Jan 09 2025 6 mins 2
Does your daughter get overwhelmed by overthinking and overanalyzing everyone and everything in her life? If you have a middle or high schooler living under your roof, the answer is probably yes. In this podcast, Dr. Jordan describes a simple tool to help her to catch herself when ruminating herself into anxiety and switch it.
Scenario: girl Ellie sees photo of her 2 best friends at a sleepover and she wasn’t invited; this starts a cascade of thoughts that get more negative and anxiety-provoking: why didn’t they invite me? Did I do something wrong? Are they mad at me? Are they getting closer and thus am I losing them as friends? Who will I sit with at lunch on Monday? Am I going to have to sit alone like the weird kids?
Girls always ruminate worst case, not best case. Rumination is one of the most common causes of anxiety and panic attacks in the girls that I counsel.
Instead of getting caught up in the negative spiral of “what if”, your daughter can learn to switch it to:
What is? i.e. what is the truth? I didn’t do anything so it doesn’t have to mean anything unless I let it
What else? What else could it mean? There are lots of possible explanations that don’t involve me in a negative way: maybe her mom said could only have 2 friends over after her volleyball game and they are on the same team…
The worst-case rumination explanations are almost never true. And girls can check out the truth by asking her friends about why she wasn’t invited so that she can get out of her head and hear the truth.
Summary: help your daughter learn to become aware of when she’s starting to ruminate & Shift from “What if” to “What is the truth” and “What else could it mean?”
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