Caroline Cavanagh, an anxiety specialist, explains the pattern interrupt technique for breaking stress escalation chains. She uses a personal example about her daughter's lunchbox to show how to stop a stress spiral before it builds.
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Hi there, my name's Caroline Cavanagh. I'm an anxiety specialist, and I'm here today with tip number 22 of my Advent calendar of stress-busting tips. And this one is one that, again, it's a bit of a common occurrence one. It's one that you can use to kind of prevent that escalation of stress, and it's called pattern interrupt. Now, a few years ago, my daughter got into a habit of every day I'd make her lunchbox, put in some nice healthy stuff, and then she'd bring it home at half past 4 and all the rubbish would be eaten and all the salad stuff would be left in the box. And we just got into this pattern of I'd open the box, go, oh, all the salad's left again! Say to her, Nadia, why didn't you eat your salad? She'd come back with, well, you know I'm not gonna eat it! Why'd you put it there in the first place? I'd come back with, well, you know you've got to eat healthily. She'd eat a token tomato and then reach for the biscuit tin, and so it went on. And every time, as soon as that lunchbox came in, I could feel my stress coming up because I know this chain of events was going to be, you know, pursuing from that, from that starting point. And this is where Pattern Interrupt comes into place. It's about changing something in that link That stops the escalation. So next time— next day she came home and put the lunchbox down, I opened the lid and I— oh, here we go again! Right, pattern interrupt. So I took all of the salad stuff out, put them in a little bowl, took them to her and said, Right, sweetheart, here's your salad. I know that you know about healthy eating. I know that you want to do really well on the netball court, so if you want to perform well in sports, You need to put the right fuel in, so here's your salad. You make the choice. And just walked away. Her face was an absolute picture, but the really important thing is she didn't get stressed and nor did I, because we changed the pattern of events. And that's what the Pattern Interrupt is all about. It's— if you can imagine like dominoes, if you line them all up side by side Or, you know, one in front of each other, and then you knock the first one, it goes— But if you take a couple out, it stops that chain reaction. And so the tip is, every time you feel yourself getting stressed, stop and actually think about what's the pattern that's leading there. Especially if it is— if you've got teenage children like me, you're probably very aware of this kind of thing going on all the time. Thinking about what is that chain that leads one to another to another to another, and just take one of those things out And the pattern gets interrupted. Every link you take out of that chain, the more likely you are to reduce your stress. So the pattern interrupt is, is a great one. As I said, it's brilliant with teenage children, but there's all sorts of scenarios that you can put that into. So another one for your stress-busting toolkit. 21. This makes this the 22nd. So we're aiming to build you up a really cool toolkit of different techniques. that you can use, a bit like this one that's more of a kind of everyday thing that you may get into. Some of them are preventatives, others of them are to use what I call it the emergency light, the first sort of the first aid approaches to stress management. And there should be 24 by the time we get to the end of Christmas Eve. So for anyone who is kind enough to share this post on their timeline or to also like the page, I will be putting their names into a hat as my way of thanking you to, um, to work with you one-to-one. Um, as I say, it's my way of thanking you for trying to share these tools around, because the more people that can reduce their stress, the less stressful world we're gonna live in. And at the moment, it's not looking as if the start to 2021 is going to be much better than we've had over the last 6 or 9 months or so. So be more resourced, have more ways to deal with stress, because nothing out there is real. It's only the meaning that you give to it. And the more tools that you have, the more different meanings you can attach to different situations. So thank you very much for watching. As I say, anyone that chooses to share this post, I'll put your name in a hat and draw names out for the opportunity to work one-to-one with me. So that I can work really individually with you to help any things that are causing you stress or anxiety. And if you'd like all of these in one very simple usable format, there is an ebook that's actually got 30 tips— there's another 6 as well— that you can download from carolinecavanagh.co.uk and go to the resources page and you'll see the free ebook that's got all 30 that you can just dip into and out of. As you please. So thank you very much to all of those of you that have been watching, and I will be back tomorrow with tip number 23. 2 more to go. Bye-bye for now.
