Are you often overcome by feelings of anxiety? Anxiety is not an automatic response. Just because something threatening is in your way, it doesn\u2019t mean that you will get instantly anxious. It is your thoughts about events that makes you anxious. Thoughts that typically trigger anxiety are \u201cI am being threatened or overwhelmed\u201d, \u201cI am unsafe\u201d, or \u201csomething bad is going to happen\u201d. \u00a0If you are exposed to an event or person that is deemed dangerous, your thoughts trigger the fight or flight response in the body and you feel anxious. The fight or flight response is an important component of anxiety. While anxious thoughts may trigger a response, one might already have a high level of physiological arousal, which in turn fuels your anxious thoughts and further stimulates your physiological arousal, which in turn provokes anxious thoughts, and so on. For example, you may have an exam coming up and be feeling tension about this and then someone almost drives into you with their vehicle. Already tense, your anxiety spins out of control. One way to intervene in this cycle is to practice deep relaxation techniques to lower your overall sympathetic nervous system. This teaches the body how to relax rather than overreact to tension and worry.<\/p>\n
In addition to relaxation techniques, it is helpful to work with anxiety generating beliefs. This is because the root of anxious thinking is the belief that things are done to you: \u201cShe is making me anxious\u201d\u2026\u201dthat place scares me\u201d. However, it is important to understand that nothing is done to you; things just happen in the world. You experience an event (A), this leads to negative thoughts (B), and this leads to anxiety resulting from the thoughts (C). So A does not cause C, rather B causes C. It is therefore the negative thoughts or what we tell ourselves in response to any particular situation that mainly determines our feelings of anxiety. Often these thoughts are so fleeting that we hardly notice them and therefore we call them \u201cautomatic thoughts\u201d. This anxious thinking sounds like the truth but is often very irrational.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a0Anxiety Disorder Treatment Calgary<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Anxiety is often generated by \u201cwhat if\u201d thinking. You may ask yourself \u201cWhat if I can\u2019t cope?\u201d or \u201cWhat if I am alone and there is no one to help me?\u201d.\u00a0 Those with this style of thinking are often be vigilant for signs of trouble and they have a tendency to imagine the worst possible outcome, a characteristic of extreme thinking that we often call \u201ccatastrophizing\u201d. This style of thinking often involves overestimating the amount of danger in the environment which only increases anxiety. This often leads to avoidance of anxiety provoking situations and because the person then never gets a chance to see if they could cope in the situation, the anxiety often worsens with avoidance.<\/p>\n
Many people have been telling themselves anxious negative self-talk for a long time and it can be difficult to give up. One way of reducing the strength of these thoughts is to counter them with realistic statements by challenging them with a more rational and objective perspective.\u00a0 One way of doing this is to ask yourself questions that evaluate the validity of what you are telling yourself. For example, you could ask yourself \u201cWhat is the evidence that this thoughts is true?\u201d. If you look at the facts of the situation you will often find the evidence is not very convincing. It is also often helpful to ask yourself \u201cWhat are the odds of this really happening?\u201d as well as \u201cWhat\u2019s the worst thing that could happen\u201d. If you can imagine the worst thing that could happen you can then ask yourself what is so bad about this and how you would cope if this outcome happened. Often, you will find that you can cope with an outcome and that it may not necessarily overwhelm you.<\/p>\n
Once you have had a chance to challenge your anxious thinking, you will be ready to counter it with realistic, affirming statements. This involves keeping realistic statements in the present, for example saying \u201cThis may be scary but I can tolerate this anxiety as I know it will pass\u201d. Beginning your realistic statements with \u201cI am learning to\u2026\u201d or \u201cI can\u2026\u201d is affirming and can counter anxiety. It is important to keep the realistic statements in the first person, for example, using \u201cI\u201d statements. Saying to yourself \u201cI can handle this\u201d is more powerful than saying \u201cThis situation is not as scary as I thought it would be\u201d.<\/p>\n
Making a list of all your fears and then developing realistic self-statements to each of these can be helpful. It is recommended that you write down your realistic statements and post them in conspicuous places. Reading through them daily will help you integrate them into your consciousness, in particular, reading through them when you feel anxiety rising. Often realistic self-statements will need to be specific to the particular form of anxiety.<\/p>\n
There are many different forms of anxiety ranging from generalized anxiety, phobias and panic attacks to social anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder. Not surprisingly, there are also a variety of treatments for these different expressions of anxiety, self-talk being only one component. There are many benefits to challenging anxiety-producing self-talk.\u00a0 Learning to use realistic counter-statements not only decreases anxiety but can lead to an increased sense of control over moods and improved self-esteem. Research has shown that these techniques, as part of a broader therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy, are more efficacious in the long term compared to other treatments such as medication.<\/p>\n
Dr. Abigail Draper
\n<\/span><\/strong>Clinical Psychologist<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nPlease call us at (403) 452-6262<\/a> to discuss your questions about or interest in individual therapy we offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Are you often overcome by feelings of anxiety? Anxiety is not an automatic response. Just because something threatening is in your way, it doesn\u2019t mean that you will get instantly anxious. It is your thoughts about events that makes you anxious. Thoughts that typically trigger anxiety are \u201cI am being threatened or overwhelmed\u201d, \u201cI am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
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