Screaming Robots: Externalization in Action

Last year the podcast This American Life featured a story about a software programmer named Paul Ford (you can listen here, it’s great). Paul was feeling overwhelmed. Balancing work, raising two young children and struggling with his weight had led him to feel “anxious, overweight and terrified.”

He came up with an unconventional solution: programming a website called “Anxiety Box.” He entered a list of the things he was anxious about – losing weight, getting projects done by deadline, raising his kids – and then the site sent him a steady stream of emails each day, but not the type you might think.

The messages were not inspirational, instructional or even encouraging, but instead were written to him from his anxiety, a character he describes as “a ruthlessly cheerful underminer.”

The site used countless phrases simulating how his anxiety sounded to him and then sent him an onslaught of less-than-kind messages about the very things he was worried about. So a dozen times a day he got messages like, “I respect that you just live your life and don’t care if people think you are childish or disgusting,” or “history will forget you because history forgets people who never finish anything. Sincerely, your anxiety.” Nice, right?

But guess what? It worked. “It was immediately effective,” he says.

Whether or not he knew it, Paul was using a technique – more accurately a mindset – known as externalizing the problem. It’s an approach used to detach yourself from whatever it is you are struggling with, like anxiety, anger, low self-esteem, and so on. The list of possibilities is endless, but the idea is always the same: picturing your struggle as some sort of external figure or character, and not some internal or fundamental part of you, opens up space to see it and respond to it differently.

Choosing not to define yourself by the problem but seeing it instead as a thing, person or creature that you struggle or wrestle with can be a powerful paradigm shift. Simply put, the less you see the problem as being part of you, the easier it is to resist.

This takes some imagination. Some people will picture their depression as a floating, hooded ghost, or their anger as a fire-red, fist-clenching monster. Paul saw his anxiety as a little screaming robot, which gave him a new, liberating perspective. “Building this little emulator made me go, ‘Oh. This part of me is incredibly stupid.’ It says the same things over and over again, and that really is what my anxiety looks like,” he says. “It’s not smart. At some level it’s like a little robot that just screams. What this let me do is look at the robot.”

This is the crucial part, being able to look at the robot to see it in a different light and – more importantly – to see it not as some genetic defect, permanent personality trait, or terminal condition. Instead of viewing the anxiety as an innate part of him, externalizing the problem helped Paul to interact with it in an entirely different, and entirely better way. Instead of simply going along with every shrill insult the anxiety threw at him, he learned to tune it out. The anxiety lost its authority.

As PJ Vogt from This American Life says, “it seemed crazy that he had ever believed what it said about him was true.”

Elizabeth Gilbert gives another example of this in her book Big Magic. She confesses that she was “born terrified” (earning her the nickname “Pitiful Pearl” from her loving but exasperated father), but learning to view the fear differently enabled her to stand up to it. She tells us that every time she begins a new book or project, she pictures fear sitting “in the car” and gives it the following warning:

“You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.”

The relationship between Gilbert and the fear changed dramatically. Instead of fear calling the shots as it had for years, she was now talking back and taking charge.

“Pitiful Pearl” had taken back the wheel, but the fear was still in the car. Paul says his anxiety is still with him too. “I’m sure it will be there ‘til I die,” he says. “But it doesn’t have as much control.” Externalizing the problem isn’t a cure on its own, but it’s a mindset that can make a big difference. It’s a subtle but significant shift that can be a huge step towards silencing your own screaming robots.