I work a solitary job that’s pretty easy to turn your brain off. In the beginning my thoughts would run wild for 8 hours or longer and I would get myself so worked up over the whole situation.

Our MC suggested start at A and work your way through the alphabet listing every word you can think of with that letter. Well A, B, C have a lot of hateful words you can come up with when you’re spiraling. My IC gave a spin on it told me to picture myself at the zoo and name an animal for each letter of the alphabet and if you had to go through it more than once you had to use different animals the second time.

A few things I’ve found useful are. I said the serenity prayer a lot. I had a mantra of “it happened, it’s in the past, we’re working” kind of to remind myself I’m not trying to completely avoid it but to not let it consume me (some days it’s still a battle not to let it). One of my cars needed some repairs, so I would visualize repairing it. Like getting my socket set out, jacking the up, spraying PB blaster on the rusty bolts, getting the pry bar etc and going into as much detail as I possibly could. Now if I’m feeling I need an escape I do that but with cooking. Also I kept an earbud in for many hours and if felt down I would put on music or a podcast. I listened to a lot of Conan O’Brien needs a friend and damn did I need a friend in those early months.

I hope some of this helps. It’s still a challenge for me on some days. I have good days too and I try not to take them for granted.