Self-Coaching

Fight your inner drama queen

By April 30, 2020 May 28th, 2020 No Comments

How to challenge your inner drama queen

Young love hurts, we all remember. But – only one day into lockdown – one of my younger relatives (but not that young) told me that not seeing his girlfriend was ‘tearing him apart’.

Is it though? How often do you usually see her? Can you speak on zoom? How are you really feeling?

‘Well it’s annoying but we’ll get through it’.

Beware of soap opera or reality TV speak. (You know, the sweeping statements of ‘This is the only thing I was born to do’ as a tone-deaf warbler steps onto the X-factor stage.) Dramatic statements usually mean you’re setting yourself up to believe a false rule like ‘I always mess things up/I can’t cope/my boss thinks I’m useless/being stressed makes me eat crisps’.

How to talk yourself down

If you find yourself having a BAFTA-winning internal dialogue, challenge the statement you’re making. Challenge the truth of it, where did it come from, and find the exceptions.

These are some questions which may help:

  • Is that true?
  • Is it helpful?
  • What else could be true?
  • Always? Does that always happen?
  • Who says?
  • How reliable as a witness is that person?
  • Who says it’s impossible? What stops me?
  • Better/worse than what or who?
  • Compared to what or who?
  • How do I know what someone else is thinking?
  • How specifically does X force me to do Y?

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