smell, seeing the colours vs. eating your meal while watching a tv show

• mindful walking: really taking in the sights (trees, clouds, mud, flowers, birds, etc.), the smells (grass, mud, flowers), feelings (your feet against the ground, the breeze on your skin), sounds (chirping, your footsteps, light chatter).

• It can literally be any activity, and my most recent wildly mindful activity is mindful dishwashing, which is wild because I HATE washing dishes. But now it's become this meditative thing I do because it's oddly ... soothing? If you put your entire attention towards something and its not constantly being drawn away to something else?

Mindfulness breathing

• goal: focussing on the sensory aspects of your breathing

• literally exactly like above, except you're focussing on the sensory aspects of breathing

• The feeling of air filling your lungs, your stomach and core expanding, your chest falling as you breathe out; the feeling of the chair against your body, your feet against the ground, etc.

Mindfulness meditation for thoughts

• goal: allow thoughts to come and go in your mind, without judgment, let your internal monologue play but don't react to it, be non-judgmental, curious about the thoughts as they come by

• For me, I visualize each thought popping out as a thought bubble, being able to see the thought, and slowly letting it go.

• You might have thoughts like "I'm hungry", "I'm cold", "I should be doing homework"; you might even have thoughts like "I suck at this", "this is dumb", "I am bad at doing this". It's ok. Your brain just THINKS thoughts all the time and it'll continue popping up those notifications. Swipe those notifications away like you do promotional emails that you deleted without reading.

• If you love visualizing stuff I have two versions of this that are visually based:

• leaves on a stream: envision placing each thought on a leaf that is slowly flowing down the stream ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1C8hwj5LXw&t=17s

• sushi train metaphor: envision placing each thought on a plate like a piece of sushi on a conveyor belt ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzUoXJVI0wo

It was all easy peasy until this 24/7 news cycle about COVID19 updates started happening

Every day there's more news about shutdowns,

and questions about why we haven't done more,

or what we SHOULD be doing,

or what we SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING.

Mindfulness is REALLY REALLY hard to practice during this time

And I found myself easily forgoing that

saying to myself that I need to

do the anxious scroll to get the latest and most important updates

about this virus,

so I can be #prepared.

It probably only took half a day before I felt overwhelmed

Unable to cope with the hourly emails from

ALL THE COMPANIES I have EVER encountered in my life

updating us on how they are dealing with this pandemic.

I spent all of Monday updating and updating and updating and updating, until

I stopped.

This is your permission to unsubscribe from news updates.

SPECIFICALLY, this is your permission and my permission

to unsubscribe from CONTINUOUS STREAM of updates where

information is thrown at you and you're constantly

constantly making decisions.

Stop that.

Instead, set aside intentional time every day

to grab information that you need.

Set boundaries with people who might be sharing this info with you.

Let them know what those boundaries are.

(no insensitive memes? no sad news after 10pm or before 6am so I can go the fuck to sleep and not have nightmares? don't send me screenshots of dumb and ignorant replies I only want the news info? only send me info that has an actionable step I can do? etc.)

This is really first and foremost a reminder to me,

to not let this bleed into my entire day,

so I can compartmentalize and focus on living.

It does kind of feel wild, carrying on and "living in the present", while the world is in panic

Key disclaimer, I am not ignoring the recommendations

and pretending the pandemic doesn't exist.

I am still:

• exercising social distancing to flatten the curve

• maintaining daily activities and staying active

• staying updated

But all in a more intentional way.

Remember when this was my goal of the year?

it's still word of the year,

pandemic or not

I'm sticking to it y'all

But I'm doing a lot more

I don't need to commute anymore

A lot of meetings got cancelled

So I have so much freedom (!)

with my time

And here's what I've done so far:

• mindfully wash them dishes, we are on day 3 of 0 leftoever dishes each night

• I have mindfully eaten 5 apples, ranging from a rating of 2/10 to 3.5/10. one friend asked me to just stop eating apples. we will see.

• I've discovered free audiobooks from the library, and have listened to Spark Joy by Marie Kondo almost in entirety

• And simultaneously deep cleaned my house

And yes

the news still scares me

as more stringent measures are placed into action.

Thoughts that come to mind are usually:

• Did I prep enough for this social distancing and self-isolation? #past

• Was I careful enough when I met with clients who were sick, or with lab members who showed up to lab, ill? #past

• What will I do when I run out of food in 2 weeks, how will I get food? #future

• What will I happen if I get ill, I live alone? #future

And all of these questions are important to consider,

in terms of prepping for the future

& considering risk levels from the past to determine my future steps,

but I have tangible solutions for all of them

and do not need to be constantly re-reviewing my response

minute by minute

Day by day, possibly.

It's not gonna change if I think this thought one more time in the next 42 minutes.

Instead

I am staying present.

Washing them dishes.

Doing things I wanted to do if I suddenly had 2 weeks of

no classes, no meetings, no deadlines to meet.

:)

Reflecting on my journalling routine

I started out 2020 strong with a whole new {pretty heavy} journalling routine. Back in high school, I used to blog every day (possibly multiple times a day), and it really helped me process the day. I'm still in the process of archiving my old Blogger blog, and some entries were really good to come back to, for me to see the progress that I've had since then.

(Granted, 90% of the blog was just an early, longer version of Twitter where I dumped all my weird internal monologue and is very cringey to look back on. But there are some good nuggets in there).

So without further ado, here is my 2020 journalling routine. Which I can now call a routine because I've done each component at least 3x.

1. The daily morning journal

What & How

• Morning pages where I dump my thoughts for 10 minutes

• I try to include reflections on my goals for that day, including one strive goal (i.e., if nothing goes wrong and I still have time) and one definite goal (i.e., minimum that I need done)

• Google docs, I add new entries at the top every day

Why:

• Doing morning pages really helps me a) get geared up for the day and b) clear my mind of self-doubt. b) is especially helpful because it helps me lockdown and identify these thinking patterns and challenge whether they play a role in my life

• I do mine digitally, which is different from the usual recommendations! (See the end of this post for the classic morning pages from Lavendaire) -- I do this because my typing speed is close to my thinking speed, especially my morning speed and I like seeing my thoughts visualized.

• I get really frustrated writing things out by hand because I think a lot faster than I write and sometimes I want to write so fast that I can't go back and read what I've written. So that's why.

2. The daily "evening" journal

What & How:

• I have a custom 5am to 11pm calendar that I printed from staples

• It shows the entire week, at 1hour increments

• I track the activity that took up the most time during that section

• I also give a little symbol to represent how the hour made me feel: + = positive, ø = neutral, - = negative)

• I jot down 3 things I'm grateful for that day

Why:

• The idea of reflecting on +ve things that happened today to counteract my by default negative filter

• I'm also tracking the types of activities that energize me vs. drain me. It helps inform me how I should plan my ideas (i.e., don't leave the heavy work towards the end of the day), and help me reflect on whether the draining stuff is worth it in the long run or whether I'm just doing it because other people are doing it also/ I feel some invisible social pressure to conform

• I use a custom printed "agenda/planner" layout because too many agendas pretend that weekends don't exist and I don't vibe with that at all.

3. The weekly reflection

What & How:

• (I repurposed and old lab notebook from undergrad for this loool so the first 50 pages of this journal are lab meeting notes but we'll ignore that)

• Every Sat (though usually I procrastinate and do it on Sunday)

• Section 1: reflect on my 3 intentions of the year (i.e., clinical skills, finish phd and self-care), and track how much time I spent on these intentions (which I tabulate from #2).

• Section 2: reflect on a) what's working/ what do we celebrate this week?, b) what's not working, what should we let go of?, c) schedule + make time for what's important in the upcoming week

Why:

• This helps me reflect on whether I'm still living according to my values, because life sometimes throws a lot of stuff at you and you kind of knee-jerk say yes and go with the flow

• On top of daily gratitude, I'm making the time to celebrate the good things !!! Especially sometimes it's hard to celebrate at the end of the day because I'm T I R E D

• I'm also making the time to honour and let go of things that aren't working, so that I can make time to say yes to the things that I want to do.

• I love this journalling time each weekend tbh, I LOVE IT

4. The monthly check-in

What &How:

• I use IG: heyamberrae's (see resources in the footer for the March reflection prompt) monthly reflection prompts

Why:

• She makes such an aesthetic monthly prompt and is so consistent in posting these

• I no longer do them though, although I do use her reflection prompts to guide my weekly ones -- I realized I actually preferred the more frequent check-ins

• It's not the end of this though, I foresee that if things calm down for me in the future that I might revert back to a sparser monthly check-in

5. The weekly blog

What & How:

• That's you!

• I learned to stop oversharing every small thought that came to my head on a blog because I soon realized that blogs have tangible storage limits and I ran out VERY quickly (I use twitter now, oops)

• I jot down notes and ideas of things that really impacted my life that I want to share with other people!

Why:

• Honestly, because my very supportive friend E. suggested it

• Also because I honestly really enjoyed blogging in high school and wanted to continue the habit of sharing ideas

• I just needed it to not be associated with my google storage (i.e., blogger) because man, I also hoard a lot of files on google drive (oops)

6. Talkspace therapy

What:

• 2x daily text-based check-ins with a licensed therapist

• I'm on the monthly plan that's $49USD/month and features a weekly check-in, but my therapist checks in 2x a day regardless, we just converse in smaller quantities and this feels more like a text message convo than like, the full plan, which felt more like emailing

• Shameless plug but here's my promo code: https://talkspace.com/invite/1317883?p=2.

• (Full disclosure: we both get $250* off the next plan if you use this link)

Why:

• I see it more as maintenance therapy where if something arises and I don't know how to apply a skill, I have someone to check-in with to stay on track

• It's also keeping me accountable TO check-in with myself on a regular basis on how my mental health is, instead of focussing on this eternal grind of academia where I become this emotionless productivity machine

7. My art scratchpad/ journal

What & How:

• I have a little ikea notebook where I just draw and write ideas that aren't typable

• It was my old morning pages notebook before I swapped back to doing an online typed one

• I use a date stamp like this one to stamp the date bc I'm a fancy pants

Why:

• Not all ideas can be typed and sometimes I just need to doodle as a mindfulness meditation thing

8. Research journal

What & How:

• Google doc (this is where the idea of my digital morning pages came from)

• I document everything in the science process, almost like a chemistry lab book, but more intense

• In my research, this looks like: documenting all research related meetings, talks I attend (ideas and names and contacts!), ideas that I don't have energy or resources to do right now, rationales behind decisions made (e.g., why we set 2.0 as an arbitrary threshold and the exact citation and link to paper for THAT specific choice).

• It's in google docs so I can ctrl+f easily and find the decision

• It's also where I make research to do lists now e.g., if I need to visualize the steps I need to do for an analysis, or document where I saved something, then 1) I'm helping myself stay on track, and 2) if I get asked 5 years and 3 months later what parameter I entered into an analysis and it's not recreatable from the code I can consult my to do list to be like hey, I set it as this

Why:

• The google docs idea of adding a new entry to the top is actually inspired by EMR (electronic medical records) systems that I've worked with

• I REALLY LOVE THE IDEA of having a system where you can just add entries, tag different things, etc. and just document things and I was like, no one cares, but I need an EMR system for my internal thoughts

• And thus the google doc of internal monologue of research thoughts was born, documenting all of my meetings, questions, important emails, successes, rationales, etc.

9. Budget journal

What & How:

• Another one of those adorable ikea notebooks

• I tape receipts to each page and reflect on each purchase

• Specifically, I reflect on a) whether it was a planned purchase and whether it's a planned purchase I want to continue forward in my budget and b) if it's unplanned whether I should PLAN for it next time / whether there are alternatives that I can make more readily available so next time I resort to the alternative more easily than fall back into the habit of spending money

Why:

• I'm really threading back to the 2020 word of the year/ promise to myself that I will more intentionally spend this year

Wow, this was a long post so I'm going to wrap it here. Let me know what kind of journalling you already do or whether you have suggestions / resources that you really like!

Resources I recommend:

• My 2020 Word of the Year: Intention

• Lavendaire's video on morning pages & what it is

• heyamberrae's monthly reflection prompt for March 2020

• Get $250 for you and me on talkspace: https://talkspace.com/invite/1317883?p=2

• [ad] date stamps for your journalling swag

• Mindful doodling video