Free Yourself from Anxiety (16 page)

The trial is over, and while the jury’s considering the verdict we’re going to look at another way of working with your thought processes.

Socrates was born nearly 2,500 years ago, and he created a way of questioning that is still useful today. He used to encourage his students to question everything in a strict and rigorous way that was designed to make them think for themselves instead of just going along with their first ideas on the subject, or believing what they were told. This approach doesn’t come naturally to most of us but it is a useful way to put anxious thinking under the spotlight. Think of it as a truth test.

These are the kinds of questions to ask:

What are the facts?
What is the evidence for this thought being true?
Has this been true in the past?
What are the chances of this happening, or of this being true?
What is the worst thing that could happen?
Why is that the worst thing, and why is it so bad?
What would I do if the worst happened?
Am I looking at the whole picture?
Am I being objective?

Here is an example of Socratic questioning for someone who fears having a panic attack at a parent-teacher evening.

What are the facts?
I have to see the teacher for ten minutes on Tuesday but I can’t go because I’ll have a panic attack
.

What is the evidence for this thought being true?
I had a panic attack at the doctor’s last week, and also when I was waiting at the school gate the other day
.

Has this been true in the past?
I nearly had a panic attack at the last
parent-teacher
evening but I made an excuse and left in time. Before that I was fine but I didn’t have Anxiety then
.

What are the chances of this happening, or of this being true?
I think the chances of me having a panic attack are very high
.

What is the worst thing that could happen?
If I have a panic attack and the teacher sees me they’ll think I’m a bad parent and a stupid person
.

Why is that the worst thing, and why is it so bad?
I don’t know why it’s the worst thing, it just is
.

What would I do if the worst happened?
I’d run out of the school and I’d feel stupid and humiliated
.

Am I looking at the whole picture?
I can’t, I’m only looking at me and the fear of panic
.

Am I being objective?
No, probably not
.

You can see that as the questions proceed the flaws in the argument emerge. Is it really the worst thing that can happen if a teacher sees someone being upset? Clearly it isn’t, there are much worse things that can happen to someone, and so the answer to the next question is ‘I don’t know why it’s the worst thing’ followed by the admission that they aren’t looking at the whole picture, or being objective.

Once you have admitted this, you can reassess the answers. ‘I’ll have a panic attack’ changes to ‘I might have a panic attack.’ ‘The chances are high’ changes to ‘the chances are less than 100%’. ‘I’d feel humiliated’ changes to ‘I’d find a way to cope’ and so on.

Socratic questioning can be applied to all types of anxious thinking. In addition, you can ask yourself other questions that will help you be more objective such as:

Are there other ways of looking at this?

If someone I knew had this thought, what would I say to them?

What are the alternative ways of approaching this?

The parent with the fear of panic might answer as follows:

Are there other ways of looking at this?
I suppose I could tell myself it’s only ten minutes, and to give it a try. I could tell the teacher about my Anxiety problem, maybe they’d understand
.

If someone I knew had this thought, what would I say to them?
I’d tell them not to be so hard on themselves. I’d tell them we all have problems from time to time and I’d tell them not to worry about the teacher’s reaction, teachers are tough types who aren’t easily thrown
.

What are the alternative ways of approaching this?
I could see it as one of my goals
.

Using the Socratic questioning technique can be very helpful in breaking out of OCD’s illogical thoughts. Here is an example for someone with a fear of losing control and harming another person.

What are the facts?
I can’t drive my car because I’m sure that if I do I will cause an accident, and I’ll have to go back and check my route
.

What is the evidence for this thought being true?
I failed my test twice, and I have scratched my car on a gatepost
.

Has this been true in the past?
Somebody drove into the back of my car once. They said it was my fault
.

What are the chances of this happening, or of this being true?
I don’t know, people have car accidents all the time
.

What is the worst thing that could happen?
I could cause an accident where somebody dies
.

Why is that the worst thing, and why is it so bad?
It’s the worst thing because it would be my fault, and I couldn’t live with myself
.

What would I do if the worst happened?
I’d go mad, or something
.

Am I looking at the whole picture?
No. I know that most people actually don’t have accidents, but I don’t know how they stop themselves worrying about it
.

Am I being objective?
I suppose not. I drove for nine years before OCD made me give up
.

What alternative explanation might there be for me having this thought?
That I become anxious when I get in the car, and then have these thoughts
.

What would be the worst that could happen?
I will feel very anxious but that’s all
.

Once again the thoughts don’t stand up to careful questioning. There is no real evidence that this person is an unsafe driver and there is no objective reason for them to give up driving. Equally they won’t be
miraculously cured of OCD just because of the Socratic questioning, but once they have accepted that there could be an alternative explanation – i.e. the thoughts are produced by their Anxiety – then the method described below can be used to test this out with the aim of easing them gradually back behind the wheel.

The jury returns, the verdict is in, and Anxiety is guilty, no doubt about it. The details of the verdict will be different for each person, since Anxiety doesn’t treat us all the same. It can be a bully, a demon, an authority figure, a false friend. Only you can decide what your Anxiety is guilty of.

You’ve spent some time in court now, studying Anxiety, and hearing how it speaks to you. Did you recognise anything about it? Very often when people are asked to listen to their anxious thoughts, they realise that the voice doesn’t belong to them at all – it’s the voice of an adult from their childhood, one who nagged, or bullied, or put them down all the time. Maybe it’s the voice of someone who truly cared, such as a parent or grandparent, but who had a negative way of showing it.

If you can identify your Anxiety in this way, you can use that knowledge as part of your recovery. You can tell the nag or the bully to be quiet, in fact you can tell them to get out of your head entirely. If it’s the voice of someone who loved you, you can still explain that you don’t need their negative remarks any more.

If you don’t recognise the voice in this way, you can still characterise your Anxiety in whatever way feels right to you – call it something, such as Bully, or Bossyboots, so that you can talk to it and tell it to pipe down.

It’s time to set up the next part of the recovery programme, which aims to change your anxious thinking. Look back through your notebook and
pick out the types of anxious thinking that you are prone to. Here is a reminder checklist: