.png)
Joan, who was sixty-eight, was going on holiday to Scotland.
It involved taking an overnight ferry from the mainland to one of the islands and she was travelling with her sister. It all seemed well planned and organised to me but Joan’s anxiety about the trip was huge. It continued to grow the nearer the departure date came. In fact she reached such a state of high anxiety that I believed she would pull out of the holiday.
With this in mind I asked Joan if she would work with me to uncover the actual cause of her anxiety. She agreed so we began by her explaining to me what exactly triggered it – in her opinion.
She said that a friend of hers, who had already made the trip, had told her that when she travelled the crossing was ‘a bit rough’. I asked Joan what ‘a bit rough’ meant and how high were the waves. She thought about it and then bent down and indicated a level about nine inches above the floor.
I explained that for me a rough sea means waves six feet high and the level she indicated I would call ‘choppy’. That made us both laugh and eased the tension. Clearly our frames of reference were very different!
I then asked Joan who would be in command of the ferry to which she replied that it would be the captain. I wondered if she thought the captain would leave port in dangerous seas and her immediate response was that the ferry wouldn’t sail.
Joan’s anxiety about the ‘rough crossing’ was so all consuming that she couldn’t think straight and it was clearly blighting her holiday before it even began.
I realised that her frame of reference was almost ‘written in stone’ and that she had no idea of how to update her thinking and soothe her anxiety. This kept her very ‘stuck’ with behaviours that hindered rather than helped her.
So I invited her to work with me on my emotional literacy floor sheet and she readily agreed.
It was apparent that Joan became extremely fearful when unfamiliar situations presented themselves.
We worked with the statement ‘that you can only be frightened of things or situations that you have no knowledge of’. In which case, the task for fear is to gather information.
For instance, what does ‘rough seas’ mean? What does the word ‘choppy’ convey? Could anyone become a captain of a sea-going ferry?
Joan needed to discover the information for herself instead of relying totally on what friends or family told her.
Once you are in possession of this information you can notice if you are reassured and whether or not your anxiety has dissipated. If the answers are ‘yes’ then the planned holiday can go ahead. If the answer to these questions is ‘no’ then you can make the decision to choose a different holiday that won’t cause you anxiety.
When we are emotionally literate we have the ‘tools’ to solve problems and make informed choices about how we live our lives. Without the toolbox we limit our choices and often live with negative emotions which sometimes threaten to overwhelm us.
Joan eliminated the anxiety which threatened to ruin her holiday by updating her thinking. Anyone can do it!