A speaker shares how she broke free from nighttime anxiety loops during her divorce by writing down fears, ranking them by severity, then listing best-case outcomes and actions to achieve them. This three-step method transforms rumination into problem-solving.
I picked up a horrific habit when I was going through my divorce. I would wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and flip-flop until 5 o'clock in the morning when it was time to get up and go to work. Why? Because I would think through the most horrific scenarios of what could possibly happen as I was going through my divorce. Now, mind you, none of them ever came into existence. None of them were true. None of them happened, but my brain was just absolutely on overdrive and I just couldn't find a way to make myself come out of it, especially not at 2 o'clock in the morning when all I wanted to do was desperately go back to sleep. Now, if that sounds familiar, I would like to share 3 really quick steps that can help you to navigate through those moments of anxiety and those sleepless nights where you're just imagining the worst scenarios that you possibly can. And the first one is this: write it out. Once you take it out of your head and you put pen to paper and write everything around that idea or around that scenario that you can possibly think of, from the most outlandish to the simplest, it doesn't matter. Just brain dump on paper Because one of the reasons why we can't let those mind loops go is because we're constantly chasing ideas. Once you stop the chase and you write that down, it makes it so much easier to, in a way, release it because you don't have to keep reminding yourself, oh, this— these are the things that I'm— that I'm thinking about. The second idea is, or the second step, is to rank them. What is the absolute worst-case scenario? From what you've listed. Write it down. What's the next one? And the next one? And the next one? Until you've made your way all the way through the list. One of the things that you might notice as you're doing that is that there are themes. You can actually cluster some things in buckets. You might have a finance bucket, a relationship bucket, a rejection bucket. You're going to be able to start to see what those patterns are, start putting them in buckets, and that's gonna give you even more clarity. And once you know these are the worst-case scenarios or these are all the different scenarios, take the first one and think about what can I do to mitigate that? Is there anything that I can change, any action I can take, any thought that I can change, anyone whose help I can elicit to make sure that this worst-case scenario doesn't happen or that I'm equipped with the right tools if it does to deal with it. And the last step is instead of thinking about what the worst case scenario is, flip that on its head. What is the best case scenario that can come out of the situation? And write those things down. Do the same thing. What is the best, second best, third best? However, make sure you've got a little bit of, of an organization going. And then ask yourself, What can I do to stack the deck on my side? How can I ensure that the best case scenario comes true? Whose support can I enlist to make sure that that happens? Switching the perspective from that negative, what's the worst case scenario, to the positive, what's the best case scenario, completely changes the energy of the situation instead of being mired down in anxiety. It becomes kind of a fun challenge to figure out, okay, if this is the crap that I might have to deal with, what's the good that can come out of this? What are things that you can be hopeful for, things that you can strive for instead of man— just managing the bad stuff? Shoot for the good stuff. So these 3 steps are going to be able to help you to reframe, clear some of the anxiety, be able to look at things a little bit more objectively than those crazy mind loops that I know I've gone through, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It really helps when we put it on paper we look at, okay, what's the worst thing that can happen? How can I mitigate it? What's the best thing that can happen? What can I do to stack the deck on my side? It really makes a world of difference. And if you're just coming out of a divorce or a long-term relationship and you're looking for a supportive community of like-minded women, I invite you to join my Facebook group called Brave New You.
