Reactions

Think of a recent situation that distressed you a lot? Maybe it was distressing because it prompted distressing memories of a past event, or it involved dealing with day-to-day hassles that are very frustrating or did it involve other challenging situations, like a job interview or having to relocate.

Note down:

• What the situation/event was
• What the triggers were within the situation or event that you found distressing (for example sights, sounds, smells, people, conversations)
• Any negative self-talk (for example "I'm going crazy" or "What will they think of me?")

Two main skills are presented here for coping with distressing reactions; calming yourself with controlled breathing and helpful self-talk.

Controlled (or tactical) breathing

When we get anxious or distressed, our breathing tends to get faster and shallower. This is a natural reaction as our body prepares for fight or flight. But in most cases, we don't actually need to either fight or run away. The physical changes that go with the increase in breathing, (such as muscle tension, butterflies in the stomach, feeling light-headed) just make us feel more uncomfortable and anxious.

Getting our breathing back to normal helps to calm our strong emotional and physical reactions and prevents them from getting worse.

You can learn more about breathing here.

Calming self-talk

Self-talk (what you are thinking and telling yourself) can make anxious reactions better or worse:

• If your self-talk is negative it will make your anxious reactions worse.
• If your self-talk is calming and reassuring it can reduce your anxious reactions.

Unfortunately, negative self-talk can become automatic when you are distressed - you may hardly be aware that you are making your stress reaction worse by your negative self-talk.

The first step is to recognise when this negative self-talk occurs and then use calming and reassuring self-talk to coach yourself through the distressing situation.

If you find it hard to use calming self-talk when you are distressed, then practicing helpful self-talk when you are calm will help.

You can practice identifying helpful thoughts using the table below:

Stressful situations are a normal part of life and can't be avoided.

Making a plan for how you are going to manage stressful situations will help you manage your reactions simply by being prepared.

Triggers don't have to cause the same reactions in you over and over.

If you get distressed, you can calm yourself down.

At the date you have set for review:

• Did you try to implement the skills above? If so, how well did they work?
• Would you do things differently to improve how you managed your reactions?
• If a skill did not work, consider rehearsing the skill or select another skill that might be useful.

If you've had some success in managing your reactions to distressing situations, well done!

Don’t worry if things did not work quite as you’d hoped, as many people don’t succeed first time, simply work through this process again

You have taken a major step in improving the quality of your life by learning to manage your reactions to stressful reminders and events.