If you want to learn more about your anxiety, charting your reactions in specific situations can be very helpful. Because anxiety is often unexplained discomfort, identifying what is happening right before, during, and after your anxious moments can help you decide what to do to reduce it. Use the Self-Diagnosis Checklist to determine when you have anxiety.
Self-Diagnosis Checklist
____ 1. I feel uncomfortable and experience building tension or discomfort that seems to come out of the blue when I think about a particular situation.
____ 2. I avoid specific situations that make me feel uncomfortable.
____ 3. I have at least four of the following symptoms at the same time: shortness of breath or feeling smothered; heart palpitations (rapid or irregular heartbeat); trembling or shaking; choking; dizziness or unsteadiness; nausea or abdominal distress; numbness, feeling detached or out of touch with myself; fear of dying; fear of going crazy or out of control; hot flashes or chills; sweating without exertion.
____ 4. I worry excessively, and so I feel restless, keyed up or on edge, irritable, easily fatigued, have trouble falling or staying asleep or I wake up tired, have tense and tight muscles, have difficulty concentrating, and/or find my mind going blank.
____ 5. I have recurring intrusive thoughts such as hurting or harming a close relative, being contaminated by dirt or a toxic substance, fearing I forgot to lock my door or turn off an appliance, and/or have unpleasant fantasies of catastrophe.
____ 6. I perform ritualistic actions such as washing my hands or counting to relieve my discomfort because I have fears that keep entering my mind.
____ 7. I have witnessed or been subjected to a life-threatening experience and have persistent symptoms that have lasted for at least a month, including repetitive and distressing thoughts, nightmares, flashbacks, attempts to reenact the situation, emotional numbness (out of touch with your emotions—feeling no anger, sadness, guilt, or relief), feeling detached from other people, losing interest in activities that once gave me pleasure, sleep or concentration problems, startling easily, irritability and/or have outbursts of anger.
Key to Your Answers:
If you checked #1 (just thinking about a situation brings on discomfort), you have anticipatory anxiety.
If you checked #2 (your discomfort arises only in response to being in a specific situation), you have what is called situational anxiety and you are likely dealing with agoraphobia, or fear of going to specific places or being alone. If your discomfort is related to being in social situations and is related to avoiding humiliating or embarrassing yourself, you may be suffering from a social phobia.
If you checked #3 and you include among your symptoms shortness of breath or feeling smothered, you have panic attacks. If your anxiety forces you to avoid certain situations, you have a phobia. If the avoidance is of places, such as driving on freeways, going to doctors, riding in elevators, using public transportation, going over bridges or going through tunnels, eating in restaurants, going to work, and so forth you are likely dealing with agoraphobia.
If you checked #4 you probably have a generalized anxiety disorder.
If you checked #5 you may have an obsessive-compulsive disorder with obsessions only.
If you checked #6 you are probably dealing with an obsessive-compulsive disorder with both obsessions and compulsions.
If you checked #7 you are probably in post-traumatic stress or nonspecific anxiety condition.
How You Maintain Your Anxiety Disorder
As mentioned in the previous chapter, what you’re doing to keep your symptoms going is crucial for you to identify so you can obtain relief.
Sarah, a thirty-two-year-old kindergarten teacher suffered from panic attacks and agoraphobia. By taking the Self-Diagnosis of Anxiety Maintenance Checklist (see below), she discovered that her actions, including negative self-talk, poor nutrition, and a negative lifestyle, added to her anxiety.
Complete the following checklist to find out how you might be maintaining your anxiety disorder by the things you do.
Self-Diagnosis of Anxiety Maintenance Checklist
Check the factors you think might be helping to maintain your anxiety. If you check an item, find the chapter in this book that will tell you more about how to overcome this behavior.
____ 1. Avoiding situations or objects that make me anxious. (chapter 9)
____ 2. Using negative self-talk. (chapter 9)
____ 3. Holding mistaken beliefs. (chapter 9)
____ 4. Not sharing my feelings. (chapters 9 and 10)
____ 5. Not being assertive. (chapter 10)
____ 6. Holding too much body tension. (chapters 8 and 9)
____ 7. Lack of self-nurturing skills. (chapters 9 and 10)
____ 8. Poor nutrition. (chapter 5)
____ 9. Leading a high-stress life. (chapter 7 and 8)
____ 10. Not having meaning or a sense of purpose to my life. (chapter 10)
Go back and pick three of the ten causes of anxiety and pledge to work on them daily for the next month. Write the word pledge after each of the three. Work through the chapters that relate to your choices first, before reading the rest of this book.