Don't Panic

Last month an essay on panic [1] in Brownstudy (a blog by Mike Brown) led to a neat list of cognitive distortions:

1. All-or-nothing thinking ("always", "every", "never", ...)
2. Overgeneralization (making too much of isolated cases)
3. Mental filtering (focusing only on the negative)
4. Disqualifying the positive (shooting down good possibilities)
5. Jumping to conclusions
6. Magnification and minimization (exaggerating some aspects of the situation, ignoring others)
7. Emotional reasoning (relying on intuition rather than reason or evidence)
8. "Should" statements (looking at wishes rather than reality)
9. Labeling and mislabeling (naming things instead of understanding them)
10. Personalization (blaming oneself or others for random events)

Brown suggests that when you feel panic you might try:

• classifying the scary thought(s) via the above taxonomy
• looking at feelings and rating the level of discomfort
• jotting down disturbing thoughts and refuting them

Brown also cites [2] (in Alex Lickerman's blog) which in turn suggests:

• Carry anti-anxiety medication with you
• Don't fight panic—accept it
• Rate the severity of your panic moment by moment
• Look for mistakes in the thought process that led you to panic
• Desensitize yourself to situations that induce panic.

And of course there's my favorite strategy: try to identify what causes panic and avoid situations where it might arise.

(cf. BlameStorming (1999-05-15), KnowHowAndFearNot (1999-11-19), RepoMan (2003-03-10) SalmonOfDoubt (2005-07-07), ...) - ^z - 2010-11-17