Ok. I’m wondering if a psychologist or doctor told you it was something to try, and you could ask them to explain it a bit better?
I know a couple of things along these lines though. Something that’s said a lot about using mental health skills is that it’s best to practice them when you’re feeling well/not being triggered. I know it goes against our instincts to use skills when we don’t need them, but it helps to solidify them in our minds and make them easier to apply when we need them. In a lot of ways, learning to manage our mental health is like learning any skill - They require practice. Maybe this is what they meant? I know for me, I need to constantly remind myself to stop, take a breath and check in with how rational my thoughts are to gain a bit of perspective. It’s too easy for my brain to spin into a chaos of anxiety unless I take these mindful moments, and I try to practice it often and feel like it’s slowly becoming more natural.
The other thing is that there’s the idea of ‘Coping Ahead’, where you visualise an upcoming situation that you think might trigger anxiety or another strong emotion in the moment. You try to imagine the rational things you will say to yourself at the time and how the event will go ok, so that when you’re actually there you’ve taken away some of the uncertainty about how you’ll cope. I probably haven’t explained that very well, but you can look up Coping Ahead which is a DBT skill.
I hope this helps.
Take care,
Alexlisa
