Page 133 - Advance Copy: Todd Kaufman, Author
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HOW TO MANAGE ANXIETY & END PANIC ATTACKS
Now I’ll check in with myself: “Sad I seem to feel in my eyes, like I am about to cry. I can feel it sitting somewhere in the base of my brain messing with me! It still feels pretty crappy. Yes, I know what Sad feels like!”
Or, I could go the other way to Frustrated, and I might use a connected Attending Thought, or not. For example: “This is my fault; I really should go to my geriatric clients, not have them come to me. Seriously Todd, why have you not set up a program yet to travel to meet these clients! It’s been on your to-do list for months and its so frustrating that you have yet to make it happen. I think I feel Frustration in my jaws, it feels like I’m clenching my teeth. ! Yes, I know what Frustration feels like.”
An unrelated Attending Thought might also move me to Frustration. For example: “I am frustrated I have not fired my cleaning company and hired another!”
5. Continue to repeat this process, moving around the wheel. (Pick a direction and don’t change until you return to a point you that you are comfortable ending the exercise, and if you get stuck, simply go back in the other direction.) Move around the wheel one emotion/feeling at a time. Don’t try to skip one even if it seems easy to do so. The goal is to become the Master of Changing Your Emotions and Feelings, and if you jump an emotion or feeling on the list, you get less Repetition of the desired change, which, of course, reduces one of the key components to creating neuroplastic change.
Feel the sensation of each emotion, and then move onto the next. Spin around the wheel as quickly as you want, and the second you recognize the new emotion/feeling. It really is an awesome and very rewarding discovery when you notice that it is you who can change your emotions and feelings!
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