Meeting Mr Cool

In my late 20s, I was struggling with anxiety. I’d started having panic attacks out of the blue. After trying to fix it myself, my partner sat me down on the bed and told me I needed some help.

Before my first Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) session, my therapist gave me a questionnaire to complete. It covered things like how much I worried and whether I thought my thoughts were out of control.

As I arrived and settled in her sunny front room, my therapist smiled and asked why I needed her help. Slightly confused, I reiterated that I was struggling with anxiety. She nodded but then showed me my questionnaire answers.

“According to this, you’re doing pretty well.”

I experienced a strange cognitive dissonance as I tried to level my obvious struggle with my reported perception of things.

We talked about it for some time and she asked me to refill the form for our next session.

I remember feeling shocked but also excited that we were on to something: some part of my perception was way off. By sectioning off my panic attacks and anxiety as unrelated to my day-to-day life, I’d created an internal split.

We ended up calling this personality Mr Cool. Mr Cool’s motto is “It’s all good, man.” Sure, there’s the occasional existential terror and debilitating panic. But that’s just some physiological quirk. I’m otherwise pretty relaxed and have everything under control.

It was important for me to maintain this self-image. I wanted to convince myself things were ok and for others to see me as relaxed.

But Mr Cool was really a protection from the fear and confusion that had begun to plague my life over the last year. It was a way of sectioning off things I didn’t understand so that I didn’t have to face them fully.

Once we’d given Mr Cool his name, it was easier to spot him in action. I came back next week with my updated questionnaire and the picture looked very different. I was struggling on all fronts.

Self-images are powerful things. They’re often pulled together to help us survive difficult situations. They’re subtle and remain invisible until something cracks.

Mr Cool helped me get by, but he also kept me from getting better.

It wasn’t until I held up the mirror that I could begin to reclaim the parts of me that I’d sidelined. Not just the panic, but the vulnerability and the fear.

That was when the recovery began.