Is:
- Is a sequence of statements I learn and repeat to myself whenever I’m anxious (anxiety is: more fear than I should feel for this situation, or fear that continues when the event that triggered the fear has passed).
- Is a way to turn my anxiety off in any moment, so I can be my true self in that moment.
- Is a way to change. If I do it a lot, I will stop doing a lot of the stuff I want to stop, and discover new stuff I should stop.
Isn’t:
- Isn’t a cure or even a treatment for anxiety. My anxiety will persist my entire life. But I don’t care, as long as I can turn it off when I need to.
- Isn’t a quick method. There are no quick methods for turning off anxiety. It can work in seconds, but mostly it takes a number of tries, the number of which I can’t predict. That’s not my fault or any method aiming to turn anxiety off. It’s the way the brain works.
- Isn’t a philosophy or anything else that requires belief, or conflicts with my beliefs. I have to see, not believe. That’s why it’s called the seeing sequence.
Next, the statements.
Hi
Major life change just happened and my anxiety is through the roof. I moved out on my own. I am finding as soon as I start the b&c my anxiety already goes down.
I’m just getting stuff from remembering how it goes.
Good me I moved out. Poor me I think it was a mistake. Because poor me I’m afraid I’ll see the I’m in the pain of failing to ignore… uh my true response which is this is a good step to take. I’m having trouble now
Let’s say I’m in an interaction where I can’t b&c quickly enough to find and externalize my true response, and my anxiety causes me to screw it up. Afterwards, however, like we would do in your office, I can “relive” the scenario, b&c my psr’s, and figure out how I would have proceeded had I gotten my anxiety under control.
Here is my question: like athletes use visualization to prepare, can I take the above scenario (once I know how to proceed more fluidly, ie. less anxiously), and repeat it to myself? Or better yet, can I make up hypothetical scenarios that would cause my anxiety to spike, and b&c them out? That is, does my brain know the difference between live and “visualized” scenarios?
Your brain doesn’t care. Your practice plan is good. However, it will get boring. Just keep practicing.
I will. I’m realizing that if I’m in an unanxious state, the approach I proposed will only let me practice the correct response, and not how to flow my way out of anxiety before I figure out the correct response. If I’m unanxious, there are no psrs to b&c out. My brain is already as close as it will get to thinking more clearly.
hi,
Iam going back on dex.so I focus and try to do the seeing sequence.hope it works
The key is repetition. The more you try it, the more it gets into memory and works. Doing it without focus is hard, requires more tries, but keep trying no-matter-what. You will slowly start to remember to do it more and more often, until you remember to do it often, then very often. Best of luck.
Hi doc. It’s been awhile and that’s not good on my part! I haven’t been doing my b&c. It’s hard when I don’t have a weekly fresher upper I find. But I’m starting to see my anxiety creeping up more and more. While my life has moved along in a lot of ways which is good but I need to commit back to this. I’m afraid I won’t remember all the phrases tho. I hope your doing well and I may be commenting a lot in the next little bit to make sure I have it right so I can start repeat repeat repeat again.
Thanks
R
B & c how you hate doing b&c or anything else that you put off.