By Megan Rigdon
Clinical Social Worker
I often have people come into my office asking for help with anxiety. Anxiety looks different for everyone, but there are similar aspects that my clients report. One theme I have seen in my work as a therapist is that anxiety comes when people follow the “what if” thoughts they have. “What if I interview for the job, but I don’t get it?” “What if my child gets sick and I don’t notice it in time?” “What if I relapse and my wife leaves me?” Too often we follow these “what-ifs”, and before we realize we are running after these thoughts, we feel anxious and get stuck in a cycle of constant, anxious thinking.
We all have these what-if thoughts. I am having one right now! “What if no one likes my blog post?” It is not uncommon to have these thoughts, but what can you do to cope with these thoughts and stop yourself from chasing them down? There are several tools and schools of thought, but one tool that I teach (and my clients have reported being helpful), is called “thought labeling.”
Thought labeling comes from a practice called mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation aims to keep you in the present and helps you observe your thoughts without judgement. I like to put it this way: we feel depression because we dwell in the past. We ruminate about what we should have done differently. On the other hand, we feel anxiety because we reside in the future. Worrying about all the things to come and the “what-ifs.” When we can take a moment to be mindful, check in with our body and our thoughts, then we are in the present. Being in the present allows us to take a step back from the future and the past, resulting in a reduction of anxiety and depression.
This is when thought labeling comes in. When you realize you are having these “what-if” thoughts, go ahead and grab onto one. Take my thought for example, “What if no one likes my blog post?” My instinct is to follow this thought and think of all the possible scenarios until I get really anxious and end up thinking that I am a failure and that everyone will hate my blog. That may sound extreme, but if you follow one of your thoughts you might find that they end in an extreme place. What would happen if I decided to not follow that thought? I am going to tell myself that it is “just a thought”. Too often we believe that every thought we have is true, when frequently that is not the case. A thought can be just a thought, not a reality.
Thought labeling is as basic as it sound.. You simply label an anxious thought as “just a thought”, and it takes power away from it. You get to decide later if the thought was true or helpful or realistic. But for now, this thought that “No one will like my blog”, is just a thought.