Feeling Anxious

Feeling anxious or worried a lot of the time feels awful. Anxiety is a bully but there are things you can do to stand up to it. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT tells us that any disturbance in the way you think, affects the way you feel and behave. People who feel anxious are often fixated with the concept of danger and underestimate their ability to cope. This constantly makes you think that you are a vulnerable person in a dangerous world. This becomes a vicious circle e.g. the symptoms of anxiety themselves can impair your ability to perform and you then go on to interpret these as a sign of serious mental or physical illness. These thoughts increase your feeling that you are vulnerable and the circle continues. To add to this, all of these all contribute to the way you behave. You might feel unsteady, faint and weak. These can also increase your sense of danger and on it goes.

When you start to think, feel and behave in this way, the way you process information is distorted. Your thinking about things becomes distorted and another vicious circle starts. These are called "thinking errors" or "cognitive distortions". An example would be when you draw conclusions in the absence of sufficient evidence.

The good news is that there are things you can do to interrupt the vicious circles. At the Successful Living Project we have some self management learning opportunities packed full of techniques and things you can do, but we need your help to improve them. Let us know your experiences.