How To Deal With Thoughts That Cause Anxiety and Worry

This post looks at how to challenge unhelpful thoughts that cause anxiety and worry. This post is part of a series about thought challenging so please check the previous posts if this one isn’t making sense. I’ll start by looking at how to identify the thinking that causes anxiety and then look at how to challenge those thoughts.

The thinking that typically drives anxiety is some type of prediction about the future. Anxiety is actually caused by dozens of factors, but for the sake of understanding, this post just looks at how to deal with anxiety caused by worrying predictions about the future.

Step 1 is to write down your worrying thoughts and use the downward arrow technique to identify your core fear. Instructions for using the downward arrow technique are listed in a previous post here. This exercise takes about 1-5 minutes.

Step 2 is to take the core fear and write down everything that would have to occur in order for the core fear to actually happen. You can use the steps from the downward arrow technique and then add others that are logical.

For example: Let’s say that someone’s initial worries are that their relationship with their husband is going badly. So they do the downward arrow technique and they recognise that the core fear is of being alone for the rest of their lives. In order for that to occur the following things would need to happen.

John and I can’t work through our issues together by talking.

John refuses to attend couples therapy to address the issues.

John stops talking to his friends/family and has no feedback from any other person about how to address the issues.

John becomes 100% unwilling to change.

We get a divorce.

I am unable to recover from the impact of the divorce.

No men show any interest in me for the rest of my life.

I refuse to go out or put myself in situations where I might be attracted/interested in another person.

I completely deny any feelings of interest in other men for the rest of my life and refuse to interact with men who are interested in me.

I will be alone for the rest of my life.

Step 3 is to write down the chance that each one would occur. Write this down as 1 chance in 2,3,4,5….10,000 etc so it looks like this:

John and I can’t work through our issues together by talking. (1 in 5)

John refuses to attend couples therapy to address the issues. (1 in 2)

John stops talking to his friends/family and has no feedback from any other person about how to address the issues. (1 in 20)

John becomes 100% unwilling to change. (1 in 20)

We get a divorce. (1 in 1)

I am unable to recover from the impact of the divorce. (1 in 1000)

No men show any interest in me for the rest of my life. (1 in 50)

I refuse to go out or put myself in situations where I might be attracted/interested in another person. (1 in 1000)

I completely deny any feelings of interest in other men for the rest of my life and refuse to interact with men who are interested in me. (1 in 100)

I will be alone for the rest of my life. (1 in 1)

Step 4 is to multiply all of these estimates together. This allows you to estimate how likely the core fear actually is.  1 in 2 becomes 1/2; 1 in 3 becomes 1/3 and so on.

From the above example: 1/5 x ½ x 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/1 x 1/1000 x 1/50 x 1/1000 x 1/100 x 1/1. A quick math refresher from school: multiply the numbers on the bottom on a calculator. Then the final probability of the core fear is 1 chance in that number.

1/20,000,000,000,000 or 1 chance in 20 trillion.

Step 5 is to understand how likely that is to occur by going to a page that explains the odds here. You can see from that page that this person has a higher chance of dying from spontaneous ignition of her nightwear than she does of remaining alone for the rest of her life.

Hopefully she feels a bit better now.

Our brains are built to detect threat. Evolutionary theory predicts that if we didn’t have a brain that detected threats quickly then our genes would be unlikely to survive. However, surviving in a modern world where the threats are not usually fatal means understanding that your brain will overestimate how likely a threat is. If you are an anxious person you come from a good stock of ancestors who may have been the first to detect threats and run or fight. Their anxiety saved them. In order to not feel anxious yourself you can use self-talk to remind yourself that the actual risk of something happening is nowhere near as imminent as your brain is telling you.  

Thought Challenging 2

This is the second post in a series that I am writing on a skill called thought challenging. This post looks at the foundational skills for challenging negative thoughts. The two approaches for this are to challenge the accuracy and unhelpfulness of a thought. Remember, it is essential to write down your challenges otherwise this skill won’t work well.

Recognising thoughts

The first step is to identify the thought that is causing your negative mood. Many people are not aware of their thinking but instead tend to notice their symptoms, like anxiety, shame or behaviours like shutting down or feeling paralyzed. In these cases try to guess what you might be thinking. It might help to look at the post on Common Thinking Traps (which is two below this one) in order to understand what kinds of thoughts to look for.

Challenging Negative Thoughts

Once you have identified your negative thought (or thoughts) the next step is to challenge that thought by writing down the reasons why the thought is not accurate and why it is unhelpful.

Why is this thought inaccurate?

Write down all the reasons why the thought is not 100% true. No thought is ever 100% true although it is very common for it to feel that way. Look for the reasons why the thought isn’t true in all situations, all the time, with everyone.

For example, let’s say you were challenging the thought: “I am a failure because my kids hate me”. Here is a list of reasons why the thought isn’t 100% true in all situations, all the time, with everyone. 

1. Sometimes my son can be quite caring towards me, but only when others aren’t around.
2. Just because they don’t like me a lot of the time, doesn’t mean that I am a failure. Most parents are hated by their children when they go through adolescence – it doesn’t mean that they are all failures.
3. There are a few areas in my life where I am not a failure. I do ok at my job, my husband is happy and I still have relationships with some friends that are quite good.
4. My kids don’t actually hate me all the time. Last week they seemed quite happy with me for taking them out for the day.

The idea is to keep this list handy and to keep adding to it regularly. Part of the reason why negative thoughts feel so true is that there is so much evidence for the thought. If we have a thought like the one above then we are more likely to look for evidence that confirms our belief.

Think of this like a courtroom. The negative belief has a star legal team and mountains of evidence and you are on the other side with just a few reasons why the thought isn’t true. In order to feel better you will need to collect the facts in order to build evidence against the negative belief. The more evidence you have the more likely you are to win the case against your negative belief.

Why is this thought unhelpful?

It’s usually easier to start by writing out the reasons why the thought is unhelpful. Sometimes it’s just too difficult to see how the thought is inaccurate. In these cases write out your answers to the following: 

1. How do you feel when you believe this thought?
2. How do you behave when you believe this thought?
3. How do you treat yourself unkindly when you believe this thought either in your head or physically?
4. How do you treat others unkindly when you believe this thought?
5. When you believe this thought, does it cause avoidance that will lead to long-term problems?

Troubleshooting

I can’t stress how important it is to WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHT CHALLENGING. This is the number one reason why I see people get stuck and unable to progress in treatment. Part of the reason why I think they get stuck is that they try to challenge the thought but their negative thinking has 10,000 reasons why the belief is true. The thought challenging may not work because each time they try to think of one reason why they thought isn’t true, their mind comes up with 20 reasons why it is true.

Writing down your challenging will slow the process down. It will help you to see that there are several valid reasons on a page that dispute the belief. It also let’s you come back to the page and add to it so that you have a solid argument against the thought instead of just a few pieces of one-off evidence.

So after reading this post write down these two questions somewhere:

Why is this thought inaccurate?

Why is this thought unhelpful?

When your mood becomes more negative try to recognize the thought by guessing what you may have believed about yourself or your situation at the time. Write down the thought then write out your challenges to it. Write on paper, in your phone, a diary, on your computer – anywhere that’s convenient. That’s the process.

Next post I will write about some more advanced techniques for challenging negative thinking.

Common Thinking Traps

Thinking traps are types of thoughts that result in negative emotions. These thinking traps are very common – everyone thinks this way sometimes. There is a lot of research evidence showing that people who can reduce these thinking styles become happier over time. 


Don’t worry about trying to memorize them all since many of the thinking traps are very similar. It is not important that you can perfectly classify your thoughts – just learn to recognize if you are in a thinking trap in a general sense. The next step is to write it down and challenge it (more on this at the end of the post). 


Check if you frequently use any of the following thinking styles:

All or nothing thinking / Black & White thinking
Thinking in terms of absolutes without recognizing that there are always shades of grey to the reality of the situation.
"If it’s not perfect, then it’s a disaster"

“It never works out for me”

“It always ends up badly”

“Nothing I do is right.”

Catastrophising
Jumping to a negative conclusion without thinking of the reasons why it might work out ok. Deflating the chances that you can cope with negative outcomes

“This will never work out”

“I’ll never cope if I get any worse than this”

“It will be a disaster like last time”

“I won’t cope”

“I’ll fall to pieces”

Shoulds / Musts / Oughts

Setting standards for yourself and others that lead to guilt (self) or frustration (others) when they are not met. Not tolerating mistakes.

"I can't make mistakes"

“80%, 90%, 95% isn’t good enough”

“I should have done it differently”

“I should be better”

“I am not good enough”

“I should have realized that beforehand”

Making feelings facts (emotional reasoning)

Using the way you feel about something to justify it as reality

“If I feel anxious I must be in danger”

“If I feel like a loser then I must be”

“If I have a bad feeling about this then something bad must be about to happen”

“The positive thought doesn’t feel true to me so it must be false/wrong”

Overgeneralising
Applying your experience in one or a few situations to all situations
“Men only want sex”

“You just can’t trust anyone”

“People will always let you down”

“People in authority will take advantage of you”


It is normal to feel uneasy as you start to recognise how often you think this way. The next step is to challenge these thoughts so that you can learn they aren't completely true. The more you feel they are true the more emotional pain will occur. Write down your answers to these quick questions to challenge your thinking trap thoughts:

1. List three reasons why this thought is not completely, 100% true.
2. List how this thought is unhelpful (How do you feel or behave when you believe it is true?)
3. How would life be different if you could let go of this thought?