Strategies for working through worry, fear and anxiety, there are many tools for managing overwhelming
worry, fear and anxiety, including cognitive, behavioral and mindfulness techniques, think cognitive
when our fear is activated.
We're all likely to have thoughts that terrify us even more.
For example, if we regret by fear on a plane, we might become convinced the plane is going to crash,
which further heightens our fear and continues the cycle.
By challenging our anxious thoughts, we can interrupt this feedback loop a note of caution.
When we are overwhelmed with an anxiety, it's difficult or even impossible to talk ourselves down with
reason alone.
These techniques will tend to be most effective before an anxiety has taken over and in combination
with behavioral and mindfulness techniques.
Remember that an anxiety is not dangerous.
We often come to fear and anxiety itself, believing it's dangerous to be too anxious.
However, as uncomfortable as it can be, an anxiety itself is not harmful.
Furthermore, fear about being anxious only leads to more anxiety.
Keep in mind even a severe bout of anxiety that the physical, mental and emotional symptoms will not
hurt you.
We assess the likelihood of danger.
Our fear will convince us that what we're afraid of is really going to happen.
But keep in mind that an anxiety disorder is by definition involve and realistic fears given the actual
risk.
So the probability that they will come through is actually quite low.
If your fear is telling you something really bad is likely to happen, you can use that core belief
form to test this belief.
How strong is the evidence supporting it?
Has it happened before or if so, with what frequency?
If you discover any errors in your thinking, evaluate the likelihood that what you fear will actually
happen in light of the evidence, reassess the severity of threat.
Sometimes the thinking is we make isn't about how likely a negative outcome is, but how bad it would
be.
For example, if you thought it would be terrible if people knew he was anxious while giving a talk
as he examined this thought, he realized that people might indeed know he was anxious from that quiver
in his voice or his shaking hands, but realized it probably wouldn't be a big deal.
After all, he'd heard speakers who seemed nervous before and their anxiety hadn't covered his overall
perception of the person or the quality of his or her speech.