I can remember as a young 18 year old driving from Peoria, Illinois where my family lived to Des Moines, Iowa, the home of Drake University. I was a very young college student in my second year of Pharmacy school. I had decided to not take the interstate and instead to meander along the back roads through some small towns through Illinois and Iowa.
I was only about 60 miles from home when all of a sudden my ‘66 Chevy Belair didn’t want to go any faster than 35 miles an hour. The speed limit at the time was 55 miles an hour on those highways and cars were passing me. During those years as a young macho driver, this embarrassed me. In those days, driving fast was what we did. My memory was that speed limits seemed more like a suggestion than the law. I even had a theme that I drove by “Nobody passes Old Blue.”
The car I had inherited from my grandfather was named Old Blue because right before it was passed to me, he had taken it to MACCO to get the $99 paint job and he chose the color baby blue.
It wasn’t macho that I was feeling at that moment, however. It wasn’t even embarrassment. It was actually something just a little short of terror.
What was wrong with this car? What had I done?
My mind starts racing:
Did I forget to change the oil?
Had I blown the engine?
Did I put the wrong kind of gas in the tank?
All of this, however, was secondary. My SUPER FEAR was that my dad was going to kill me.
Not literally, of course, but that feeling came from somewhere. Probably because I was a first hand witness when my brother wrecked my dad's prize Cadillac by speeding and hitting something that almost tore the transmission out of the car. My brother is still alive, but at the time, none of us was sure that was going to be true for very long.
You see, my dad was a really kind and loving person. He would do anything for anyone at any time. I can remember going and fixing people’s hot water heaters after supper on a Saturday night. I can remember going and helping his friends build their houses. I can remember my dad going and helping my friend Brad’s dad work on his 1972 Pinto (Ekkkk), in which I was a passenger many a time in the back seat (If you don’t know this reference, just google Ford Pinto).
Alongside this positive trait of his was a strong sense of responsibility. If he told me to do something, I had better do it. While he didn’t use the words, he expected it to be done with excellence. The goal for my dad was that my brother and I would grow up to be responsible men. I think that gene still gets expressed in my work today.
Awfulizing
This is probably my first recollection of the experience of awfulizing. Awfulizing is the term I give to describe when something goes wrong and the event, which normally isn’t too bad in reality, all of a sudden becomes a catastrophe.
Here is how it works:
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, my car won’t go over 35mph.
I probably forgot to change the oil.
Without an oil change the engine will blow up.
When the engine blows up, I will have destroyed my car.
This was my grandfather’s car and a gift to me to care for.
If I don’t care for this car, I will be seen as irresponsible.
My dad is going to kill me.
I saw him almost kill my brother.
So what do I do?
This is the point where emotion takes over from reality. This emotion can cause me to be afraid of the wrong thing. Can I stop this awfulizing so that I can think more rationally?
Turns out, psychologists have actually studied this phenomenon. What happens is that our feeling of anxiety doesn’t have an ability to create probabilities. For example, based upon the situation of my car not going over 35mph, there is a 10% chance my dad will actually be upset. And there is a 15% probability that I forgot to change the oil.
My brain, when my car won’t go over 35mph, becomes anxious. My brain can’t rationalize that there is almost no chance the reason that this car won’t go faster is because I missed an oil change. My brain associated car problems with my lack of knowledge (or memory), and created the short term anxious feeling.
Turns out what anxiety can do is build on itself. Something small can become something quite large in our minds quickly.
That report that was due yesterday has you being fired.
That bill you forgot to pay has you in bankruptcy.
That customer you forgot to call is now closing their account.
Forgetting to change the oil right after the 5000th mile has your engine blowing up.
We awfulize. We make a mountain out of a molehill, as my grandma used to say. Our emotions have a way of making something quite small into something quite large...neither of which is actually real.
The rest of the story
Turns out, there was a mechanical issue with the car. As you already guessed, it had nothing to do with the engine or the oil or anything else that I was worried about. The timing chain had broken and the transmission wouldn’t shift out of second gear. Not a big deal, really. About a $140 dollar repair back in the day.
Remedy
I want to acknowledge something here up front. There are people who are under the care of a physician who have clinical anxiety. If that is you or a loved one, I pray your mental health professionals are helping to get the relief that you need.
For the rest of us, who tend to awfulize more than we want to admit, I want to give you a couple of practical tools that I use in my executive coaching practice when my clients are in an awfulizing mode.
Practice good self-care. There is no substitute for lowering these stressful moments like prevention. Just like changing the oil in the car can keep the engine from blowing in the future, so can taking care of yourself. This prevention might not take the awfulizing away completely, but it can lessen its effects and frequency.
Get 7-8 hours of sleep.
Eat a balanced, nutritious diet.
Get some weight bearing exercise.
Practice Relaxing.
Work on deepening your spiritual practice.
Implement the acronym STOP. This method is a process that can help you get your thinking mind back. The first step has you Stop from the awfulizing and disconnect from the emotion in the moment. Take a deep breath. Become Other person focused. Finding someone who needs your empathy is the idea. Propose a question and reframe your circumstances.
Report the facts. Take the temporary feeling of anxiety that has your underwear in a bundle and just report the facts. Not the inflammatory facts that you want them to be, just the facts of the situation.
Had I known any strategies like the ones above, I likely could have saved myself hours of emotional turmoil. Why did it take me over 50 years to learn to just relax? It is all going to be okay. Deal with the facts as they are, try and resolve the issue at hand, stop trying to be so perfect, and just enjoy being yourself. Come on, Scott...You Got This!