BWRT: Stopping the Clock to Treat Anxieties and Phobias
A little technique I learned in a book
Lately, I’ve been reading about BWRT therapy. BWRT stands for brain-working recursive therapy, and it’s a short-term therapy designed to change the way your brain reacts to certain stressors.
My reason for looking into this is that although I’m a warrior, I’m also a worrier. I’m the type of person to worry about something obsessively until it finally happens.
For example, in June I had to organize a meeting with 5-6 people in my hometown of Luton. Finding the perfect meeting room took some planning, but I got a good deal on a room. Still, I was anxious about the meeting right up to the day, because I kept fixating over all the things that could go wrong. Is there enough snacks?…what if they get lost?…what if they can’t get parking?…what If I say something stupid during the meeting?
If something went wrong, I thought it would be all my fault because I was planning it. Thankfully, the meeting went down well.
But this is something that I must fix about myself because, with my sickle cell condition, stress and anxiety are a known trigger for my symptoms. I could have just gone to a therapist, but my finances aren’t on the up right now, so I needed a cheaper solution. And that’s why I looked into different forms of therapy for anxiety so I could treat myself. BWRT came up in my research, and I soon ended up buying the book BWRT by Terence Watts.
This book has been helpful in my battle against anxiety. That’s why I want to share one of the exercises; the Stop the Clock technique.
The Stop the Clock technique is useful if you have a specific person, situation, subject, or phobia in your life causing you anxiety
This technique is almost like a meditation. It involves you closing your eyes to visualize yourself in an ideal situation, then picturing a clock with its hands coming to a stop, and then focusing in on the object of your anxiety before trying to train yourself to go back to your ideal situation.
Here are the steps in full so that you can correctly attempt this exercise:
Just follow the steps – it works best if you can learn it and then do it with your eyes closed (you probably won’t need to record this one):
Imagine how you might look from the outside if the problem had simply gone away, and make it as vivid in your thoughts as you can. Don’t worry if it seems daft or unlikely, or what anybody else might think or say if they knew – just imagine it anyway in the privacy of your mind and store that image of the different self anywhere in your thoughts. This step is the hardest part of the exercise.
Now think of a clock with an hour hand, a minute hand, and a hand that shows the seconds so that you can see the clock is working. Make that vivid in your mind, too. (You don’t have to think of both this image and the first one at the same time.)
Next, think of a time when you were experiencing the problem and try to find the uncomfortable feeling. It doesn’t matter if you can’t find it; just trying to find it will send the right message back to the reptilian complex in your brain. Imagine how you might look from the outside at the time and make that vivid too.
As soon as you can find the feeling, or try your hardest to find the feeling, just imagine you can stop time somehow so that image is now locked tight in the past and you can see that the clock has stopped (or stop it in your mind if it hasn’t already). Everything has stopped – except you. You can walk out of that locked scene and adopt the different self you created in step 1.
Now zoom right in to feel as if you actually become that different self so that it’s as if you’re on the inside looking out on the world, and notice how good that feels as you realise the clock has started again.
Repeat steps 3–5 at least three times and notice how it gets easier each time. Stop when you’re happy with how you feel, or after six repeats (which is about the maximum useful number).
I now aim to add Stop the Clock to my rotation of mindfulness exercises. It’s a good technique to have in your back pocket for those highly anxious situations.
Remember, this is just one of many BWRT techniques. If you want to learn more, I recommend purchasing the BWRT book. It’s an interesting read if you appreciate learning more about how our brains work.
You can also seek out BWRT therapy if you feel this is something you’d benefit from.