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Your Thoughts and Anxiety

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Throughout my website, I work through many specific examples utilizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  CBT would suggest that your thoughts cause your anxiety and panic attacks.  Therefore, by locating the thoughts that are making you feel badly, you are then in a position to recognize the cognitive distortions. Subsequently you become able to generate alternative and more accurate thoughts that make you feel better.

However:

• when you are in the midst of a panic attack, it is very challenging to nail down your specific thoughts;
• people struggle with the issue of how to figure out what their underlining thoughts are;
• it is critical to learn about your underlying thoughts. 

While obviously you are very aware that you feel anxious, you might have trouble connecting your anxiety to specific thoughts. But nailing down your thoughts will then allow you to apply CBT to them.

So how do you nail down your thoughts and anxiety caused by them?

I always say that you have to be a good detective with your thoughts, and right here, I’d like to suggest some ways to do so.  While you read these suggestions, I want you to keep in mind the following: if you continue doing something long enough, you can become very proficient in what you do.  This is true with restructuring your thinking.

Now, I need to put forward some additional suggestions for getting at those anxiety producing thoughts:

1. It is important to keep a journal of your daily emotions, feelings, and thoughts throughout the day. 

The reason I suggest listing your emotions throughout the day is because doing so allows you to look back at how you felt at different times throughout the day.  And you can look to see if there were situations and/or thoughts that might have triggered these emotions.

When you look back at a specific emotion, it might provide a good hint about what your specific thoughts were.

This is the same for specific events that may have happened during the day.

2. Look at a particular emotion throughout the day that was problematic and ask yourself the following: “What thoughts could be causing this emotion?”  Once you do this, you will probably start getting some ideas.  Reflecting on these things might take a few minutes but it can be very helpful. 

Once you get some ideas about what COULD be causing your emotions, I would suggest that these are likely what ARE causing your emotions.

The great news is that now you have some thoughts to work with. 

3. Now you can proceed with the process of CBT, which will help with your thoughts and anxiety.

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