When one problem turns into twenty
I promise, you know this feeling: the email arrives, or the text, or the phone call.
And suddenly there is a big problem to deal with.
Work. A relationship. A mistake. Something with consequences.
Your jaw clenches. Your stomach turns. Your breathing changes.
Within minutes, your brain has produced several very convincing trailers of your future disaster.
😱 What do I do?
😱 How much will this cost?
😱 What if I’ve completely messed this up?
Anxiety narrows our attention towards threat. The more desperately you try to solve everything, the more overwhelmed you feel.
So, let’s try something that may sound slightly counterintuitive. Let’s get out of this scary movie! Cut! 🎬
Find a large piece of paper and a pen. Write down everything going through your mind. Don’t organise it. Don’t judge it.
It might look like:
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Will Ben help?”
“This is so embarrassing.”
A cloud of thoughts inside your head can feel like one enormous monster. On paper, they become separate thoughts you can actually look at.
Now take three sheets and title them:
IN MY CONTROL: things you can actually do.
👉 Call Ben.
👉 Check the facts.
👉 Find out the procedure.
OUTSIDE MY CONTROL: things your brain may desperately want certainty about but cannot currently know.
❌ The mistake has already happened.
❌ I cannot predict how someone will react.
❌ I cannot know exactly what will happen next week.
MY FEARS & SELF-JUDGEMENT: the emotional noise around the problem.
🤮 “I’m so stupid.”
🤮 “This is humiliating.”
🤮 “Everyone will think I’m useless.”
Start sorting.
Once you’ve done this, leave the desk for a moment: walk, make coffee, stretch, jump 50 times if that’s what your body needs. Separately or in that order.
Help your nervous system come out of emergency mode enough to think again.
Then come back to the IN MY CONTROL page.
Choose one action. Not the perfect action. Not the action that guarantees everything will be okay. Just the next reasonable step.
Make the call.
Send the email.
Check the information.
Then reassess. What do you know now that you didn’t know an hour ago? What is the next step? Adjust your plan for tomorrow.
Anxiety loves the enormous, undefined future. Action brings you back to the present.
Fear needs imagination. To be frightened of the future, your brain has to create a picture of it. And it usually builds that picture from something familiar: past experiences, previous mistakes, old shame, loss, rejection, things that once hurt.
The demons in the dark room often feel terrifying precisely because you have met some version of them before.
Sometimes the most useful question isn’t:
“How do I stop feeling anxious?”
It is:
“What is my anxiety afraid will happen, and what can I actually do about it now?”
Separate what is real from what is imagined. Separate what you can influence from what you cannot.
Then take one step. 🪜
And another. 🧗♀️
Breathe! 🌬️