CHAPTER 6: The Debrief—Rewind, Reflect, Rewrite and Replay

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” — Socrates

It will take time to learn to manage your anxiety well, and lots of practice. While you are developing your own personal 3A Toolkit that helps you to do this, you will still have moments when your anxiety feels too big. Little to no learning can occur at times of high activation or dysregulation, as the lower brain systems (mammal and reptile brain) are essentially in charge and a person has little access to their ‘thinking’ brain. However, a great deal of learning can occur once you have returned to a more calm and regulated state. Once you are calmer, you can debrief the anxiety episode and consider what you would do differently next time. It is really helpful to involve a supportive adult to help you with this also. How long it will take you to return to being calm and alert will vary considerably. Because we know that it is not possible to be connected (relationally) and highly dysregulated at the same time, your ability to socially engage with others lets you know you are likely ready to debrief a situation. This is another reason why it can be really beneficial to have someone help you with this process.

In a debrief, work through the awareness, assign a label, and action areas of the 3A Toolkit. Consider what you noticed (Awareness), generate a label (Assign a Label), and determine what you would do differently next time (Action) in terms of the four categories of strategies. As I mentioned already, you always need a helpful thinking and body calming strategy. If your worry still needs additional strategies, then try a relationship or emotion and memory strategy. After this, imagine that you rewind the experience back to when you first noticed being worried. Then go through the Awareness, Assign a Label, and Action phases, but this time with the new ending where you imagine you have successfully shrunk your worry. Really notice how much more regulated you feel when you do this and notice and feel how different this is from when worry takes over. When you activate a memory like this, it is malleable and susceptible to revision, creating the opportunity to modify the memory in a positive way (Tryon & McKay, 2008). This is an incredible opportunity for learning what it will be like to be able to manage your worry well.

So, even if you are not able to always shrink your worry as it is happening, you always have the opportunity to do a rewind and debrief later. Try and do a debrief often as this really is an excellent way to improve your ability to manage your worry. You may notice that you often feel a bit activated or worried just by thinking about an experience when you were worried. This is really normal and part of the avoidance that is a huge part of worry. With this in mind, perhaps choose an experience of worry that is mild or not that intense for your first debrief practice. Just by remembering the experience of worry, you will sometimes feel like you are overwhelmed. This is why it works so well to use the debrief to write a new ending and consider a different outcome for the worry and also why it is important to start with a small and manageable experience in the beginning.

It is important to consider that building healthy habits to manage stress and anxiety will take time. Here are some things to think about when getting ready to do a debrief: • Change takes time, be patient. • Be curious and compassionate about your experience • Growth and change is supported by cycles of reflection and feedback.

How to create healthier habits? REWIND, REFLECT, REWRITE, REPLAY

REWIND

• When you are calm and safe, rewind to when it all started. • Approach with curiosity, like a scientist or a detective looking for clues. • Mindful and non-judgmental awareness • Find the moment you want to rewind to. This is often just before you really started to notice the anxiety. Anxiety does not just appear magically or randomly, it is preceded by events, thoughts, actions and interactions that contribute to it. This is the information that we are interested in-all of the different elements that contributed to your uncomfortable experience of anxiety. This information is important so you know what changes you can make. • You will notice that in the next section, Reflect, you will be asked some reflective questions to help you gather important information about what is contributing to your anxiety. Even though you have done a ‘Rewind’ so you can debrief a past experience of anxiety, some of reflective questions are asked in the present tense and some in the past tense. When you reflect back on an unpleasant experience, such as being anxious, you may feel like that experience is happening right now. When going through the reflective questions, consider what you remember about what happened before AND what you are noticing right now as you reflect.

REFLECT (using the 3A Toolkit)

Awareness

Awareness Category Important Reflective Questions

Body Activation

What do I remember about my body’s response at the time? What do I notice about my body now? What was my level of activation then? What is my level of activation now?

Thinking

Is this thought helpful? Consider if the thought was helpful at the time and if you think it is helpful now.

Assign a Label

What feeling label will you use to capture your experience? Also notice and label how you feel right now.

Action

Using your 3A Toolkit, decide what helpful thinking strategies and body calming strategies you could use next time you feel anxious.

For example, for helpful thinking you might use some messages of safety such as “This feeling will pass” and “I am safe” and “there is no real danger here”. You may also try some helpful thoughts that focus on what you can influence and what makes you feel more capable such as “I prepared well for the presentation and will do the best I can”. For body calming, I might try using my breathing with long exhales or choose my favourite body calming strategy.

REWRITE (Using the 3A Toolkit)

Now put all the pieces together and write a new version of the experience or event but this time with you putting the 3A Toolkit into practice and imagining you are able to shrink your anxiety. Using the public speaking example from this workbook, here is an example of what a rewrite would look like using the 3A Toolkit.

AWARENESS ASSIGN A LABEL ACTION

Thinking

• “This is going to be a disaster” • Your thoughts are jumbled and not helpful • Notice these thoughts are not helpful

Body Activation

• Heart is racing, trouble catching your breath • Assess level of activation

Label It

“That’s just my anxiety”

Helpful Thinking

• Messages of safety e.g. “This feeling will pass”, “I am safe”, “no real danger here” • Helpful thinking with a focus on: Present moment Capability What you can influence e.g. “I prepared well for the presentation and will do the best I can”

Body Calming

For low to medium level of activation try using your breath to lengthen your exhale and slow your breathing down. For higher levels of activation, use slow movement such as walking

REPLAY

Rewind what happened to the same moment you selected for this debrief, but this time replay it and imagine or visualize the new ending. If you are comfortable, you may even want to close your eyes. I suggest that when you get to the Action section of your replay, you actually state the new helpful thoughts and actually do the body calming practices. You may need to rewind and replay a few times until you feel more confident.

Let’s try out the debrief using the prompts above. Choose a recent experience when you felt anxious and consider the following:

Once you have figured out what is important in the Awareness, Assign a Label, and Action categories for the debrief, rewind the anxious experience in your mind and run through it again as if it was a movie. This time, use the new learning from your debrief to visualize a different way of responding to your anxiety that will generate a new outcome. Practice rewinding and replaying this experience with the new learning from your 3A Toolkit several times until it feels comfortable. You can use this 3A Toolkit approach for the debrief every time you felt more anxious than you wanted to, or want to respond to stress differently. There really is a lot of potential for new learning in reflecting on your experience in this way and essentially writing a new ending.

Just remember that reflecting on past experiences of being anxious can leave you feeling a bit anxious in the present. This is a good opportunity to practice using the strategies you have learned, but I suggest starting to practice this debrief process with an experience of anxiety that is relatively mild (e.g., not a panic attack). As you get more confident with this debrief process, you can try more intense experiences of anxiety. And also remember to wait until you are calm to try this debrief process.

Some people find it helpful to draw what happened. If this is you, I have included a template for drawing a comic strip version of a debrief, followed by an example of what this looks like when it is complete.

3A Toolkit Comic Debrief

I know my____________________________________ is acting up when:

AWARENESS How do I know worry? Is too big? THOUGHTS & IMAGES Are they helpful?

BODY What is my level of activation?

Then I said, “That’s just my___________________________________”

ASSIGN A LABEL What am I feeling?

ACTION How do I shrink the feeling?

I know I can shrink my _______________________________ by :

HELPFUL THINKING BODY CALMING

AWARENESS How do I know worry? Is too big?

ASSIGN A LABEL What am I feeling?

ACTION How do I shrink the feeling? 3A Toolkit Comic Debrief Example

I know my_______Worry_______is acting up when:

THOUGHTS & IMAGES Are they helpful?

I keep thinking something terrible will happen during my presentation and I will make a fool of myself.

BODY What is my level of activation?

I feel nauseous and like my stomach is in knots. My heart is pounding and my hands are sweaty.

Then I said, “That’s just my_____Worry____”

I feel worried.

I know I can shrink my_____Worry____by:

HELPFUL THINKING BODY CALMING

“I am safe” “My worry is making up stories again”

“I have practiced a lot and know the presentation material really well”

“I will do my best” “People want me to do well” “I will survive even if I make a mistake Deep breaths Butterfly hug