The Why Doesn't Matter
Welcome to Day 2 of the second spiral of Beliefs. Today we are talking about overthinking and the danger of finding the why.
Because we live in our heads, people with HFA are great at figuring out the why of a scenario. We LOVE analyzing why we do a particular behavior. This figuring out the WHY of the situation is a trap. It is a trap because it makes us feel like we are DOING something to solve the problem but in reality we are just overthinking.
For many years I said curiosity was the key to treating anxiety. I fully and wholeheartedly believe the world doesn't have enough curiosity about behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and other people. We are too filled with judgment, shame, or guilt, and we miss the essential element of just being curious. Curiosity is an amazingly freeing concept that allows us to see someone else’s perspective, see the big picture, or get clear on our feelings and perception..
HOWEVER, sometimes rather than being a freeing concept, curiosity can go the other way and become a practice of justifying and judgment. I notice it a lot with myself and my clients, who have the habit of justifying their stress.
I wake up feeling stressed, and thinking I am being helpful I immediately get curious--why am I feeling this way? And I precedes to list of all the possible contributors:
I have a big presentation tomorrow, and I am worried about it;
my husband and I argued last night;
I wasn't as present with my Mom as I should have been;
lately, I have done a lousy job of work-life balance.
Obviously, I have a lot of reasons to be stressed. But then things take a dark turn and I will do one of 2 things:
Beat myself up because I don’t have THAT much on my plate, I should be grateful! My Monger says, That is NOTHING you are stressed for no reason, compared to your friend Mary you are lucky! OR
I am so consumed with worry about my presentation and the shame of being a lousy wife and daughter that I feel worse than when I woke up by the time I am heading into work.
There is a way to be curious and not have it take a dark turn. The curiosity around the question "why am I stressed?" is an exercise not of justification but awareness.
It isn't a test to see "is my life worthy of this feeling" but rather an acknowledgment of the feeling and the factors that might be contributing to it.
I missed the critical part of following my stress litany with a pause, a few deep breaths, and then getting curious about what might help me ease my stress—asking myself what can I add into my life today that will give me some self-love, that will fill up my glass again. No judgment, no shame, just acceptance.
So I decided to practice skipping the why. The next day, I woke up and felt stressed, and I didn't go into my standard litany of WHY am I feeling stressed, I didn't have any curiosity about what was behind the stress.
I just noticed the stress. I went into the bathroom mirror, and made eye contact with myself, took a couple of deep breaths, put my hands on my heart, and kept repeating to myself, “Stress sucks, I am so sorry you are overwhelmed, let’s acknowledge the messy feelings. I pulled out the feelings sheet and thought “frustrated, agitated, upset, irritated, worthless, overwhelmed and sad. I was honestly surprised by the sad. But as soon as I saw worthless and sad on the feelings sheet I had tears in my eyes. I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “It’s ok Sweet Pea. Being sad is hard and a perfectly understandable emotions”. I didn’t think WHY are you said or jump down a rabbit hole of justification.
Then I Slow Down and Got into my body and put on one of my favorite songs, Brave by Sara Bareilles And just felt my body moving back and forth in the bathroom.
Then I Kindly pulled back to see the big picture. You are ok right where you are, you can do the day AND be full of emotions, it feels messy but it is very human. Lets get clear on what is a must do today. And what can you do to ease some stress. Make a cup of tea, go for a walk, call a friend, etc.
The truth is the why doesn't matter, not when it comes to treating anxiety. All of that analysis doesn't help. It's fun. It provides an insight that can help us know ourselves better. But as far as treating anxiety? Understanding why we do certain things is just an exercise in over-thinking. Pay attention today to the temptation to figure out the why.
AND if you have ANY questions about the content—send me an email at questions@selfloyaltyschool.com or head over to the website, sign in to the student portal and fill out the Q&A form. Ask Nancy Jane, and I will answer them in the next Q&A session. Q&A sessions will be recorded and appear on the Ask Nancy Jane podcast feed and in the member area on the last Tuesday of every month.
See you tomorrow!