#but even then it wasnt the exercise that proved me right it was an mri scan

[sealochs]

Hey girl! How does the evidence for evidence against exercise work? Would love to try it on my own anxiety lol

hello! so the evidence for evidence against exercise is like taking your anxiety to court. put her on trial! cross-examine her! she's a liar, your honour!

on the face of it, it's very simple, like it's so simple i can't believe it works so well; it makes me feel simple every time it works. i will say that it does sort of rely on you focusing on one (1) fear, on one main thing that's causing you to be anxious; but there's nothing to stop you doing it multiple times for multiple anxieties, one by one, if you find it hard to separate or identify a principal cause. although, even the act of doing that can help; what are you principally anxious about, & which extra anxieties are you recruiting to that cause? i often find my seemingly generalised anxiety is actually a pretty specific one when i sit down & force myself to be honest on paper, but that doesn't mean that's true for everyone!

when you have your one (1) fear, you basically sit & you write a list of evidence for that fear coming true; a list of evidence for your anxiety being entirely reasonable and founded in a rational reading of reality. when you do this, & i think it helps to do it by hand, you realise you have much less hard evidence than your brain has led you to believe. last night, i discovered a lot of mine were starting with the word 'maybe', & what followed was just wild conjecture. objection, your honour! sustained! strike that last from the record!

then, you write a list of evidence against. this might be a list of actions or words from someone that would indicate that they do not, in fact, hate you. or a list of previous achievements that would indicate that you are not, in fact, doomed to fail the challenge you're currently facing. or a list of facts about a situation that act as alternative explanations for something bad having happened, and so indicate that it was not, in fact, all your fault. this list might also include reasons why things on your 'for' list may not, actually, constitute hard evidence. the jury are nodding their heads, they're murmuring approval, they're casting nasty glances at your anxiety in the witness box.

you can stop there, but i've found that writing that second list of evidence against often turns into a general free writing exercise where i start to explore the thing that's making me anxious from a far more rational perspective; i've found it works as a way into empathy, into generously & in good faith imagining what another person might really think, might really feel, or how a situation might really turn out, without the ultimately self-centred & distortive lens of anxiety blinding me. i am literally always stunned when it works in this way, when my brain - which was just one hour ago already spiralling into a grief process for something that hasn't happened yet - manages to do a complete one-eighty & see the situation entirely differently.

which is probably the final thing to note: i've often found that doing this exercise is in itself a terrifying prospect, & i've often put it off or simply not done it, & Suffered instead. because it's like: but what if i prove myself right? what if i do actually come up with a lot of hard evidence that this thing that i am deeply anxious about is, in fact, something i have due cause to be deeply anxious about?

& yet, with one glaring exception*, i have never yet proven myself right with this exercise. i haven't always definitively proven myself wrong, but i've always been able at least to realise that there are many alternative explanations or possibilities for something beyond the one worst case scenario that my anxiety has decided is the most likely, & to temper my anxiety with an acceptance of those.

this got weirdly long, but i hope it helps somewhat! i'm sending you love <3