ACT with Anxiety by Sears Richard;

Author:Sears, Richard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PESI

Handout

5.3

Thought Trains Exercise

Our brains can be very busy places, sometimes busier than Grand Central Station. Trains of thought can carry us off to all sorts of far-off locations. Sometimes the brain’s ability to go off to strange places can be a good thing. It is called creativity. But if you have anxiety, your mind likely goes off to faraway places that are not helpful.

For example, I recently saw a news story that 22 people had been killed in a severe tornado. Since my family recently moved into a home with no basement, it reminded me that I need to think about a severe weather safety plan. But if I was feeling overly anxious about it, those thoughts could have gone into far-off destinations, where one thought leads to another like a runaway train.

If you have a lot of anxiety, even thoughts that start off in Happytown can easily end up in Anxietyville. “It’s such a nice day today. But what if it doesn’t last? What if the weather forecast is wrong? They certainly are wrong a lot. What if it gets windy and stormy? I’m still not prepared for a tornado. What if my house gets blown away? What if I never recover from that? What if I’m so distraught I lose my job and become penniless and homeless?”

“What If” Railroads definitely provides regular non-stop service to Anxietyville. Even a thought like “It’s such a nice day today” can take you to worrying about being penniless and homeless.

When you are on one of these anxiety thought trains, you may metaphorically feel shaken up and jostled around. But if you view the trains from above, you can peacefully watch them go on down the tracks. Likewise, when you are lost in your anxious thoughts, you feel the anxiety intensely. But when you can step back and just see your thoughts as thoughts, and don’t confuse them with the reality they are trying to represent, the struggle connected with those thoughts begins to drop away.

You may not be able to stop these trains, but you can learn to not let them take you for a ride. You don’t have to stay on the trains. You can learn to step off and watch them go by. Instead of worrying all day, you can consciously choose if, when, and how you want to think about a real problem like a weather safety plan. You will likely find that more anxiety trains keep coming along, but you don’t have to jump on board any of those either.

When first learning this skill, it is best to practice it in a quiet place. As you get better at doing this, you can do it anytime throughout the day, and you will be able to notice when your mind goes off to irrelevant places more often. The concept is very simple: Notice when you are being pulled away by a thought train, and rise up above it. Of course, simple is not necessarily easy, so it takes practice.

Find a peaceful place to sit or lie down.

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