One of the right of passages we all go through is learning how to drive. The responsibility and the freedom that comes with it. I learned how to drive on a stick shift, an early 80s Toyota Corolla. It was a beaut! (Similar to the one at right). My Dad had bought it used and it was driven by my two older brother’s before I had my turn behind the wheel of it.
I remember the excitement…as well as the sheer terror! The smile and joy of being behind the wheel as well as the cringing while going through the growing pains of learning to drive stick. Think of all the favorites like catching the wrong gear, grinding gears, over revving, the car bucking, stalling at traffic lights and stop signs, and more. One particular moment of tremendous fear came when I was still trying to master driving up steep hills. I was driving with my Dad riding shotgun and offering instruction. We were leaving the nearby grocery store parking lot. The exit had a hill that rivaled El Capitan. Well, in my mind.
El Capitan in Yosemite National Park
I remember coming to a complete stop on the hill behind the car in front. It was quickly my turn. A few attempts to get up the hill led only to high revving of the engine and backward movement. The pressure mounted when a car pulled up behind me.
We mine as well have been kissing bumpers to the car behind, again, in my mind. I can recall wanting to give up and stop. Wanting to get out of the car and have my Dad do it. The tension mounted with another attempt. My heart and thoughts were racing, while the car was remaining stationary. All I could picture was the car rolling backward into the car behind. I was wondering how much the damage would cost. How would I ever pay that off?!
It would be decades later when I began to study counseling that I first heard the term, awfulising thoughts. As I learned, these are thoughts that we have in which we over focus on the worst case scenario. We give in to our fears. These thoughts typically have key words in them including:
Horrible
Worst
Terrible
Forever
Never
Always
Miserable
Excruciating
Dreadful
“The taste for worst case scenarios reflects the needs to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster.”
Whether the thoughts remain internal or are verbalized, they ratchet up our stress level. And when our stress level is in overdrive, our cognitive functioning, aka. rational thinking, plummets. In that earlier scenario all I could think about was everything that could go wrong. I became a slave to my own thoughts. I was becoming immobilized, much like the car as it sat on that hill.
Awfulising thoughts, big and small, happen to each of us on a daily basis. Many of which we may dismiss without a second thought. Other stronger ones make it past our “mental bouncer” and start causing chaos for us. The key is not to achieve zero awfulising thoughts, that isn’t possible. What is far more important is what we do with them when they occur, which they will. If we allow them to take root, they are like a virus and begin to spread. They can infect not only our cognitions in the moment, but our outlook, our feelings, and our subsequent actions. It can then become a self fulfilling prophecy.
A positive consideration when looking at awfulising thoughts is that they do help us to consider all possible outcomes of a situation. In other words, using a reframe here, we can call it critical thinking, and boom you have an asset. Critical thinking allows us to identify potential risks and if necessary take steps to mitigate those risks. The difference is that critical thinking is objective. Failure is an inevitable reality. We will experience it at times.
The downfall occurs when our emotions kick into overdrive. One way to picture it, our emotions can serve as mental NOS. Think Fast and the Furious and Brian O’Connor wanting to up his street racing with a double dose of NOS.
In this situation, NOS is exactly what you don’t want. Our thinking is no longer objective, the pre-frontal cortex, and instead is driven primarily or even solely by emotion, often fear. This comes from the limbic system in our brain, the amygdala. When I was driving up El Capitan, there was only one outcome I could see, via my amygdala, hitting the car behind me.
So now that we have established the cognitive and emotional pitfalls, what are the steps to get ourselves out of the pit? You have a choice in how we react.
Recognize: acknowledge that the awfulising thought is occurring, name it
Emotional-regulation: it is imperative to take a time out to regulate your emotions so they don’t get the better of you (ie. take some deep breaths, take a time out, say a prayer, get a drink of water, take a walk, read something, listen to music) - keep the virus from spreading by slowing things down
Analyze your options: after regrouping, objectively consider the possible outcomes and the ways to approach the situation
Choose your thought and action: make a conscious choice of the thought and own it. (Note: remember your thoughts will drive your actions and thus the subsequent result)
Take action: execute
Obviously there is great variation in the possible situations. Things can also get complicated when others are involved and you’re trying to navigate the actions and responses of others too. This is where trial and error come in and working on communication including expressing yourself, listening effectively, and working toward establishing common ground is important. Not to mention we don’t always find the “right gear” the first time. Over time or in instances we could strip the gear, that call for repairs. Relationships require repairs too. With prudence, we have the choice to go back and work to repair things that didn’t work out the first time.
There is one thing I haven’t mentioned yet about that early driving experience. In that moment, on the hill, I had a safety net, my Dad. He had his hand on the emergency brake, while I was driving. When we are in everyday situations we don’t often have someone outside of ourselves with a hand on the emergency brake. We are the ones left to handle navigating the situation as well as remembering we have an emergency brake available to us. Remembering our emergency brake can help us to react in a positive way. Hitting the pause button, especially if someone is pushing our buttons, and stepping away in the thick of it, can be a healthy emergency brake. Coming back to it later - 5, 10, 15 minutes, or other - with a cooler can be a game changer.
“Don’t spend a lot of time imagining the worst-case scenario. It rarely goes down as you imagine it will, and if by some fluke it does, you will have lived it twice.”
I didn’t run away from that ‘El Capitan’ situation. I got up the hill successfully and kept driving stick. Had I never learned how to drive stick I would have never had the chance to drive some pretty sweet rides over the years.
Acura NSX
BMW M5
Nissan 300 ZX
Mitsubishi 3000GT
Porsche 911
Dodge Viper
Ford Mustang SVT Cobra
Aston Martin DBS
While, I never took any one of these on a Ferris Buller-esque excursion or on some awesome car chase, they were each pretty cool to get behind the wheel of. And for the record, the Aston Martin DBS was my favorite. Yeah, I kinda felt like Bond…James Bond.
