CHAPTER 6 The Debrief
It will take time to learn to shrink your worry, and lots of practice. While you are building your own 3A Toolkit that helps you to do this, you will still have moments when your worry feels too big. You will have a very very hard time using the strategies you have learned when you are really worried and you have ‘flipped your lid’ and the downstairs brain is in charge. It is pretty normal to not always be able to use the strategies when you are worried, it takes lots of practice! But, lots of learning can happens later, once you’re more calm. Once you’re more calm, you can think about the worry and wonder what you would do differently next time. This is called ‘The Debrief’. It’s really helpful to involve a supportive adult to help you with this also. How long it will take you to return to being calm and alert will be different for everyone, take as long as you need. When you feel like being close with other people, this lets you know you are likely ready to debrief a big worry. This is another reason why it can be really helpful to have someone help you with this process. It is also extra important that your supportive adult is also calm, you can only do a debrief when both of you are calm. In a debrief, consider what you noticed (Awareness), generate a label (Assign a Label) and what you would do differently next time (Action) in terms of helpful thinking and body calming. After this, imagine that you rewind what happened back to when you first noticed being worried. Then go through the Awareness, Assign a Label, and Action phases, but this time with the new ending where you imagine you have successfully shrunk your worry. It is kind of like you get to write a new ending for your worry story, a new ending where you shrink your worry! So, even if you are not able to always manage and shrink your worry as it is happening, you always have the chance to do a rewind and debrief later. Try and do a debrief often, this really is an excellent way to improve your ability to shrink your worry. To start with, choose a worry that is not too big or upsetting for your first debrief practice. Just by remembering the of worry, you will sometimes feel like your worry is getting bigger. This is why it works so well to use the debrief to write a new ending and consider a different outcome for the worry and also why it is important to start with a small worry in the beginning. Here are some tips for doing the debrief: • Work through the 3 A’s either by drawing what happened, talking it through with someone, or thinking about it on your own.
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