CBT Tips To Help with Anxiety
CBT tips for anxiety can be helpful in moments of stress and anxiety.
Sometimes when you become anxious the mind becomes busy. Overanalysing and other thinking creates more and more thoughts, which are typically negative. CBT techniques can help in these moments.
Alternatively, you may have a thought which you just can’t drop which then becomes persistent, demanding a solution or answer.
In all of these cases, there is both a physical effect on the body and a mental effect upon the mind. Chemicals become released form the brain and the mind becomes more active and the body becomes tense and tight. You may of heard of this as ‘fight or flight response.’
But you can take the approach of proactive thinking rather than reactive thinking by using these CBT tips for anxiety.
CBT Tips For Anxiety
Tip 1
FACT. With every thought is a feeling. When a thought is negative or troublesome the mind can begin to panic and overthink and overanalyse. Typically it will search for an answer and come up with many different outcomes, which may even all be negative. The mind , however, loves a fact. If a thought is factual it feels confident and even calm. Try this CBT tip for anxiety. Interrupt your thought or thoughts with the word ‘FACT.’ If the thought holds no fact, drop it, treat it as an untruth.
Normally thoughts are assumptions or fears, so imagine how many thoughts you could drop with this technique. By dropping them as soon as possible, you interrupt the usual follow-up responses of overthinking and overanalysing. The more you interrupt your negative thinking with the statement of ‘FACT’, the more your mind will learns the process subconsciously.
Tip 2
Thought Balloons. Think of your mind as a space. And in this space when you become anxious it can fill rapidly with thoughts and fears. Imagine these thoughts and fears as contained in balloons. Metaphorically you can advise your subconscious to make space and feel calmer by imagining the balloons being deflated or even popped. Your mind is a place to encourage good feelings, calm and space.
Tip 3
This CBT tip for anxiety is to encourage a general feeling of positivity and appreciation. At the end of each day reflect on the positives that have happened. The mind is very good at recognising negatives and not the positives. For example, if you were in a room with 100 people and 99 said good things about you and 1 said negative, guess what you would focus on? So every day have a reflection and encourage the mind to seek the positives that have happened, there are always positives no matter how little sometimes.
By doing this, you will feel achievement which brings confidence. The more you practice this technique the more you may find yourself doing it naturally several times during the day and grounding those good feelings within you. Encourage your thinking to take the positive. You will be surprised at how much easier things can become to deal with and how your mind can veer away from the negatives and all that overthinking and overanalysing.
For more information on how CBT can be used in conjunction with Hypnotherapy for further effect, please contact AbsoluteU Clinical Hypnotherapy on 01403 267276 / 07909 992635.
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