CBT & Anxiety

CBT addresses the symptoms of anxiety by helping people make small changes to the way they think and behave during times when they are anxious. The goal of CBT is to help people interrupt and change the worried or intrusive thought patterns that feed into anxiety, while also working to reduce the avoidant behaviors. These changes, together, help reduce symptoms of anxiety without the use of potentially dangerous medication and lessen the negative impact on day-to-day lives.

CBT Helps Reduce Anxious Thought Patterns

Anxious thoughts are described as “thought distortions” or “negative automatic/responsive thoughts”, which are believed to cause anxiety levels to increase. These include ‘worst-case scenario’ thoughts or ‘what if…’ ideas that become dominant for many people when they feel anxious. This can also include negative or intrusive thoughts a person has about themselves or their lives. With the assistance of CBT life skills, it is possible to stop, challenge and change these thoughts into more positive and helpful thoughts that reduce and level anxiety.

Below are some examples of how this type of therapeutic treatment can help to interrupt negative or distorted thoughts that feed anxiety.

Magnification

Magnification is the overfocusing of or giving too much-unwarranted attention to an unimportant detail, or consideration to something that is unlikely to happen.

• Example of magnification: Focusing on one small mistake you made in an hour-long presentation you spent weeks preparing.

• CBT intervention for magnification: Zooming out to focus on the big picture accomplishment, or to take note of, positive parts of the presentation, which can help to reframe negative thoughts about the overall presentation experience.
  
  
  

Fortune-Telling

Fortune telling is making predictions about the future without having sufficient information or evidence.

• Example of fortune-telling: Believing you will do poorly at job interviews.

• CBT intervention for fortune-telling: Imagining positive outcomes or interactions for the interviews using mindfulness. The goal is to bring your attention to the present, instead of focusing on a potential future state.

  
  

Mind-Reading

Mind reading features thoughts that presume knowledge regarding what another person is thinking or feeling, or what their internal motives might be for a certain choice.

• Example of mind-reading: Believing that a good friend didn’t call you back because they are mad at you and they don’t want to be friends anymore.

• CBT intervention for mind-reading: Consider the more likely alternatives, and the likely less personal reasons for why they didn’t return your call (i.e. they were busy, forgot, etc.).
  
  

Comparisons

Comparisons usually involve unhealthy comparisons a person sometimes makes between themselves and other people. Comparisons that tend to make them feel even more insecure, inadequate, self-conscious, or anxious.

• Example of comparisons: Comparing yourself at work to a co-worker who hasn’t been doing the job for as long, and feeling like a failure as a result.

• CBT intervention for comparison: Work on imagining a stop sign in your mind to catch you when you start forming unhelpful comparisons and work purposefully to refocus your attention to other prideful thoughts when this happens.
  
  

Emotional Reasoning

Emotional reasoning is the tendency to believe something is true or will be true simply because of an emotion a person has.

• Example of emotional reasoning: Convincing yourself that a meeting at work will go poorly just because you’re not looking forward it.

• CBT intervention for emotional reasoning: Monitor and track your anxious thoughts by journaling them in a log, this helps you become more aware of this type of distortion.
  
  

Filtering

Filtering is when a person minimizes and disregards certain facts and information that doesn’t mesh with their other thoughts, beliefs, or feelings.

• Example of filtering: Believing that your family and friends don’t really love you, even though they try to tell you otherwise.

• CBT intervention for filtering: Make an actual list of the “evidence” that supports your belief that people don’t love you, as well as all of the evidence that conflicts with this belief. Doing this can help you challenge those irrational and meritless thoughts and beliefs.