Anxiety might feel like something that’s too big, too mean, and too powerful for you to change. However, even strong and complex emotions like anxiety follow certain patterns. The key is to get perspective and find out what those patterns are.
Once you make this discovery, you’ll learn that the automatic thoughts and physical sensations associated with anxiety do not have to control your behavior. You have other options. At any moment, you can start taking your life back from anxiety. The process begins with awareness. Take some time to see—in a direct and nonjudgmental way—how anxiety shows up in your life right now.
There is a saying: “What you are aware of, you can control. What you are not aware of controls you.” When you understand how anxiety arises in your body, mind, and behavior, you can begin to create new responses to this emotion.
The purpose of the following exercises is to gain personal awareness of anxiety. Each exercise includes a question or two for you to answer. To get the most value from this part of the book, write out your answers to those questions on paper. Or open up a word processing file on your computer and write your answers there. You might even want to start a personal journal that includes your responses to the exercises. Over time, this journal can become a visible record of your thinking, feeling, and behavior. You’ll be able to see definite changes in your experience of anxiety.
Though you can go through the exercises by yourself, consider doing them with at least one other person. Sharing your responses with each other will take your experience of this book to a deeper level—and open you up to some potentially life-changing experiences.
Remember that an anxiety trigger is any person, place, thing, or event that’s consistently linked to your experience of anxiety. These triggers vary widely.
People with simple phobias can point to a specific trigger, such as the sight of an insect or the act of standing in line to board an airplane.
For people with a social phobia, the trigger might be the sight of people gathered for a party, or even just the thought of attending that event.
People with PTSD often find that memories of a traumatic experience trigger their anxiety symptoms. Sometimes a seemingly unrelated object or event becomes a reminder of that experience and turns into an anxiety trigger.
This can also happen to people with panic disorders. Even a single physical sensation—such as an elevated heart rate—can trigger a memory of a past panic attack, which fuels more anxiety symptoms.
When you gain awareness of triggers, this helps you see how they lead to anxiety-based thoughts, physical sensations, and urges to behave in self-defeating ways. And with that perspective, you can choose your response to an anxiety trigger rather than merely react to it.
Think about the last time you experienced anxiety and reflect on these questions:
In summary, what are your anxiety triggers? List them in writing, and be as specific as possible.
Note: Some forms of anxiety, such as generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder, can arise without clear triggers. If this is your experience, then don’t worry about listing anxiety triggers for now. Just continue with the following exercises.
Take a minute to review the types of negative thinking that commonly occur with anxiety:
What are your anxiety-based thoughts? Put them in writing. Consider creating a two-column chart. In the left column, list specific thoughts. In the right column, note which type of negative thinking each thought demonstrates.
Where do you feel anxiety? To prompt your thinking, review this list of common physical sensations associated with anxiety disorders:
This is not a complete list of anxiety-based physical sensations. They’re different for everybody.
What are your anxiety “data points”—the specific places in your body where the sensations of anxiety usually surface? Remember that anxiety-based sensations might move in waves that sweep through the body in specific patterns and sequences. For example, you might feel anxiety at first as a sensation of nausea, followed by a racing heart, and then trembling or twitching.
Detecting physical sensations is a skill that develops with practice, so repeat this exercise from time to time. Also consider learning about meditation, yoga, and other practices that develop body awareness. These are useful allies in your quest to become free of anxiety. (For one suggested practice, see the instructions for doing a body scan under Learn to Relax, which appears in a later section.)
In response to the unpleasant physical sensations and negative thinking that occur with anxiety, people tend to rely on certain behaviors. These might be self-defeating in the long run, but people with anxiety disorders turn to them as coping strategies anyway. The behaviors mentioned earlier in this book include the following:
What actions do you take when you feel anxious? List several examples. Whenever possible, describe a physical, visible behavior—the kind of action that would show up on a video recording. Try to get a clear mental image of what you’re actually doing in response to anxiety.
Keep this list. It will come in handy later as you create a plan to change anxiety-based behaviors.
Take a few minutes to review your responses to the preceding exercises, especially those where you described your thoughts and behaviors. Then ask yourself: Are those thoughts useful in managing anxiety? Are those behaviors actually working?
If the answer to either question is yes, then anxiety is probably not an issue for you. But if your answer is no, then admit the truth about it. Denying the facts about your experience of anxiety can actually make you feel worse over the long run.
While this might be a painful thing to realize, there’s also a potential benefit: discovering the consequences of anxiety in your own life can fuel your desire to change.
How has anxiety diminished your quality of life? To get the full benefit of this inquiry, get down to particulars. Focus on specific areas of your life in which anxiety has become an obstacle to being the person you want to be, doing what you want to do, and getting what you want to have.
Consider the following areas of activity:
Create a written list of ways that anxiety has diminished your life in any of these areas. You’ll get the most benefit from specific, concrete statements. Following are two examples:
My social phobia prevents me from getting promoted at work. I shy away from meeting people and making contacts, and there’s no way that I can do any public speaking. These are all things I need to do in order to advance in my career. Right now, I feel stuck in a job with no future.
OCD puts a big strain on my relationships with friends and family members. When I promise to meet them at a certain time for a social event, they know that I’ll be late. I go through a lot of rituals to get ready, and then I can’t leave home unless I check several times to make sure that I’ve actually locked the front door of my house. This routine can take hours out of my day. People know about my anxiety condition, and they say that they understand. But underneath the pleasant remarks, I know that they resent me for being unreliable. Some of them have probably given up hope that I’ll ever change.
What would your life be like without the barriers to happiness that you just listed? Visualize what it would actually look like to meet your major goals in life. Imagine what you’d be able to do differently and what you’d have that you don’t have now. Then put the details of your vision in writing. Again, here are two examples:
When I change the behaviors related to my social phobia, I’ll do better in job interviews. I’ll also be able to develop my skills at public speaking. This will allow me to apply for a more interesting and better-paying job and to make contacts with people who can help me make a career change.
Getting OCD under control will really change my relationships. People will know that they can count on me to show up at places on time. I will regain their trust and respect. I won’t feel the brunt of their resentment. Besides that, cutting down on my rituals will free up hours each day for things that I really want to do, such as reading more books and getting more exercise.