Dr. Richard Leahy, a well-known therapist specializing in anxiety said,

The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950’s.”

We’ve since discovered that the problem is not limited to a particular age group.  It’s widespread and epidemic.

The problem attacks the body but germinates in the head!  Much of our anxiety comes from telling ourselves a bad story.  It usually goes something like this:

  • You’re not smart enough for this job. 
  • You’re too young, too old, don’t have any experience, can’t learn new things fast enough.. 
  • It’s just a matter of time before you are exposed. 
  • People wouldn’t respect you if they really knew you”  

The dialogue is endless chatter.

If you change your story you can change your life.  How?

  • Recognize the voice in your head
  • Listen to what that voice is saying
  • Identify faulty thinking patterns

Here are 7 thinking distortions that fuel our anxiety. Start dumping them today.

  1. Absolute Thinking – Sometimes this is referred to as “polarized thinking.”  It’s the “always” and “never” talk, and it usually leads to victimhood.
  • I’ll never find someone I can count on. 
  • People always let me down.
  • This relationship is over. 
  • I cannot be happy without him/her. 

Everything is either all good or all bad. It’s an overgeneralization where one negative event is a never-ending pattern of defeat.  “I didn’t get accepted into that school/program; I’ll never get my dream job.”  This kind of thinking becomes a mental perspective through which all other reality is seen.  The result is that our vision of life is distortedly darkened.  Yet when we stop to count our blessings, we discover that life is rarely so absolute.

  1. Downplaying The Positive – This is the tendency to marginalize our successes.  We disqualify positive experiences by dismissing them as not counting.
  • It really wasn’t that significant.
  • It was not a big deal. 
  • It was really minor. 

A chance for affirmation becomes a channel for anxiety.

  1. Leaping To Conclusions – Jumping to conclusions” is the only exercise some people get.  Further inquiry often results in the opposite conclusion.
  • She walked right by me and didn’t say a word!  She must be upset with me.  “I wonder what I did wrong?” 

What are the facts?  She passed you, didn’t say a word, and didn’t make eye contact.  Yet another possible conclusion (and more empathetic), is that she’s upset about some bad news and had no thought about you at all.  This is often referred to as “personalization”, thinking that everything people say or do is some kind of reaction to you.

  1. Fortune Telling – We anticipate that things will turn out badly.  We approach the prediction as though it were fact.  We activate the flight simulator in our minds and go over the disaster again and again.
  • My relationship is breaking up, and my family and friends will ostracize me. 
  • My life of fitting in has ended.
  1. Emotional Reasoning – This is the fallacy of thinking that our emotions reflect the reality of what is happening.
  • Since I feel this, it must be true.

If you feel stupid and boring, then you must be stupid and boring.  I have learned it’s always a bad idea to allow my reasoning to be shaped by my current mood, especially if I’m down or depressed.  This creates unwarranted anxiety. Not all thoughts are true, and not everything you feel is a fact.  With practice you’ll begin to notice these thoughts – “are they true or not?” – and then let them go.

  1. “Shoulds” and “Musts” – Shoulds”, “Shouldn’ts”, “Musts” and “Oughts” are all poor motivators.  “I should do this” leaves us feeling anxious – even guilty.  Rather than
  • You should do this, ask
  • Why do I want to do this?  What is the outcome I want? 

Some people “should” all over themselves and never touch on the real motivator of why they want to do something.  When the “should” and “ought” is directed at someone else, the anxiety can turn to anger.

  1. Filtering Information – We hear 20 positive comments and 1 negative.  We filter out the positive and amplify the 1 negative.  We put it in our mental petri dish and let our anxiety grow like a bacteria.  We have successfully isolated the negative “bacteria” from the serenity-producing information.

We can’t control the weather, the economy, or the actions of others.  But we can control our attitudes, thoughts, words, emotions and behaviors.  Understanding our distorted thinking patterns is the best place to start.

Recognize all of these, but pick 1 or 2 that grab you and start taking control today?

I’ve got my 2 🙂

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2 Responses
  1. Mick Ukleja

    Thanks Teri. Today’s environment with events coming at us from every corner of the world on 100’s of cable outlets has increased anxiety levels in all humans. We need skills to counteract this onslaught of stressors.

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