++What the quest for four major awards tells us about Hollywood, celebrity egos, and ourselves. +
++Humans are funny little creatures. We love making lists, participating in oddball competitions, and creating weirdly specific metrics to be proud of — all quirks that join together in the annual EGOT watch, when fans and record keepers alike obsess over who will be the next creator to snag not one, not two, but all four of the entertainment industry’s most prestigious awards: the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony. +
++To EGOT (because this acronym can be both a noun and a verb) is a genuinely rare accomplishment and also a curious one. After all, plenty of folks have the Emmy and the Oscar, but including the Grammy and the Tony makes things truly interesting. It’s the unique entertainer who’s booked and busy, not just on screens big and small, but in the music studio and onstage. In other words, it really is, as 30 Rock put it, “a good goal for a talented crazy person!” +
++Despite the long odds, no fewer than 19 talented creators have pulled it off — 25 if you count “honorary” awards (though whether those should count is a subject of heated debate). The most recent entry into the clubhouse? Elton John, who snagged the EGOT title in January after garnering an Emmy for his glitzy farewell concert. Talk about going out on top! +
++EGOT watchers and betting rings are already paying detailed attention to who’s up next in the EGOT lineup. 2024’s best shot probably goes to the songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who could nab a couple of Emmys this fall. The upcoming Grammy awards won’t see any winners crossing the EGOT threshold, but the infamously long list of nominees could push several entertainers one award closer to the coup. +
++The next real shot anyone has at snagging the EGOT arrives in June, when hip-hop artist Common could win a producer Tony for this season’s revival of The Wiz — though if that happens, it won’t be without ruffling the feathers of those who think producer credits shouldn’t count toward the EGOT. +
++Why so much drama over an acronym? Can we really attach objective meaning and value to winning four fairly disparate awards? And why is the EGOT field so crowded with musical theater composers? +
++We’re glad you asked! Read on — we’ve got answers to all this and more. +
++How do you pronounce “EGOT”? +
++This isn’t the most pressing concern, but the general consensus is that it’s “E-Got.” That’s also the pronunciation used in the 30 Rock episodes that popularized the whole notion. +
++However, we’d be remiss not to point out the alternate and far more correct pronunciation, “ego,” with the appropriately pretentious silent “T.” That’s “ego,” as in the thing that expands proportionately with each ticked item on the EGOT checklist. Clearly, this is the truest pronunciation, and we will not be taking questions at this time. +
++Who came up with the idea of the EGOT? +
++Miami Vice star Philip Michael Thomas gets credited with the original idea, thanks to his determination to win all four awards, manifested in a gold necklace he wore, engraved with the letters “EGOT.” +
++But it’s really Tracy Morgan’s 30 Rock character Tracy Jordan, and his hilarious quest to score the EGOT for himself throughout the fourth and fifth seasons of the show, that put the concept on the cultural landscape starting in 2009. Tracy sees Thomas’s necklace one day in a jewelry store, and when he learns what the acronym means, he makes it his mission to pull off the feat. His quest leads him to do everything from juicing up a script for Garfield to starring in a North Korean propaganda movie opposite Kim Jong-Il. +
++As for Thomas, while he snagged a Golden Globe nomination for Miami Vice, he never achieved any of the four coveted wins. He once told People that the acronym really stood for “energy, growth, opportunity, and talent,” and much later told Vox sister site Thrillist, “There’s things so much more fascinating than this, what you’re talking about,” when questioned about his reaction to the term’s legacy. +
++And he’s not wrong! +
++Who are some famous EGOT winners? +
++One interesting thing about the EGOT sweep is that while the acronym appears skewed toward actors over musicians, more EGOTs have gone to musical theater composers than to anyone else. A look at the lists of names among the EGOT and “EGOT-minus-one” winners offers one a broad swath of musical theater history, from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Pasek and Paul. +
++That’s undoubtedly because musical composers so often get tapped to do scores for other mediums. Musical composers also gain Grammy wins more easily than, say, actors — usually for Best Musical Theater Album, an award that’s changed names several times but which has been a Grammy mainstay since 1959. +
++In fact, Richard Rodgers, composer of Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, and many other beloved musicals, was the first person to achieve all four EGOT awards. And of all EGOT winners, only Rodgers and another musical composer, Marvin Hamlisch, have won the coveted Pulitzer “PEGOT” extension. Rodgers won for South Pacific; Hamlisch for A Chorus Line. +
++The list of other EGOT winners includes acting legends like Audrey Hepburn, Rita Moreno, and Viola Davis, who exclaimed, “I just E-GOT!” upon winning the Grammy in 2023. Mel Brooks is the only EGOT winner thus far who won at least one of his awards for writing. +
++The number of people who are just one award away from an EGOT makes for an equally interesting list. Stephen Sondheim sadly missed out on the EGOT by an Oscar (though he also won a Pulitzer); Kate Winslet’s son wants her to win an EGOT, but she’ll have to come to Broadway to get it. Other one-aways like Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese aren’t likely to make it to Broadway to get that final trophy, but producing could give them a way in — though some people, who take the EGOT game very seriously indeed, argue that taking such “shortcuts” taints the whole game. +
++And people take the EGOT game very seriously, indeed. +
++People take very seriously the question of what does and doesn’t count in an EGOT +
++Although the EGOT gained pop culture cred as a running sitcom joke, people were truly intrigued by the idea — enough so that they fight over what “counts” as an EGOT win, what shouldn’t count, and what does count but shouldn’t. +
++For example, many people have observed that the quickest way to an EGOT is for a Hollywood type otherwise uninvolved with theater to sign on as last-minute producer of a Broadway musical with big Tony prospects — not unlike the aforementioned Common with The Wiz. Many EGOT watchers consider this move “cheating.” TheatreMania’s Zachary Stewart opined last year over “brazen EGOT-hunters” who’ve crowded the Broadway producer field in the hope of scoring an award; after all, if anyone can win a Tony for producing, does the Tony itself mean as much as it used to? +
++“If your talent is the ability to write a large check, it shouldn’t really be considered in the same league,” Stewart lamented, as a win by someone whose cultural contributions are arguably much larger, like many of the musical theater composers who’ve EGOT’d over the years. Still, if EGOT chasers help get more shows to the Great White Way in a beleaguered theater landscape, I say: Here’s your carrot, go chase it, live your dream. +
++It also bears noting that cultural impact varies wildly; one person’s Richard Rodgers may well be another person’s Common. Not only that, but sometimes cheating your way to an EGOT might be considered a perfectly valid move depending on who’s doing the cheating. Prime case in point: Barbra Streisand, who despite being inarguably the greatest musical theater diva of the 20th century, has never actually won a performance Tony. (She was nominated twice but lost both times; her 1964 nomination for Funny Girl, a role for which she later won the Oscar, lost out to Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!.) +
++Streisand was eventually given a special Tony Award in 1970 for Star of the Decade, which immediately sealed her EGOT, since by that point she’d already won an Oscar, an Emmy, and multiple Grammy awards. Yet she’s not generally included as an “official” EGOT winner, but rather as a side note “non-competitive EGOT winner,” along with six other performers and producers who won special awards. +
++As Billboard’s Paul Grein puts it, that’s because “the whole point is to have won the awards in competition.” Is that the point, though? Who’s gonna tell Babs she didn’t really earn an EGOT? Who’s out there gatekeeping living legend Quincy Jones, another “honorary” EGOT winner, just because his 29 Grammy wins don’t stack up to one missing competitive Oscar? +
++All of this nitpicking really underscores how arbitrary much of this is, how much the EGOT is biased toward stage and screen performers, and how much of it seems to be about gatekeeping what is and isn’t a “valid” award. +
++Take the Emmys. Another path widely derided as a “shortcut” was the short-lived Emmy honor for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program, a slot that allowed a slew of Broadway performers to pick up nominations and awards just for stopping by a talk show and singing a song or two. +
++The list of people who could soon EGOT just from this trick alone includes musical stars Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo, and Katrina Lenk, who, as Grein pointed out, all got their Emmys just for promoting their hit musicals. Should that count? The Emmys ultimately decided the answer was no; the award lasted just three years before it was eliminated in 2019. (Noting that Platt et al. get to keep their awards, Grein added, “It’s not their fault that the Daytime Emmys made it too easy for them.” Too easy! You try performing a Broadway show eight times a week and then serving a side performance so good it gets Emmy attention, sir!) +
++Then again, many people believe that the Daytime Emmys themselves shouldn’t “count” toward an EGOT. This was also an idea 30 Rock floated, in a famous episode where Tracy Jordan tells Whoopi Goldberg her EGOT isn’t legitimate because she only won her Emmy — twice — for her work in daytime television. +
++Of course, when 30 Rock did it, it was a joke. The more serious attention given to the question seems to be based on the feeling that the Daytime Emmys are less prestigious or even less demanding of the creatives and journalists who do daytime TV work. +
++Perhaps there is a kernel of truth to that; after all, Eminem, who only has one letter to go, the “T,” won his Daytime Emmy for a Chrysler commercial. Still, that sort of win would seem to indict the awards system, rather than the pursuit of an EGOT itself. +
++That brings us to the fuzziest EGOT-related question of all: What else can we stack onto it? +
++What’s a PEGOT? +
++A “PEGOT” is an EGOT with either a Pulitzer or a Peabody award tacked on to it. +
++What? Nobody is sure which it is? +
++The people who believe the “P” stands for “Peabody” include Rita Moreno fans, who note she became the first Latina EGOT-plus-Peabody winner in 2017, and the Peabody Awards themselves, which congratulated Moreno on her PEGOT win and at one time declared the sweep “the ultimate showbiz coup.” +
++Identifying Peabody winners as “PEGOT” contenders seems to have caught on in recent years, perhaps in part because the Peabody Awards are given to a broad variety of media and creative works. Still, it ain’t exactly easy to pull off a PEGOT via the Peabody: If South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone ever win an Oscar, they’ll be just the fourth and fifth people to have done it. +
++That said, most people seem to lean toward the idea that the “P” stands for the much more prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Winning a Pulitzer alongside the EGOT is a far rarer distinction because the Pulitzer rewards literary and journalistic merit — hence why so far only two musical theater composers have PEGOT’d in this direction. Once Lin-Manuel Miranda finally wins an Oscar, he’ll become the third Pulitzer PEGOT winner. +
++Miranda, despite not having actually EGOT’d yet, also has the distinction of having another EGOT hybrid coined around him: the “MacPEGOT,” which includes winning a renowned MacArthur Genius Grant. Miranda even has some fans going for the “MacPEGOTO” — the MacArthur fellowship, the Pulitzer, the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, the Tony, and London’s Olivier Award, which Miranda has also won. Twice. +
++One needn’t let the absence of a Peabody or a Pulitzer stop their acronymic ascendence, either. Mel Brooks declared himself an “EGOTAK” winner after he won recognition from both the American Film Institute and the Kennedy Center Honors. Some EGOT-lytes have proposed tacking on the Golden Globes to create the “EGGOT.” +
++Plus, there are always other prestigious meta-awards you can track. There’s the Acting Triple Crown, or books and authors that have won both the Hugo and the Nebula, or my personal favorite, the decennial Sight and Sound Top 10 list, which polls critics for their top 10 films, then compiles and ranks the votes. Sure, it may be less action-packed than the yearly EGOT watch, but nothing says commitment like waiting decades for any other movie to unseat Citizen Kane. (That finally happened in 2012, first with Vertigo, and then again in 2022 with Jeanne Dielman.) +
++See? Everyone needs a gratuitous list of totally arbitrary criteria to feel passionately about. The EGOTs may have only ascended in the pop culture landscape 15 years ago, but spiritually, they’ve always been with us. +
++Farmers’ frustration over French and EU regulations are a new dimension in a longstanding problem. +
++French farmers’ unions on Thursday called a halt to protests in which they’ve blocked traffic with their tractors and dumped manure and rotting produce in front of government buildings to make their point. The message: They can no longer earn a living due to cheap imports, a lack of subsidies, and increased production costs. +
++French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced a series of concessions, including an agreement not to import agricultural products that use pesticides banned in the EU as well as new financial subsidies and tax breaks. The new policies have — for now — appeased France’s two largest agricultural unions, the Young Farmers and the FNSEA (the French acronym for the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions). +
++While farmers throughout Europe have been protesting poor wages and bureaucratic policy within their own countries and the EU, the French context is slightly different from other countries. It’s partly because of France’s self-conception and the place of agriculture within its national consciousness, but also because of France’s politics, specifically President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopularity. +
++France’s farmers seem to have won a victory, but agriculture workers in Germany, Belgium, and other European countries have taken their frustration to the European Union headquarters in Brussels, where the European Commission held a summit Thursday. Some experts have linked the movement with Euroskepticism, a political movement that questions the usefulness of the European Union and often pushes individual countries to leave it. But while there are some shades of that philosophy in the protest movement, there’s more nuance and complexity to farmers’ frustrations — and more of a desire for French influence in the EU. +
++French farmers’ concerns are somewhat specific to their own agricultural and political tradition, and they reflect a wide range of interests. Some farmers, like a small, un-unionized group in Toulouse credited with starting the highway blockades, claimed their victory last week when the government announced a slate of reforms, including easing regulations around building water reservoirs, compensating farmers for crops lost due to disease, and backpedaling on a proposed diesel fuel price hike. +
++But other groups, including the FNSEA, the Young Farmers, and the Confédération Paysanne, a leftist union that represents small and rural farmers, weren’t satisfied and vowed to continue their actions through this week, progressing from areas around the country toward Paris. Meanwhile, Belgian farmers moved on Brussels to express their dissatisfaction with EU policies, including a major trade deal with Mercosur, the Latin American economic bloc, and cheap imports from Ukraine. French farmers have concerns about the deal as well. +
++There is an especially strong culture of protest and labor power in France, and farmers there have been able to press their demands and secure at least some of the changes they want. But what effect they’ll have on EU politics and policy remains to be seen — and they are unlikely to have a major effect on European Parliament elections this summer. +
++French farmers have been struggling for years, and for many different reasons +
++There are two major — and interconnected — overarching concerns in France. +
++The first is income. French farmers, especially smaller and independent farmers, say they aren’t making enough and that their livelihoods will vanish in the near future. Suicide has plagued the agricultural industry in recent years as the sector has shrunk and farmers find themselves unable to earn a living. But French agriculture — wine and cheese, of course, as well as livestock and produce — is a distinct part of French cultural heritage, and France is the EU’s largest agricultural producer. +
++During Macron’s tenure, tougher environmental standards both in the EU and in France have required French farmers to invest in new production methods. But because of global inflation following the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers are searching for cheaper products. Enter competition from outside the EU, forcing French farmers to sell their products for little profit — or none at all. +
++Those concerns speak directly to the second problem, which many farmers see as exacerbating the first: competition and free trade agreements. +
++The EU has a pending trade agreement with Mercosur, the economic bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, that would reduce tariffs on imports from the bloc — especially agricultural products. “In France, many people see it as opening the gates of Europe to foreign products, which is to the competitive advantage of those countries,” Patrick Chamorel, senior resident scholar at the Stanford Center in Washington, told Vox. Because France is the largest agricultural producer in the EU, he said, “the French will take the brunt of the competition.” +
++The farmers argue this trade agreement and others the EU has with Chile, New Zealand, Kenya, and Ukraine — nations that don’t have the same strict agricultural production standards as the EU — increase unfair competition due to low prices. +
++Those low prices mean small if any profits, bringing us back to the first problem of income drying up. +
++Within France, matters are complicated by the fact that the farmers’ unions aren’t all on the same page. There are more radical unions, like the leftist Confédération Paysanne, and unions like the Coordination Rurale, which represents more right-wing interests. +
++“The FNSEA is the union of the big farmers in France, so they don’t defend the interests of the majority of the medium-scale and small-scale farmers in France,” Morgan Ody, a farmer member of Confédération Paysanne and coordinator for the international farmers’ movement La Via Campesina International, told the BBC’s World Business Report. “They defend the interests of the people who want to export … so they are not asking for fair prices, they are not asking for a redistribution of the payments linked to the [Common Agricultural Policy], they are just defending their interests, which are the interests of very wealthy men.” +
++France is dealing with a multifaceted dilemma, then, one that it has to solve within its borders but that significantly depends on EU policy. That will include changes to the aforementioned Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP, that went into effect in 2023 and placing further environmental regulations on farmers in order for them to earn the subsidies the policy promises. +
++Farmers are revealing political frustration throughout Europe +
++Given that the Mercosur agreement includes import quotas and that negotiations could be concluded before June, just ahead of this year’s EU Parliament elections, European farmers are now protesting in earnest, leading to this month’s mass demonstrations in France, Brussels, and elsewhere. +
++French President Emmanuel Macron has struggled to please French farmers, particularly small rural farmers whose livelihood is most affected by globalization and the growth of large agribusiness concerns. Since his first term, starting in 2017, Macron has had to balance environmental concerns within French politics and the EU with the needs of rural farmers — whose cause far-right politicians have been all too willing to capitalize upon — as well as the interests of powerful agribusiness tied to the FNSEA. +
++Early in his mandate, Macron pushed farming practices that aligned more closely with the environmental standards of the Left, Socialist, and Green parties, but he adjusted many of them in the face of protest. And as he geared up for a reelection run in 2021, Macron sought to push back on his image as an elitist out of touch with the needs of France’s rural population. +
++Attal, who only recently became prime minister, has been the face of the current crisis, working to appease farmers’ demands. With his promises to enshrine the principle of food sovereignty into French law and impose stricter import controls, as well as loosen bans on certain pesticides, he seems to have passed his first major political test. +
++“I think that the farmers are ready to give Attal a chance,” Chamorel said. “Attal is probably cushioning the blow to Macron — that remains to be seen, but I think right now he is an asset, he is a shield for Macron.” +
++French farmers’ unions have also demonstrated their power. Though farmers make up only around 3 percent of the labor force, January’s protests — and Macron’s responses to the agricultural sector throughout his years in power — indicate the power of France’s agricultural sector, or at least parts of it, as well as Macron’s utter political weakness. But it’s not going to be the main driver of change within the European Parliament this summer — that’s going to be immigration policy, Chamorel told Vox. +
++Still, the French protests, and the similar actions by Belgian and German protesters, have been enough to put agricultural issues on the EU summit’s agenda — although it may have taken a trash fire and the destruction of a statue to get there. +
++Nine experts weigh in on curbing and diffusing your overly negative thoughts. +
++If you’re a person who spends even a minuscule amount of time consuming news of any kind, you may find yourself in a doom spiral: ongoing war, the upcoming presidential election, climate change, the withering of the media. It isn’t just news that can inspire despair. Life is full of anxiety-inducing interactions, high-stakes scenarios, and unavoidable conflicts that can lead to overthinking, hopelessness, and catastrophic thinking. +
++Catastrophizing is a common thought pattern where you assume the worst possible scenario. If you fail a test, you might believe you’ll never get a job in the future. When the group chat is silent after you initiate plans, you jump to conclusions and take it to mean everyone hates you. Your boss says she wants to talk and you assume you’re getting fired. Catastrophic thinking escalates the most benign interactions into crises. Very often, though, these predictions do not come to fruition. +
++People catastrophize in order to prepare for these worst-case scenarios. Catastrophic thinking, however, can lead to heightened anxiety, prolonged feelings of physical pain, risk aversion, and less confidence in problem-solving when big issues do arise. “If you find that you are constantly looking for what could go drastically wrong in your life, this could reflect deeper concerns about safety, security, or self-protection,” says Scott Glassman, director of the master of applied positive psychology program at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. “This style of thinking can emerge if you’ve experienced an unexpected traumatic event, like a loss or serious injury, or if you grew up in an environment where fears were often amplified and responded to with panic or overprotection.” +
++Climbing out of the spiral that is catastrophic thinking requires both in-the-moment grounding techniques and big-picture reframing. Focusing on the reality of a situation — and not the story you’re telling yourself — can help blunt the anxiety of catastrophizing, experts say. Here are more therapist-approved tactics to help you avoid catastrophic thinking. +
++Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity. +
++Catch yourself in the act +
++“Instead of viewing the [catastrophic] thought as a prediction of the future, you can simply say, ‘This is a catastrophic thought. I’ve had these thoughts before and things have turned out fine.’ Remind yourself of the times that you’ve engaged in catastrophic thinking and survived it. You will survive this one, too.” +
++—Alyssa Mancao, licensed therapist and owner of Alyssa Marie Wellness +
++Ask yourself pointed questions +
++“One of my favorite tips for catastrophizing is asking clients, ‘What is the worst thing that could possibly happen?’ and following it up with the powerful question of, ‘Could I survive that?’ Most of the time, we can survive those worst-case scenarios, but our anxiety gets in the way and makes us believe we can’t get through it. When we can slow ourselves down to examine the evidence, I find that we are often in a better place to reason with ourselves and realize that we can get through hard things.” +
++—Samantha Speed, licensed professional counselor +
++Follow the negative thoughts to see where they lead +
++“In the midst of catastrophic thinking, there are two options. One is to create a positive thought (change ‘no one likes me’ to ‘some people like me’) and repeat it. The other is to follow the negative thinking train to the end and see where the illogical thinking takes you. For example, thinking that no one likes me leads to ‘I will die alone,’ which leads to ‘I need to buy a dog because it will bark when I stop responding and the barking will annoy the neighbors and they will call 911.’ When one begins to plan for these negative events, the reality is that these worries are possibilities, not probabilities.” +
++—Diane Urban, licensed psychologist and adjunct professor at Manhattan College and Southern New Hampshire University +
++Remind yourself that you are not your thoughts +
++“Clients who struggle with catastrophizing tend to internalize their thought processes. For example, they may say things like, ‘I am a horrible person,’ ‘Nothing will ever work out for me,’ ‘I am a failure.’ By using these ‘I’ statements, we are allowing our anxious thoughts to become our personality and who we are. One subtle yet effective strategy is creating separation from your thoughts. ‘I am a horrible person’ changes to ‘I am having the thought that I am a horrible person,’ ‘I am a failure’ changes to ‘My brain is telling me that I am a failure.’ This helps to externalize our thoughts so that they do not feel as consuming.” +
++—Courtney Morgan, licensed professional clinical counselor and founder of Counseling Unconditionally +
++Practice grounding techniques +
++“One approach that has proven particularly beneficial is grounding techniques. These are simple exercises to help bring your focus back to the present moment when your thoughts start spiraling. For instance, you might engage your senses by naming five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. This technique can interrupt the cycle of negative thinking and bring you back to reality.” +
++—Elvis Rosales, licensed clinical social worker and the clinical director at Align Recovery Centers +
++Pay attention when things go well +
++“We understandably pay more attention to bad things happening in our lives because, let’s face it, they are upsetting. Catastrophizers, however, have a habit of devoting large amounts of time, attention, and energy to thinking about the worst-case what-ifs, in addition to any bad things that might be happening each day. To neutralize or reverse this tendency, we often need to start taking notice of when things turn out okay or go well. Keeping a daily list can be a reminder of the real rates of good versus upsetting events. +
++“At the same time, we want to make notes about when our catastrophic predictions don’t come true. The more we see the errors of our predictions, the more likely we will treat them with doubt when they arise. We’ll start to quickly notice when our mind is crying wolf and be better able to stop the ruminative cycle before it has revved up. A core belief that can drive catastrophic thinking is, ‘I can’t handle this.’ It’s important to explore that underlying belief and challenge it with contradictory evidence. Keeping a record of big problems you’ve been able to solve could help weaken that belief.” +
++—Scott Glassman, director of the master of applied positive psychology program at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine +
++Accept bad things when they happen +
++“This may sound strange, but I talk with patients about the idea of getting better at suffering. It always elicits a joke: ‘Oh, I’m already great at that.’ But there’s a difference between obsessing about bad things versus accepting them. Catastrophizing seems like an effort [toward] acceptance but it’s actually a strategy for avoidance. The work here is to move toward the very real sadness and stress of uncertainty rather than trying to bargain with it. The world comes with uncertainty, bad things happen, someday we’ll die.” +
++—Matt Lundquist, founder and clinical director of Tribeca Therapy +
++Try to problem-solve instead of searching for problems +
++“If you are engaged in catastrophic thinking, you may have thought about how daunting the situation is and ways you are unable to fix it. Problem-solving may be helpful. Try breaking down the situation into more manageable parts instead of focusing on options that are overwhelming and frustrating. +
++“For example, if you have the belief that you have no friends, you would first identify the problem. The second step would be to check the facts by finding evidence that supports these thoughts to determine if you are indeed assuming the worst without reason. The third step would be to establish your goal. If your goal is to make friends, engage in more social interaction, or find a sense of community or belonging, then you would establish that goal and brainstorm possible solutions to achieve that goal by breaking down your goal into actionable steps. You would then select your solution and, if necessary, it would be helpful to develop a pros and cons list to help put that thought into action. Most of all, have self-compassion and give yourself grace because breaking negative thought patterns can be very challenging.” +
++—Peta-Gaye Sandiford, licensed mental health counselor at Empower Your Mind Therapy +
++Focus on what you can control +
++“The minute your train of thought starts to get off the rails, force yourself to think that you are not the master. You do not have control over the future. But you do have the power to either fight it or accept it. So think about all the positive ways you will deal with that catastrophic event.” +
++—Jessica Plonchak, executive clinical director at ChoicePoint Health +