You are not the robot (adaptive behavior), it only feels that way sometimes. 4 years ago with my Mentor YS Fu in Suzhou, China with other great friends, Ted and Sosa.
Superpowered – Part II: Your Adaptive Behaviors and How to Fix Them
This is Part II of a three-part summary of the book Superpowered: Transform Anxiety into Courage by Renee Jain and Dr. Shefali Tsabary. This book is my 2020 Book of the Year and one in which I believe everyone must-read, not only to help parent your children but also to help re-parent yourself. This book is not only about anxiety, it’s really about your emotions and how to handle them.
In Part I (which is here), I write about each of the 5 superpowers and how they become core wounds:
Present
Original
Whole
Energized
Resilient
We discuss what it is, adaptive behavior, and emotions. I also wrote about how they are related to the 5 core networks.
In Part II, I will review the book on how to deal with adaptive behaviors day-to-day.
It would normally be part of this section, however, it was worth a section on its own, so last week, I wrote a further understanding of becoming more emotionally aware via Ekman’s Atlas of Emotions and LALA method of dealing with our emotions (which is here). In Part III (to come), we examine how to heal your core wounds and how to reactivate your superpowers, core beliefs, and core networks.
The Worry Messenger and the Emotional Operating System
Because the book has one of its main themes to help 1/3 of American children who have anxiety (the technical term for worry), the book emphasizes how our emotions are just messengers for us. We don’t need to fear the emotion of fear or worry or any of the physical symptoms of worry like dizziness, nausea, chills, racing heart, shortness of breath, etc.
These symptoms of our emotions are just messages being given by the body. Emotions are just part of an emotional operating system that is there like pain or hunger or our 5 senses that provides information for our consciousness to make us decide what to do. Emotions (like worry) has a purpose. Emotions have benefits. Emotions are a good thing, even “bad” emotions or bad feelings have a purpose.
Using Worry As a Good Thing
The book illustrates that in the caveman days, worry or fear was a good thing. It made us survive by activating the fight or flight or freeze (or faint) mechanism when we saw a lion. Today, there aren’t as many lions however, we still have dangers such as cars when crossing a street or a hot stove.
In addition, this safety mechanism has also involved to help us with modern-day challenges. For example, before a big presentation or exam, many of us feel the same “symptoms” as anxiety. We are nervous, our hearts are beating faster and our palms get sweaty. However, there is no danger. What the body is doing is helping us to get ready to take on the challenge of the exam. So this is a good thing. It is not a reason to worry. It is time for the body to get ready for the challenge.
Emotional Operating System
If there is one area that I have had my biggest growth in, it is about emotions or feelings. While I have been exposed to understanding a wider range of emotions and tried to be happier, with books like the How of Happiness, and Happier, I was unaware that there was what some call an Emotional Operating System.
This emotional operating system operates in the body much like any of other senses, hearing or smell, or pain, hunger, and thirst. The emotional operating system sends signals that we have learned to identify as being happy, sad, angry, jealous, etc. This emotional operating system sends these feelings that have messages via these emotions. Worry we have seen is a form of warning or challenge. Anger for example is that something is violating our boundaries or sadness is due to loss.
The emotional operating system is highly evolved and can help us lead better lives. Studies over the last 20+ years have shown that people with high emotional quotient (EQ) make better decisions and are more successful in life than people with low EQ and high IQ’s. So developing and understanding our emotional operating system is very useful for living our best lives.
What Happens When We Don’t Know How to Handle Our Emotions
In addition, when we don’t know how to use our emotional operating system, it leads us to develop many problems such as core wounds and beliefs, trauma, trapped emotions, phobias, and adaptive behaviors. These issues leave many of us operating at our sub-optimal selves. Many of us were not thought about how to handle our emotions properly. And when we were younger we faced overwhelming situations such as being abused (physically, sexually, or emotionally), bullied, given tasks we couldn’t handle like caring for an alcoholic parent, or had a bad math teacher and it made us feel like we couldn’t do math.
These strong emotions and an event led our systems to store the emotions in our body and also to develop beliefs and adaptive behaviors that created our modus operandi for the rest of our lives. It is our inability to handle these emotions i.e. getting zapped that leads to adaptive behaviors.
Shed the Shoulds
Zapped from Present to What-iffing
When you are present, you are fully aware, you are conscious. Then when you start worrying about the future and consequences of the past, you start what-iffing. According to scientific studies over 50% of our time is spent in the past or future. And because this is average, I would hazard to guess that the number is actually much higher for some people (like myself. LOL).
Another name for worrying is anxiety. Because the book is written for kids, it helps by using the language for kids and teaches them how to identify anxiety by identifying the situation and noting the thoughts, the physical sensations (5 senses), and the behavior. The book then notes that strategies such as squishing (thought suppression), pacifying (it’s going to be ok), and bullying (getting mad at yourself for worrying) does not work. It provides two strategies that actually work. The first they call stopping the dominoes (measure realistic and unrealistic of the worries) and the second “Calculate the Risk”—best, worst, most likely scenario.
Anxiety Skills Workbook
These strategies in Superpowered are standard cognitive behavior therapy that has proven to succeed. If you do have anxiety as an adult, I would highly recommend instead for you The Anxiety Skills Workbook by Stefan Hofmann. It’s one of the best books I have seen on anxiety and comes with worksheets to help you through this. If you have analytical like me, you may like this workbook.
I love the worksheets given in the workbook because it starts with the why? Setting your goals for changes and why you want the changes (i.e. pro and cons).
Awareness
As usual, the very first thing to learn is awareness (this is why it is important to build this core network in personal development). So the first worksheet provided is a Self-Monitoring From that allows you to track the worrying thoughts and the degree of anxiety. You can also track the 3 components of anxiety—your thoughts, physical sensations, and behaviors.
And now that we are tracking emotions via Locate Accept Listen Act (LALA) (see here for a full explanation of LALA), perhaps LALA anxiety too—I am not a psychologist, but just curious to see what happens when you also get in touch with the feelings that surround anxiety—the location is the physical sensations and what happens if you just accept them—do they reduce, do other emotions pop up. What messages do the LALA have, and what actions i.e. behaviors do you have now that you are more conscious about the emotion So awareness of our core Emotions network helps us to understand the issues. You can see that when we have built our core networks of Emotions and Awareness, we are able to understand the issues more easily and handle them. Then we can start applying the solutions, many are habit-driven i.e. using our increased core Motivation network to form better habits.
Mindful Relaxation
The first exercises given by the Skills Anxiety Workbook are for mindful relaxation. When you are aware of your anxiety and able to breathe mindfully, you are able to help yourself to relax the physical symptoms of anxiety. So mindful breathing is first. The best breathing exercise I know of is called 4 square breathing. Inhale 4 (1, 2, 3, 4).hold 4..exhale 4 and hold for 4. Think of a Square for each count of 4. Start with the inhale i.e. the side of one square drawing from bottom to top, then as you hold, you make the horizontal top, then the vertical side from top to bottom as you exhale, then the horizontal bottom as you hold, then the vertical side from bottom top, etc. This is why it’s called the 4 Square breathing technique. Do this for 3 minutes i.e. 12 times and this is how the navy seals as Mark Devine teaches how to switch to the parasympathetic nervous system.
The second kind of mindful relaxation is to just visualize yourself in a beautiful place and surroundings and just enjoy your time in that relaxing location.
The third kind of “physical relaxation” is progressive relaxation. There are also exercises on the web that teaches progressive relaxation of the body—start with one part of the body and relax each part completely starting from the top of your head all the way to your toes.
Challenging Probability Overestimation
One of the first cognitive behavior tools is to observe your thinking and then become aware that your worries are generally overestimating the probability of something happening. This is akin to SuperPowered “Calculate the Risk”—best, worst, most likely scenario analysis. I think here, superpowered is easier and more useful.
The worksheets are nicely set up to walk you through a proper analysis of the worry situation. It first looks at the situation, how believable is the thought, your physical sensations, and behavior. Then for the believability of thought, it asks you to look at the evidence for and evidence against. Also alternative explanations, evidence for and against.
Then you record how many times you may have had these thoughts (10), how many times this may have come true (1). So only 1 in 10 times this happens or 10%. You then get that only 10% of the time your “worry” explanation is correct. So the alternative explanation may be more correct. And what will you do in the future when this “worry” comes up again. It is all so logical and very convoluting with a false sense of precision.
Challenging Catastrophic Thinking
This is what SuperPowered calls “Stop the Dominoes” or in psychotherapy parlance “catastrophic thinking”. This is when we think the worst will happen and it will lead to a catastrophe happen. I like the way Superpowered handles this by calling this realistic and unrealistic thinking. Very simple. If this thing happens, then what will happen. If I give a speech and everyone laughs at me, then I will remember that we are all human and laugh at myself and remember that I am practicing and getting better at my speeches.
Catastrophic Thinking asks you to project out what will happen to the extreme (what are you afraid of). If I give my speech, then I will mess up, then everyone will laugh, then I won’t be able to face anyone, then I will need to run away and hide, then my life will be a disaster. First, estimate the probability of it happening. Then, if this were to happen, who could help you through it, what could you do, and what skills or resources would you need to get through it.
Detached Awareness Log
One exercise in building your awareness is the detached awareness log. You record the thought or worry and just watch it thoughts of the worry in a detached way without doing anything. This is done in log form by noting the time and day and accumulate a log of you doing this.
Worry Contrast Worksheet
Another way of increasing awareness and building your estimation capabilities is the worry contrast worksheet. Just jot down your prediction of what you are worried about and the likely probability of it happening. Then record the actual outcome. (see challenging probability overestimation and catastrophic thinking)
Worry Postponement Log
Once you are able to be aware of the worry and rank the intensity and time of day, decide if you solve the issue now, then do it now, or postpone or plan and see how that reduces the intensity of the worry. Keep a log for another day. Again this teaches awareness and control over your anxiety.
The Worry Modulation Log
This one uses your ability to gain control over your worry, by interestingly teaching you to Increase your worry. So you plan for more things. Or see what happens when you decrease your worry i.e. no plans. In other words, you are able to increase or decrease your worry because you have that control. Lol.
The Highest And Most Advanced State to Beat Anxiety
Anxiety is a result of us not feeling that we can handle the emotions of the “worst” event. So Hofmann was the first book I read that states that eventually we hope to get to the state of just being able to handle the emotions or situations of the worst scenarios.
One exercise is to imagine the worst thing happening and then step into the situation. Feel the feelings as if it were happening right now. Eventually, you will get to the point of being able to feel the disappointment of the worst thing happening. You will also know you can handle the feelings and also know that you can handle the worst outcome and what you would do. Once you reach this stage, you will have the confidence to handle these worries and once you have this confidence, you will not worry anymore.
So learning to be able to handle the tough emotions i.e. building emotional capacity with this like LALA tool and also self-compassion exercises allows us to become confident in our abilities to handle anything that comes up. We therefore do not need to worry because we trust ourselves to be able to handle whatever curveball life throws our way. This is the ultimate outcome of building the tools necessary to handle anxiety.
Zapped From Original to Camouflaged
“Camouflaging means you cover up your true feelings and behaviors and transform into someone you think you need to be in order to fit into a situation or to make others happy.”
When we worry that we won’t fit in as our selves and we may get rejected (that painful feeling of rejection activates similar parts of the brain that produces physical pain), we abandon our superpower of being original and pretend to be someone we are not. We Camouflage our real selves, even if it doesn’t feel right or good.
So to make others happy or to fit in, we abandon ourselves, our original selves and we are not true to ourselves. We hurt ourselves.
Social anxiety is a form of anxiety in social situations. Superpowered breaks down into 5 categories ways we may over-estimate or catastrophic thinking as part of social anxiety. I love the words used.
Hunchifying: Having a hunch or guessing at what another person is thinking or how a situation will turn out.
Overlooking: Looking past or ignoring the positive or good stuff in a situation and focusing mostly on the negative or bad stuff.
Lightifying: Feeling like there is a spotlight turned on you and everyone is judging you in a negative way.
Extremifying: Viewing a situation in extremes, using terms like “always” or “never” or “the worst”
Supersizing: Making a small challenge much bigger than it is or exaggerating.
It is important to remember that worry is just a message. And the thoughts have “think, feel, do” components. The first thing when you have these thoughts is to the 5 C’s Process:
1. “Catch your worrying thought.
2. Check to see if you are in a Thoughthole.
3. Collect evidence that goes against your thought.
4. Challenge your thought by debating yourself.
5. Change your thought to something more accurate.”
It also notes that the “Do” of the “Think, Feel, Do” process is often an Avoidance Strategy like run away, ignore, or pretend it doesn’t exist. Instead, one should feel encouraged to avoid Avoidance. You can do this by laddering i.e. producing steps to create the outcome you want. For example, if you want to meet a new person. 1. You set that as your objective. 2. Get someone you know to introduce you to that person. 3. Have a genuine interest in that person. 4. Pitch your idea to that person.
Zapped from Whole to Cocoon.
When zapped we go from whole to cocoon. From loving ourselves and feeling confident to avoid doing anything. The book presupposes that the main issue is our concept of perfectionism. We think perfectionism is already being about the best. Not about becoming or getting better at something. So if we aren’t already perfect, we go into avoidance i.e. doing nothing at all; we go into a cocoon.
Superpowered points out 7 different ways this Cocoon could manifest.
Not Good Enoughness
Your body is never good enough. Your clothes is never good enough. You don’t have “enough” likes on Instagram. You just never feel enough.
You are often comparing yourself to others. However, you really don’t know what is going on that created the reason for this. Like a duck under whose feet are moving frantically underwater to keep him looking like the duck is gliding across the water easily. So too it is when we see others who are “enough.”
Also, rather than compare yourself to the other person and feel envious of the other person, we can receive the message of the emotion of “envy” which just indicates that is something we would like to have or achieve. When we hear this message via LALA, we can then “flip the switch” from envy and jealousy to feeling inspired. How did they achieve the result? What can you learn? You go from envy to inspired by “flipping” your internal switch.
Instead of saying I’m “not” good enough. Feel the emotion and feel the envy and instead of interpreting it as I’m not good enough, say, I’m inspired by Nicholas and how he was able to do 100 consecutive days of posting a new video on YouTube and building his “doing muscles” by deciding to do so even on days he found it hard to do. This is the action I am inspired to take: 1) I will create 200 days writing challenge for myself. I am already on day 40 and now will go to 200 days or until I am finished with the draft of my book.
Need to Please
When you are so worried about conflict and not being perfect in the eyes of others (childhood of perhaps being overwhelmed or insufficiency wounds), we often adapt by being accommodating and never disagreeing with others but sacrificing ourselves and having no time for ourselves. Just as self-care of eating properly and sleep is important for your body, self care of having time for yourself, having respectful boundaries by saying no, and mindful self-compassion is important.
Fear of Flubbing
Some of us are afraid of being judged, afraid of failing to be perfect, afraid of saying the wrong thing. When we make a mistake, we find it hard to forgive ourselves. I was there once because these are the attributes of those who have a fixed mindset. We believe you are either great or not from the beginning. The solution is to create a growth mindset. The easiest way as Superpowered suggests is to become a YETi. A person who says “not yet”. Rather than say, (I need to be) I am already good at RIM. I say I am not good at RIM YET. I am not good at ……(fill in the blank) YET.
Supersized Organizing
Another way to adapt is to make sure no surprises happen. These are the people who make constant to-do lists and are super organized from calendars to super clean desk areas. If you have a “surprise”, that sends them into a tailspin, even a surprise party or trip.
WOOP an Upgrade Over Visualization
The antidote to worrying about surprise is WOOP by Gabriele Oettingen. Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan.
This is the Positive Psychology enhancement to Visualization. In a seminar I attended with Oettingen, she walks us through this 15 minutes visualization of WOOP.
Your wish is more like your vision/mission or your objective. Your Outcome is your measurable result or key result (if you are using OKR). However, what is most important is that research has shown that if we don’t have a challenge in front of us, we actually underachieve. Our body and brain do not gear up for the challenge. So we need to think of the Obstacles and have a Plan when the obstacles do come up of how to get around the obstacles.
Quick Example WOOP
Wish: I want to have a productive day
Outcome: Write and do my Clear Beliefs class prep.
Obstacles: I won’t feel like doing my writing because “it is hard” or not enough time to do it.
Plan: Block of time to write and to do class prep. Add additional block time later, if I do not finish. When I do not feel like writing, just sit, and start writing anything. Send appreciation and self-compassion to me during those moments.
Once you have worked out your WOOP, sit and visualize the whole process for about 10 minutes.
First. visualize Wish and how that would feel.
Next, see the Outcome and how that would feel.
Then, visualize the Obstacle when it comes up.
Last, Plan what to do to overcome the obstacle. Visualize the plan.
The Perfectionism Police
Adaptive behavior for perfectionism is to be critical of all others that are not perfect. The food is terrible or complains about teammates or associates. These are the ones trying to control other people and things out of their control.
Serenity Prayer
The solution is to learn to control what you can and cannot control. Many people at AA meetings are exposed to the Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference
Living in Procrasti-Nation
Procrastination is another adaptive behavior for people who are overwhelmed and worry about making mistakes. These people are always putting things off until the last minute, or are always handing in projects late. They may appear to be lazy or disorganized, and really they are really just cocooning.
The way forward for these people is to break down the projects into Itty-Bitty Goals. So instead of me trying to write a book all at once, which has always been overwhelming, I can break down the project into writing every day at least 300 words. I also have a goal of publishing every week if possible, what I have written. So instead of a whole book, I will publish about 26 articles in 6 months and this will make up my book.
Inner Monster
Many of us have an inner critic. Worst, if the inner critic becomes an inner bully. Bully ourselves by saying unkind things to ourselves eventually makes us not want to do anything and go into a cocoon. The way through this is by being your best friend. Superpowered suggests to start by writing a letter to yourself as if you were a best friend writing to you.
One of the kindest things we can do for ourselves is to learn how to change our inner critic to our inner coach and ultimately to our inner cheerleader. We can do this by first becoming aware of our inner critic. We can ask what is the objective of that we are trying to get ourselves to do. Stop criticizing, and understanding that mammals work better with self-compassion, be self-compassionate with yourselves. Then be an inner coach and find a better way of doing the thing next time. And when we do something well we praise ourselves.
The Mirror Exercise
Th Mirror is one of those great exercises to develop self-esteem and to be your inner cheerleader. Before going to bed (perhaps when brushing your teeth), look in the mirror and think of 7 things you are proud of that you did today, 7 things you forgive yourself for, and 7 things you commit to doing tomorrow End the mirror talk by look at yourself and say I love you for 1 minute).
Zapped From Energized to Fried
Many of us have bought into the rat race of life or the Good Life Map as the book calls it. We need to get good grades, be good at extracurricular activities, get into the right university, work at a brand name company, get married, have 2.5 kids, a house with a white picket fence, and then be happy and retire at 55 or 65.
The issues are many and they cause anxiety throughout life or even just thinking about them can make us get fried. Our superpower of being energized gets zapped. We go from being full of zest for life and a passion for learning to being exhausted, depleted, and constantly worrying.
Of course, there are many issues along the road of the Good Life Map
Bad Road Signs: Shoulding.
We should ourselves all the time—should get good grades, should work harder, should be lots of activities, should be more social.
Broken Guardrails: No Room For Mistakes
There is no room for mistakes. The moment we go off this good life road map, perhaps a bad test, we fall into the sea of worry.
False Advertising: Incorrect Motivation
We are sometimes given rewards. For example, I once gave my niece a reward of $500 if she got straight A’s in high school. She did and was then not motivated after that. The reverse of punishment is just as bad.
Tailgating: Following Others Too Closely
You are too busy watching others in the race of the Good Life. You don’t have time to celebrate, feel grateful, or any of that because you are so busy watching others who may get ahead of you.
False Identity: Bumper Stickers
You get caught up in believing you are what you have achieved. I am on the honor roll or the chess champion and should not become your identity.
The biggest issue with the Good Life Map is creating Happiness as the Goal. We doing all that work to be happy. Instead, happiness is actually a feeling that comes and goes throughout our lives. It is also doesn’t come only from achieving goals, happiness can also be created and felt while we are on the road to reaching our goals.
Last, feeling that happiness is the only feeling devalues the purpose of our other emotions as messengers. All emotions have a purpose to help us guide our actions and behaviors.
Finding Your Ikigai
Ikigai is the Japanese word “the reason for you to wake up in the morning” or your purpose in life. When you using your purpose as the daily guiding force it helps to create your path of what you consider your true life.
One way of finding your Ikigai is to find the intersection of:
What you love to do,
What are your Strengths, and
What the World Needs.
My Ikigai is teaching the world about becoming their best selves. I love to learn, I am good at teaching, and the world needs to know how to become better people to create a better life for themselves and the world.
(This is an MHS original graphic. LOL)
Other Things To Be Unfried
There are three other things you can do to help you become unfried.
1. Intrinsic vs Extrinsic
Learn to Use Intrinsic Motivation (we do it because we love to do it, curious or passionate) versus Extrinsic Motivation (we do it to earn praise or reward or avoid punishment or from fear).
2. Create more Flow in your life.
Flow happens when your skill level meets the challenge level. Being in the zone happens when you are not bored (skill level is too high and challenge too low) or anxious (the challenge is too high and the skill level is too low).
3. Get More Sleep.
You might be fried because you need more sleep. Create good bedtime habits and sleep more. Sleep is my number one self-care habit. In a creative world, your brain needs more sleep to recover and function properly.
Zapped From Resilient to Iced
This is when you want to stop doing everything and avoid everything especially anything that makes you worry. This is when you feel like you have lost all your Superpowers and well, it feels hopeless. While taking risks is a part of life, you may feel like not doing anything because it might spark anxiety.
Panic or Anxiety Attack
Often this relates to an experience of Panic or Anxiety attack. This is as bad as anxiety gets. A panic attack is an abrupt onset of intense fear or discomfort that reaches a peak in a few minutes and can include four of many symptoms such accelerated heart rate, sweating, trembling, chest discomfort, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, chills, or hot flashes, numbness, fear of losing control or dying.
And once we feel an anxiety attack or panic attack, it is so horrible that you will do anything to avoid feeling it again. So avoidance of everything is the normal path chosen.
The Solution Instead of Avoidance
However, there is a better way by using science. It was discovered that the amygdala was the brain’s center of fear. It was thought that when danger was present, the amygdala would automatically turn on and you would experience fight-flight-freeze-feint reactions. However, as we have noted, fear is an emotion and we can goes our response.
E + R = O Event + Response = Outcome
E + E + R = O Event + (Emotion) + Response = Outcome
Event (Bear Attacks) + Emotion (Fear) + Response (to be afraid (real bear) or to laugh (because bear is a picture in a movie)).
The real discovery is that we have a choice. The LALA method. We can Locate the feeling in our bodies. Accept the emotion. Listen to what it is saying and then Act (choose our Response).
Ride the Wave
Another response is to just understand the emotion will pass through our bodies. So when we are feeling the discomfort of the panic attack, just allow the feelings to go through our bodies. It may be helpful to repeat a positive affirmation given in Superpowered just as:
I can handle this experience. It uncomfortable but not dangerous.
These feelings are uncomfortable but I have the skills to get through this.
These feelings can’t hurt me.
I’m safe.
This too shall pass.
I’ve learned to cope with these feelings. I can do this.
These feelings always pass. I can handle this.
These feelings used to help us survive. They will pass.
These feelings will pass. Panic can’t last forever.
Action Items
Review and see which adaptive behavior (the robot) you have chosen for your core wound.
Determine which solutions you would like to use to help you when your adaptive behavior is not working for you.
Look out for Part III which looks at giving you fuel for your SuperPowers.