
196 brilliant stress management
what resources they have, and how things can turn out positively.
This has a close relative . . .
The end is nigh
When we are stressed and unable to think clearly, the smallest
things appear to have the greatest consequence. ‘If I don’t get this
done, she’ll . . . hate me, sack me, leave me.’ Help explore the likely real
consequences, so that things can be assigned a realistic priority,
and some things can be neglected safely and without remorse.
A related form of faulty thinking – and the opposite of assigning
cause – is fortune-telling, seeing a future based on little or no
evidence and a lot of faulty beliefs ...