Areas › Worry and anxiety
Worry and anxiety
Anxiety is not a character flaw and it is not weak faith. It is a body doing what it was built to do, at a moment when it is not needed. The practices here work on the loop itself: what worry promises and never delivers, what avoiding costs you, and how to let the body come down.
What works for this
Cognitive behavioural therapy
The treatment with the largest trial base for anxiety works on what you do about worry rather than on what you worry about. Catching it, postponing it, and testing a prediction instead of arguing with it.
One move, today
Pick one worry you had today. Write the exact thing you feared would happen, then write what actually happened. You are collecting evidence, not arguing.
What matches
2 practicesObsessive thoughts and compulsions respond well to a specific kind of therapy. What is here is for understanding them, not for treating them by yourself.
It can help to give the parts of your brain jobs. The front of your head is the manager, the memory system is the librarian, and the alarm is a security guard who is good at his work and far too keen on it.
The point is not accuracy, it is having language you can reach for quickly. Saying the guard is overreacting again gets you further than trying to…
When obsessions start early and dig in deep, ask gently what anxiety looks like elsewhere in the family. Often there is an undiagnosed parent, and often that parent is helping in ways that keep the whole thing running.
None of this is about blame. A parent who checks the locks for their child, answers the same question fifteen times, or arranges the evening around a…