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
3 practicesIf this has been going on for years, medication is often part of what helps, and it usually needs a longer run at it than people expect. Starting low and building up slowly is the normal way of doing it.
The slow build is there to keep side effects bearable through the first few weeks, which is where most people quietly give up. It helps to agree with…
If every step you try keeps not working, however small you make it, that is information rather than failure. A more intensive programme is the next thing to look at, and it should be put to you as an option.
The whole point of shrinking the steps is to find one that moves. When nothing moves at any size, staying in the same weekly arrangement out of…
An exam is a task with requirements. It is not a ruling on whether you are capable, however much it feels like one while you are sitting inside it.
Saying that once changes very little. The person this comes from took a long time to arrive at it, and that is worth knowing so you do not expect it…