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“My therapist taught me the DREAM technique, which stands for ‘detect, reward, escape, amend, and magnify.’ I know this isn’t some click-your-fingers technique that’ll magically cure your problem overnight, and anyone who says that they have one is offering a distraction rather than dealing with the underlying issue. Detect is when you pay attention to what’s going on in your head — no one thinks linearly. One minute you’re thinking about one thing, the next minute you’ve gone on so many mental tangents you’re as far from the original thought as you can be — the moment you notice that slip, stop what you’re doing. Say it out loud to yourself if you have to. Reward is the detection itself, and not rewarding the negative thought — it’s about positive reinforcement to make future detection easier.”
“Escape is when you remove yourself from the environment, either physically or mentally. One technique I use is to rumble my ears and hum because it’s so loud, I can’t hear anything else (but really, anything to break the pattern and take control of the situation). Amend is to rephrase the situation by inverting the language — for example, instead of saying ‘bad,’ say ‘not good’ because it doesn’t matter if you’re saying the word ‘not’ — you’re still using ‘good.’ And finally, magnify is to, ‘Magnify the newly-created positive suggestion/fantasy, and actually imagine the outcome happening. To magnify it, make the colors brighter, the sounds louder, the feelings stronger, and the sensations more specific. The stronger the emotions and feelings attached to the new thought/image, the more powerful it is.’
It took me months to get the DREAM technique right, and to basically ‘reprogram’ my entire way of thinking, but now it’s second nature. I would have anxiety attacks near-daily, but my last one was in 2013. As the quote goes, ‘It gets easier, but you gotta do it, that’s the hard part — but it does get easier.'”
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