Before we discuss the difference between danger and anxiety, several people wondered about whether or not their self-talk was compulsive or Wise Mind. I want to say more about that: The voice of Wise Mind is always orienting you towards a therapeutic attitude of acceptance of what you’re currently experiencing. Sometimes Wise Mind is educational. He …
Let’s discuss how to prepare for the anxious moment. We’ve already covered the therapeutic attitude of willing acceptance and differentiating between anxiety and danger. Let’s quickly review. Remember that for all techniques, we’re always trying to orient towards the therapeutic attitude of willing acceptance. When we think about how to get to the therapeutic attitude of …
Here are a few questions to consider about this topic: In what areas of your life are you most sensitive to uncertainty? Does the feeling of uncertainty make it difficult for you to identify how you can take responsibility? That is, does uncertainty make you feel like you don’t have the ability to respond when …
The road to recovery is paved with details! We need to identify and observe the details of your anxious moment to know what to challenge, what to expose you to, and how to do the opposite. Anxiety disorders are created, maintained, and intensified by avoidance, and overcome with approach and exposure. Let’s start with understanding …
Dr. Claire Weekes was an Australian physician and an anxiety treatment pioneer who started writing about acceptance-based methods for relating effectively to anxiety in the 1960’s. She used the concept of floating through anxiety, as opposed to swimming through it, to emphasis the need to let go of control, rather than focusing on coping with …
Perfectionism is a cognitive pattern, with behavioral implications, that maintains many different responses leading to anxiety. You can think about perfectionism as a problem of strategy, not outcome. Many perfectionists struggle to challenge their perfectionism because they’re afraid that it will lead to dropping their standards. They will no longer be striving for excellence. The most …
Perfectionism is the wrong strategy for excellenceRead More »
There are two types of inflated responsibility. The first is thought-action fusion. The second is taking responsibility over something you can’t control. Thought-action fusion occurs when having a thought feels like an action. Thoughts and actions feel fused together. This is common in Harm OCD. You might have the thought, “What if I hurt someone?” …
Social anxiety is maintained by resistance to the possibility of judgement and rejection, due to intolerance of the feeling of embarrassment and shame and/or catastrophic thinking about the consequences of judgment. Let’s call this fear of evaluation. Notice my focus on the possibility of judgment and rejection. It’s always a possibility. Remember from our discussion last week …
Let’s talk cognitive process. Your process for any task is your series of steps to achieve your end. Your process for brushing your teeth or cleaning your kitchen may seem to you like “that’s just how you do it,” but if you surveyed the next 10 people you encounter it is very likely that their process …
The nature of obsessive thoughts is that they are unwanted and intrusive. They arrive with a spike of anxiety or uncertainty and the urge to do something that makes them stop. Behavior that you feel compelled to perform, against your conscious wishes, with the sole intention of ending a thought, feeling or sensation is a …