Anxiety Management Tips – Identification of Worrying Thoughts and Images

Overcoming Anxiety – Part II (you can read part I of overcoming anxiety here)

Anxiety management is something you need to learn when you’re calm, to help with overcoming anxiety when it actually happens. When you are feeling calm, it is not always easy to recall the thoughts or images which triggered your anxiety. Keeping a record of what goes through your mind near the time of the anxiety episode can be the best way of discovering the words, images or phrases which cause your tension – and ultimately help you learn some anxiety management skills.

Use a thought diary as a daily record, writing down whatever is in your mind when you start to feel an anxiety attack coming on.

With practice, this task will become easier; but if you do continue to find this exercise difficult, remember that timing is important; if you do not ‘catch’ a thought as it occurs, you can lose it. Also, try not to shy away from examining what you feel and think. Although in the short term you may feel upset by looking closely at your thoughts, in doing so you will greatly improve your anxiety management skills and eventually be able to take control of your worries and anxiety attacks.

Questioning Anxious Thoughts

When you have recorded your stressful thoughts, you will need to look for the common thinking biases which fall into the general categories of:

• catastrophizing: anticipating total disaster if something minor goes wrong;
• black-and-white thinking: viewing things in ‘all or nothing’ terms and overlooking degree and compromise;
• exaggerating: magnifying negative or weak aspects, forgetting the positive aspects and the signs of your strengths;
• over generalizing: concluding everything to be awful always because of one bad experience;
• ignoring the positive: overlooking personal strengths and good experiences and dwelling on the negative aspects of yourself and your life;
• scanning: searching for the thing you fear.

At this stage of your anxiety management education, you are trying to evaluate whether or not your thoughts are rational. At the time of feeling anxious or worried, you might not be able to spot irrational thinking patterns or predictions; if that is the case, look at your record later, when you are feeling calm and more able to view the situation clearly. If you still have difficulty in gaining a rational perspective, ask a friend to look through your diary entries and to comment on the accuracy of your perceptions and predictions.