It’s Election time USA. Trump vs Biden. For my wife, this is a stressful time as she is completely, emotionally invested in the outcome.
“On a scale of 1 to 10,” I asked, “how stressed are you?”
“11. No 12!” she blurted out.
For this situation, I used a protocol in BWRT called FTSD – Future Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is for when you are extremely frightened of a future outcome. Normally in BWRT I look for the worst memory of a client’s issue but this time I was going to work on how certain she was of a negative outcome.
It’s the fear attached to the outcome we are really working on, but the certainty level works great to really focus on the negative emotion she does not want to feel while watching the election results.
We want to make her life more enjoyable even when it’s still difficult.
After only 3 rounds of BWRT we had the negative feeling down from 12 to 6 to 3. She was happy with 3. “I want some excitement,” she announced, then surprised herself that she could actually enjoy watching the election again instead of being in a constant fear state.
It’s not that she cared less about who won. Now she could enjoy the election and slash anxiety while still rooting for her candidate.
BWRT is an effective treatment for election anxiety, but really, it’s an effective treatment for ANY anxiety about a future outcome that’s out of our control.
