Learn how to react mindfully instead of regrettably when life freaks you out

Learn how to react mindfully instead of regrettably when life freaks you out

The following post includes quotes and excerpts from The Mindful Freak-Out by Eric Goodman PhD, a guide to navigating life’s difficult moments in a way that minimizes suffering while maximizing values-based responding.

What’s a ‘Freak-Out’?

In his new book, The Mindful Freak-Out, Goodman describes freak-outs as when “we are going about our lives when, suddenly, our brain perceives or misperceives a threat and, instantly, powerful, and painful emotions try to take over. Sometimes this doesn’t end well for us. The emotions can hijack us and drive us to behave in ways that are impulsive and ultimately counterproductive:

• Freaking out about not being able to sleep leads to a battle against insomnia, which pushes sleep further away!
• Freaking out about feeling anxious leads to an internal struggle that inflames the anxiety into panic!
• Freaking out about giving a presentation in class or at work, which leads to an overwhelming urge to be perfect, which makes performance stiffer, awkward and painful!
• Freaking out about a big decision, which leads to endless rumination agony!
• Freaking out about something your romantic partner said or did, which leads to a big fight and, later, regret!
• Freaking out about any number of frightening things (e.g. spiders, public speaking, dating, adventure, career opportunities), which leads to avoiding situations in life that are important to you!”

What’s a Mindful Freak-Out?

Often, we try to ‘solve’ these freak-outs by finding ways to avoid the situation that triggered them, a method that can set us up to fail since emotionally distressing moments are an unavoidable part of life. As Dr Goodman said, “we all freak out sometimes”, but The Mindful Freak-Out teaches you skills for “catching yourself during these highly emotionally distressing moments and taking quick, proactive steps to reduce your suffering and sense of being out of control — while increasing your ability to respond to the difficult moment in ways you won’t later regret.”

How do you mindfully freak-out?

Before jumping into more in-depth exercises and advice grounded in a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), Dr Goodman opens The Mindful Freak-Out with a quick-start guide. This guide allows readers to “begin to take effective action right away to address your suffering … breaking down key evidence-based strategies into concise steps so they can be of immediate use.” This guide includes three steps of awareness, acceptance, and action – all of which are anchored in compassion.

Here are evidence-based steps you can take when suffering during emotionally distressing moments:

1. Get off autopilot – compassionate awareness

Your internal threat system is designed to try to take over during ‘threatening’ moments and propel you to take steps to fight or flee from a threat. This is important when survival is at stake but can be unhelpful when your threat system is only misperceiving the situation to be threatening.
You can help ease your inner threat system by:

• Noticing the suffering and slowing down. Your mind and body may be reacting with urgency and engaging your fight-or-flight, if appropriate, slow down the situation by taking a break (grab a glass of water or go to the bathroom).
• Setting an intention to do what is helpful. Rather than impulsively reacting to the painful moment, allow your inner tone to become calm and caring as you set an intention to do something to improve the situation helpfully.
• Anchor in the moment using breathing and senses. You might find yourself getting swept up in past or present moments that increase your internal struggle, focusing on calm breathing and your senses can anchor you back into the moment.

2. Face the painful moment with compassion (compassionate acceptance)

When you are faced with painful emotions, you might be tempted to struggle with them or run from them. At times, it may give short-term relief, but increase long-term suffering.
You can face these painful moments by:

• Engage your compassionate mind. Like an actor getting absorbed into their character, take on the role of your compassionate ideal self. You can find this self by recalling a time when you were at your compassionate best, helping a friend or family member who was suffering, how you were focused on being warm, kind and helpful.
• Notice and release struggles. Fighting to get rid of your painful emotions can make them more intense, increase your suffering, and further teach your threat system that you are in ‘danger’. For this moment, see if you can notice where you are automatically struggling against your painful emotions. See if you can let go of struggle and allow the feelings to sit softly in your feet, legs, stomach, back, hands, arms, chest, neck, jaw, and around your eyes and forehead.
• Unhook unhelpful thoughts. Your mind may be hooking onto threat-thoughts that are not helpful for you such as: ‘I must get rid of this unpleasant feeling right now! I can’t do this!’, ‘If I fail at this, I will be a failure!’, ‘I’ll feel this way forever!’, ‘Feelings like these are dangerous!’ or ‘I must win this argument!’ Remember that you are not your thoughts, nor are you responsible for the ‘mind-noise’ your brain automatically generates. See if you can unhook from the unhelpful thoughts. Watch them come and go without grabbing onto them or pushing them away. You can treat them like ocean waves, coming and going with you watching from the shore rather than diving in and being carried away by them.

3. Respond based on your ‘Best Self’ (compassionate action)

The goal of this step is to choose and implement an action (or strategic inaction) that is consistent with who you want to be. A Best Self action is values-based and seeks to ease your suffering in the long term, even if it means making a less comfortable choice right now.

You can do this by:

• Notice and name your urge to react. Your threat emotions will come with automatic urges to react to difficult moments in specific ways. For example, having the urge to call the dinner party host and cancel because you are nervous. You reclaim some power over your threat system by noticing and naming the urge or instinct that you have right now (‘I am aware of the urge to avoid going to the dinner party’).
• Choose your Best Self response. Imagine that you are the best version of yourself. From that mindset, notice whether acting on your emotion-driven urges would be consistent with that best version of you. If not, how would you choose to respond to this difficult moment? Another question you could ask yourself is what would you advise someone you care deeply about to do in this situation?
• Act and notice the outcome. Now is the moment of choice. You can choose to move towards being the person you want to be, or you can move away. Over time you can notice whether your action (or strategic inaction) did, in fact, move you closer to values-based living. You can also notice whether it led to less suffering in the long term, even if it meant initially facing your distressing emotions.

These steps are brief and designed for immediate support, to find more exercises to help you with ‘freak-outs’ and engaging in compassionate awareness, acceptance or action, grab a copy of The Mindful Freak-Out by Dr Eric Goodman.  

Books by Eric Goodman PhD