What if my anxious thoughts aren't true?

Anxiety is an emotion that usually exists around our feelings and thoughts about the future (and sometimes references from the past) It really doesn’t seem this way, but these are feelings and thoughts that we have chosen. I need to remind myself of this all the time.

If you are unsure about this, think about something you are anxious about. Has it happened yet? How are you thinking and feeling about it and could you choose (even if it’s difficult) to think and feel about it differently?

Once we understand this, we can start to do something about it. And unless you have superpowers that I don’t none of us know what is going to happen in the future!

I was lucky enough to work through an example of this with a 24 year old client this week.

She arrived in a flat panic about an upcoming job interview, for a role she really wants. She immediately spoke about  a time that she had messed up in an interview in the past and was utterly convinced that this was going to happen again. The resulting emotion is anxiety. Every time she thinks about the interview, she experiences a wave of anxiety that takes over her body. She imagines images of how she might stumble over her words, make a fool of herself and instead she would rather not go for her dream job!

She has decided how this story will end and now expends energy rehearsing (subconsciously) it. Brains are incredible, anything we practise we get good at, so now she is really good at getting anxious about her job interview.

So how do we outsmart our bodies and brains so that we can feel less anxious?

1. Bring your anxious thoughts out into the open. Can you write them down or speak them out loud?
2. Can you know with absolute certainty that what you are imagining is true? (yes or no) So in my client’s case- can you be certain that you will mess up the interview? (the answer is no!)
3. How else can we think & feel about it? Can we open our thoughts up to other possible outcomes? So, every time she has the thought that the interview is not going well can she replace that with another more useful perspective that is equally as true?

Anxiety is a useful emotion when in context to the situation in front of us. But, when anxiety rages for a long time in our bodies it can lead to disease. It is always worth challenging our anxious thoughts to see if another perspective exists.

The Emotions Lab