Attacking Anxiety

Left unchecked, anxiety can be a very dangerous force. One of the primary problems with anxiety is that it has a snowballing effect. You start to worry about one thing, and that worry just starts to spill over into all aspects of your life. Before long, you start looking for threats and problems and everything, and that can make anyone miserable. This is not to say that you should never worry – on the contrary, not worrying about anything can also be bad. The key is just not to let that worry overtake you by attacking anxiety when it starts and keeping yourself in control.

The key to controlling anxiety is to worry intelligently, and not to let wild fantasies and worst-case scenarios dominate your thinking. If you immediately jump to the conclusion that the worst has happened or will happen, you’ll inevitably work yourself into a fluster. For instance, if you have a fear of flying, but you need to fly somewhere, you should keep the statistics in mind. The chances of dying in a plane crash are extremely small. Of course, it’s not that easy to just put your fears to rest, but the most important thing is just to keep your head on straight and to think clearly. If you let yourself get carried away, it could trigger a panic attack.

As crazy as it may sound, one way to calm yourself down may be to talk to yourself. Engage in a little dialogue where you encourage yourself not to create unrealistic scenarios, and present facts or statistics to support that position. It may sound silly, but this method of attacking anxiety has worked for many people, and helped them to reclaim their own lives from overwhelming anxiety.

These approaches are the basis of the treatment used by cognitive behavioral therapists. The idea behind these therapies is to empower a person with anxiety with the tools that they need to overcome their anxieties in a natural and rational way. There are a number of advantages to these treatments. For example, while they are often paired with anti-anxiety medications to begin with, most people are able to go off medications completely after being treated this way. That means none of the negative side effects that are often associated with these types of medication.

Cognitive behaviorists believe that anxiety is what is known as a conditioned response. You may be familiar the idea of a Pavlov’s dog. The scientist would always ring a bell before feeding a dog. Eventually, the dog became so used to the relationship between the bell and food that it would start to salivate just at the sound of the bell, even if there were no food nearby. Anxiety works similarly – those who suffer from anxiety disorders have unconsciously trained themselves to have these negative reactions. With the help of cognitive behavior therapy, it’s possible to retrain the mind to not have these reactions. It takes some work on the part of the anxiety sufferer, but it is an effective way of attacking anxiety.