The Balanced Life, Huntsville Alabama

Anxiety and insecurity about our uncertain future abounds and everyone deals with anxiety and stress differently.

In fact, I was just listening to Brené Brown‘s new podcast Unlocking Us where she was talking about how people have a tendency to respond to anxiety by either over functioning or under functioning depending on the role they played in their first families. It was a really interesting podcast and got me thinking about why there’s so much anxiety these days and across the board there seems to be a lot of uncertainty about the future.

When we think about the future and our vision seems fuzzy or blank, we have a tendency to fill in the gap with predictions. Our brains like to predict things and, since we have a negativity bias that’s built in which causes us to focus more intensely on negative things, most people start catastrophizing, which just means thinking about the future and imagining the worst case scenario. Catastrophizing is not helpful and, if you read my blog post from March 2019, you know that it can also create really negative self-fulfilling prophecies! 

It also means that if we are catastrophizing, we are focused solely on negative possible futures while completely ignoring any scenarios in which ourselves and/or the world is healthier, stronger, and more connected.

To help balance out the sadness, anger, and fear that comes from catastrophizing and envisioning a horrible future for ourselves, we can instead choose to make predictions and envision there’s a positive outcome! We can Imagine things going well, someone saying yes, being heard and understood, being loved and supported, and we can imagine ourselves doing amazing and incredibly powerful things! It is all in our imagination after all! why not?!

If you’re wondering how to do that or just feeling like you aren’t able to visualize a positive outcome or happy future for yourself, Focus on the feelings. Think about what your ideal outcome or future might feel like. Will you feel emotionally safe, financially secure, calm, joyful, grateful, loved, respected, strong, free, independent, stable…? Let yourself feel that way now, just for a moment and let yourself begin to imagine an outcome or future for yourself in which you feel like that.

Doesn't it feel great?!

Refocusing to imagine positive possible futures is a cognitive (brain) approach to calm ourselves but we can also soothe our five senses (body) when we are  feeling super overwhelmed and anxious. As a DBT therapist, I have been teaching and helping my clients create a self-soothing boxes for years that I typically referred to as their First Aid Kit for Mental Health.

Obviously, this is not your typical first aid kit with Band-Aids and Neosporin. For this you want to find a bag, box, drawer or a room and beginning collecting anything that you might need in a time of crisis or panic or just heightened emotion. Be mindful to include something to soothe each sense.

In line I have typically had things like Jolly ranchers or butterscotch disks (taste), scented lotion (touch and smell), a candle and a lighter (vision), a music box or CD's (hearing), and of course a journal and a ball point pen.

Creating and updating your self-soothing box or first aid kit can be fun and calming in and of itself as you work to put some of your very favorite things all in one place. I recently worked with a client who was excited about creating her First Aid Kit for Mental Health and even agreed to send me a picture when she was done so that it can be shared on the blog! Hopefully hearing about mine and seeing my client's beautiful and FABULOUS First Aid Kit will be an inspiration to you and help motivate you to get started right now creating yours! We're here to help! Contact us at info@thebalancedlifellc.com! ;