Top 20 Cognitive Strategies to Reduce Anxiety

Top 20 Cognitive Strategies to Reduce Anxiety



Top 20 Cognitive Strategies to Reduce Anxiety Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Qualified Clinical Supervisor. She received her PhD in Mental Health Counseling from the University of Florida in 2002. In addition to being a practicing clinician, she has provided training to counselors, social workers, nurses and case managers internationally since 2006 through AllCEUs.com #anxietyrelief : A Sample 15 Week #Masterclass with 20 #cognitivebehavioraltherapy #CBT strategies. Links to referenced videos are below 👇👇👇
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Doc Snipes. What is Anxiety and What are Its Effects? https://youtu.be/7K_tCtluy9k
—–Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Skills | A Cognitive Behavioral Approach, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv_etBsR_Ew.
———. Assertiveness Skills and Techniques: Setting Boundaries and Living Authentically, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZwT-pk8Vb8.
———. Attachment Theory and Adult Relationships | Reducing Abandonment Fears in Counseling, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uy25DES_pk.
———. Building Positive Self Talk for Confidence and Self Esteem, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkEjdM7Kw0g.
———. Circadian Rhythm Regulation Quickstart Guide, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzH7Lx7mn2g.
———. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Understanding Cognitive Distortions: Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOoowYQmZr8.
———. Compassion Focused Therapy Overview | Counseling Techniques, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY5LBP1Zj0c.
———. Creating a Rich and Meaningful Life Vision Board | A Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Technique, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVPmEeSNflU.
———. Dialectics: Learning How to Find Balance and Walk the Middle Path, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp_AXhAkUj4.
———. Distress Tolerance | 52 Skills Everyone Needs Series, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9E6CMoknyY.
———. Healing the Inner Child: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Strategies to Address Trauma and Abandonment, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKJPtpaNP2A.
———. How Schema Affect Anxiety & Depression | Cognitive Behavioral Interventions, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Ph8Wj8ZoQ.
———. Listening without Defensiveness | Assertiveness Skills, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZAdFWtTOE.
———. Long Term Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma Part 1, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndWSIkFLq-g.
———. Loving Kindness Meditation | Developing Mindfulness and Compassion, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByyXf44V-k0.
———. Making Peace with the Inner Critic, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QpN8hb5c9Q.
———. Mindfulness for Anxiety Relief | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoOqSaysm9o.
———. Naturally Increase Neurotransmitters: PACER Integrative Behavioral Health, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgOOTPfRYvo.
———. Optimism vs Toxic Positivity: Counseling Techniques, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtEnlTWiP5c.
———. What Are Healthy Personal Boundaries and How Can I Maintain Them?, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSPQZM9KK3w.
Video by Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes on integrative behavioral health approaches including counseling techniques and skills for improving mental health and reducing mental illness.

AllCEUs.com provides multimedia counselor education and CEUs for LPCs, LMHCs, LMFTs and LCSWs as well as addiction counselor precertification training and continuing education on many of the videos on this channel. Unlike other providers like CE4Less, AllCEUs includes a weekly LIVE Stream Webinar with your unlimited continuing education and professional development membership.

Anxiety Relief Strategies
00:00 Introduction and diagnosis criteria
22:07 Create a list of triggers and vulnerabilities and current effective strategies for reference – Refer to primary care to rule out physical causes or contributors, a nutritionist if their eating habits are poor and a sleep specialist if sleep hygiene interventions do not work or they have a known sleep disorder Have them start keeping daily anxiety
38:24 12. Setting and maintaining boundaries 13. Secure attachment, positive self talk and the inner child 14. Silencing the inner critic 15. Listening without defensiveness 16. Assertiveness

hey there everybody and welcome to this video 
on 20 anxiety relief strategies i'm your host   dr donnelly snipes in this video i'm going to 
walk you through the basic strategies that i use to address generalized anxiety in someone 
who comes into my office now it's important to remember that every person is different and 
every person may display their anxiety slightly differently so this just gives you a general 
idea of tools and techniques that i might use we're going to start out by looking at what i go 
over in the assessment or intake interview and how that relates to the symptoms of 
anxiety then we'll explore other things   that i rule out or rule in that might 
be contributing to the person's symptoms then we summarize the typical interventions that 
i use when treating generalized anxiety disorder and i finish up by listing 15 psycho-educational 
topics that i think are important for everybody to have in a foundation treatment 
program if you're not familiar with some of these tools or techniques that i'm using that's okay 
i've linked to longer videos that i've done on each one of them in the notes to this video so 
just scroll down look at some of those videos remember anxiety is a feeling it's an emotion 
so the first criteria for diagnosing generalized anxiety is excessive anxiety that's difficult 
to control on most days for at least six months about a variety of things it's not about one 
specific thing it's about a variety of things it's also important to recognize that just 
like you wouldn't wait to go to the doctor   until you had a pneumonia you also are likely 
going to do better if you start addressing anxiety when you notice it instead of waiting until 
you're at a crisis point or until you accurately and completely fulfill diagnostic criteria just 
because you haven't had it for six months or more doesn't mean it doesn't need to be addressed so we 
start out with this first symptom and i ask people about what triggers their anxiety what causes 
them to feel anxious what things do they think about when they're feeling anxious and 
i make a list of these things as we talk   and then we examine those triggers for themes are 
they related to things like loss or abandonment or rejection or failure or loss of control and we 
start trying to group them together a little bit to help the person get a better understanding 
maybe of where their anxiety might be coming from then i asked them about their 
anxiety vulnerabilities now   remember vulnerabilities are different 
than triggers triggers are things that kick off the anxiety response vulnerabilities 
are things that make people more likely to be triggered when they encounter certain 
stimuli so being over caffeinated being unrested being sick being in a strange environment all of 
those may be vulnerabilities for people's anxiety and i go through each one very systematically 
we look at physical vulnerabilities   such as being over caffeinated or having low 
blood sugar having poor sleep being in pain then we move on to affective vulnerabilities 
if the person's already feeling stressed out or overwhelmed about things maybe they're just 
starting to feel burned out then that may make them more vulnerable to react to things with with 
anxiety then we look at cognitive vulnerabilities when they are in a particular mood perceiving 
the world as either optimistic or pessimistic does that make them more likely to feel anxiety 
and then we'll look at environment are there particular environments that contribute to their 
anxiety like i mentioned earlier being in a strange place or maybe being in an environment 
where there's lots of activity like your kid's preschool classroom or a very busy restaurant as 
opposed to your home or the library and finally we'll look at relationship vulnerabilities if 
you will and that is people in the person's life that may make them more vulnerable to 
react with anxiety are there people that make the person feel on edge that may contribute 
to them being a little bit more hyper vigilant so they're more likely to become anxious and notice 
for example micro expressions after we go through the themes the triggers and the vulnerabilities 
then we go to effective coping strategies what is the person doing right now that helps them 
either a little bit kind of take the edge off their anxiety or maybe it helps them relieve their 
anxiety even if just for 5 10 minutes 30 minutes those are things that we can build 
on and that helps me understand   the types of tools that might 
be effective for that person the next characteristic or criteria for diagnosis 
of anxiety disorder is feeling restless keyed up or on edge now this is different than anxiety this 
is having difficulty sitting still and this is a common symptom of adhd so the person may have 
anxiety but they also may have concurrent adhd or concurrent ptsd that is contributing to their 
sense of restlessness so no matter how much of the anxiety that we treat this particular symptom may 
continue to be present unless we also address it so again i asked them about what triggers your 
restlessness what triggers your inability or difficulty sitting still and are there any 
vulnerabilities that make it more likely that you will have difficulty sitting still or that 
you you will feel more keyed up a lot of these often overlap with the anxiety triggers but 
it's still helpful to take a look at them then i asked them about their strengths and 
coping strategies for dealing with feeling restless or keyed up what do you do when you have 
to sit still and you feel restless maybe it's in a staff meeting or on an airplane or something 
else what strategies can you use that help you cope with that sense of restlessness and edginess muscle tensions sleep disturbances and being 
easily fatigued are all additional symptoms and they can all be caused by a variety of things 
muscle tension can be caused by poor ergonomics and pain for example that is completely unrelated 
to anxiety so again we can treat the anxiety and we can address the stress related muscle 
tension but if there's also muscle tension for other reasons we need to pay attention 
to that too because muscle tension is perceived by the body as a stressor and 
that is going to trigger the stress response which is going to make the person more 
vulnerable to anxiety so i ask about different triggers for their muscle tension and 
what's an effective coping strategy whether it's progressive muscular relaxation or massage or 
heat or stretching what is it that helps them reduce their muscle tension in terms of sleep 
disturbances sleep can be disturbed for a lot of reasons your circadian rhythms can be out of whack 
your hormones can be out of whack you're you could be experiencing pain that is impacting your sleep 
none of those are necessarily directly related to the anxiety but they could be contributing 
to maintaining the symptoms so i asked about what are triggers for sleep disturbances for 
example watching particular movies before going to sleep or checking their email before going 
to sleep and what vulnera vulnerabilities exist for sleep disturbance what things make you 
more likely to have difficulty going to sleep and what are some effective street sleep 
strategies that the person currently uses sleep hygiene is a big focus of early treatment 
for dare i say just about every disorder that i treat because when a person is sleep deprived 
when they're not getting good quality sleep it contributes to a whole bunch of symptoms 
physical symptoms cognitive thinking symptoms emotional symptoms as well as emotional ability 
and difficulty regulating their emotions so sleep strategies are important and i generally 
provide people in the initial intake a link to a video on sleep hygiene and a handout on sleep 
hygiene so they can evaluate their own sleep and then if they're easily fatigued why is this 
is it because they're not getting good sleep okay that could be it is it because their nutrition 
is poor if you're not getting good b vitamins or if you're stressed all the time so your body 
can't use the food that you are eating nearly as effectively or if you're eating foods that 
don't provide all the nutrients for your body to make energy available then nutrition may be a 
cause of fatigue or a contributor to your fatigue over and above fatigue caused by poor sleep 
and being anxious or stressed out all the time tension can contribute to fatigue even 
though you may not notice that you're   holding a lot of muscle tension holding that 
tension keeping those muscles clenched takes energy and that contributes to fatigue and finally 
deconditioning people who are anxious and people who are depressed often feel overwhelmed and 
exhausted because of life so going to the gym that's a pie in the sky thought they feel like 
they barely have the energy to get through the day they can't imagine mustering the energy to work 
out but even deconditioning in terms of not being able to spend as much time cleaning the house or 
working on the yard just doing regular activities of daily living may seem completely overwhelming 
so they're not doing them and after a period of time the body loses its conditioning it loses its 
stamina the good thing is stamina can be rebuilt but it's not something that comes back overnight 
it's something that has to be gradually rebuilt and what helps the person improve their 
energy when they're feeling fatigued   you may not be able to go from feeling completely 
exhausted to ready to go to the gym but if you're feeling fatigued is there something that can put 
a little pep in your step besides caffeine and i ask people about music are there particular songs 
or playlists they listen to that can give them a little boost music can actually help increase 
dopamine and norepinephrine which make energy more available to us so music's one maybe deep 
breathing or just getting up and moving around or going outside into bright light those are 
all tools or techniques that help some people get a little bit of energy like i said it's not 
going to be a panacea but we want to look at any strategies that work for the person at least 
a little bit and then we can build on those two more criteria for anxiety disorder include 
difficulty concentrating or your mind going blank and irritability when you're stressed when you 
feel anxious you've got that fight-or-flight system going on you've got your brain in rescue 
mode if you will so your brain is paying more attention to all the threats because it doesn't 
feel safe it's paying attention to more things   that are going on around you because it doesn't 
feel safe which means if you're in an environment where there's a lot of distractions maybe in a 
busy restaurant or even at work if you work in a open area with lots of other people moving around 
it may be more difficult to maintain your train of thought because you're thinking and then all of 
a sudden your hyper vigilance makes you go over here to pay attention to that person that just 
walked in or over there to pay attention to sally who just dropped something on the floor and 
then you completely lose your train of thought so it's important for people to 
recognize when they're feeling   anxious what environments what situations 
what conditions make them more vulnerable to having episodes where they can't concentrate 
or their mind goes blank and what can help them a lot of people find that in this particular 
situation having noise cancelling headphones on sitting in a quiet environment at work 
maybe in a carol or in a private office can help them focus more effectively and 
what effective coping strategies do they have to help them deal with this difficulty 
concentrating in their mind going blank   making lists is a big one if they have a bunch 
of stuff to do at work but they've got a lot of anxiety it may be hard to remember okay what is 
it that i've got to do next but if they make lists that can help them keep track and 
follow along with what they need to do and irritability is that sense of being 
short-tempered if you will and it's important for people to recognize what makes them irritable 
irritability is sort of you can think of it as a mild form of anger and anger just like anxiety 
is a response to a threat when a person feels anxious when a person feels exhausted when 
a person feels vulnerable for some reason then they're more likely to respond to 
any sort of outside input especially stressful outside input with irritability it's 
like i just can't take one more thing go away it's important for people to 
recognize that and recognize   what their triggers are for irritability when 
they're angry i'm sorry when they're anxious what things tend to trigger their short fuse 
if you will and what makes them more likely to be triggered for example being too hyped up 
on caffeine or being exhausted or being in pain then i move on to ruling out no matter how much 
work a person does on their anxiety and their thoughts and cognitions about their anxiety   if there are underlying physical issues or other 
mental health issues that aren't being addressed there's only so much progress the person can 
make it's important to recognize that people are not just a bunch of independent parts everything 
interacts so if somebody's in pain physical pain that's going to trigger their stress response 
which is going to make them more vulnerable to   anxiety in order to make them less vulnerable to 
anxiety helping them address anxiety is great but we also have to address that pain so the stress 
response system the hpa axis isn't always turned on we want to rule out thyroid imbalance hyper 
or hypothyroid estrogen fluctuations lyme disease nutritional deficiencies food sensitivities excess 
caffeine or stimulants and that can come from the form of energy drinks or diet pills or other 
herbs that somebody may be taking that have stimulatory effects medication side effects some 
medications have in their list of side effects can contribute to anxiety it's important to recognize 
that when serotonin gets too high for example it can contribute to anxiety some people 
when they start taking antidepressants feel anxiety for the first couple of days 
because all of a sudden their body's being   exposed to more serotonin than it was prior 
to taking the medication now eventually it all balances out but it's important to 
recognize that that is a potential side effect alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal also 
contribute to feelings of anxiety now alcohol related anxiety tends to be much shorter than 
benzodiazepine withdrawal when you withdraw from alcohol usually it's two or three days that the 
person experiences high blood pressure increased anxiety etc and then things start to level out 
i'm not going to say their anxiety goes away but it levels out quite a bit with benzodiazepines 
or anti-anxiety medications it can take a lot longer for the anxiety to go away a lot 
of people also experience rebound anxiety when their anti-anxiety medication starts to leave 
their system so if they're taking a short acting anti-anxiety medication it may start helping them 
feel better real quick but then as it starts to leave their system their anxiety rebounds and it 
feels like it's even stronger than it was before they took the pill in the first place and it's 
important if that's occurring to talk with your doctor about whether there are more longer 
acting options that would reduce the rebound anxiety or if there are other treatment options 
which there are in in lieu of benzodiazepines pain as i mentioned can also contribute to 
keeping that stress response that hpa axis turned on keeping the person hyper 
vigilant when you're in pain you tend to be   kind of guarding because you don't want to hurt 
anymore you don't want to get injured anymore and it can make people more likely to respond with 
anger or anxiety so we do need to address pain whether it's chronic pain like from fibromyalgia 
or intermittent pain like from frequent migraines we still need to address what's going on for 
people who have intermittent pain they can also experience anxiety because they dread having 
another episode for people with chronic pain they can have anxiety related to the chronic pain 
worrying that it's going to get worse and worrying that it's going to keep them from having the life 
they want ptsd post traumatic stress disorder has a lot of anxiety related symptoms however people 
can have both generalized anxiety as well as ptsd ptsd symptoms are focused mainly around triggers 
reminders of the trauma whereas generalized anxiety the anxiety is about more things but if 
a person has ptsd they are going to likely be hyper vigilant which is going to make them more 
vulnerable to anxiety about a variety of things obsessive-compulsive disorder has an anxiety 
component people have these obsessions that they are they can't get out of their head 
and they're worried that if they don't do if they don't do x if they don't engage in a compulsion 
then it is going to end up causing bad things or they may just have this repetitive intrusive 
thought that they ruminate on that contributes to their anxiety and social anxiety remember i said 
generalized anxiety the person is anxious about a multitude of things in social anxiety the anxiety 
is specifically about being negatively evaluated by people can you have both yes potentially but we 
do need if somebody has a social anxiety component we need to make sure that we're addressing 
that in addition to the generalized anxiety the general treatment flow that i go through 
with general with generalized anxiety in this initial meeting we have talked about 
triggers vulnerabilities and current effective strategies that the person uses so i take all 
of those and i put them into a spreadsheet and we look for themes and i give them to the 
per give the spreadsheet to the person so they are more aware they can start identifying 
vulnerabilities and triggers that they want to address i also refer people to their 
primary care to rule out physical causes and contributors like hormone imbalances nutritional 
deficiencies chronic pain if they need to be or they want to be referred to a nutritionist 
or a sleep specialist i also make a referral to those particular people at that point in time i 
also have people start keeping a daily anxiety log in which they note the date the time the trigger 
or triggers for their anxiety the intensity of their anxiety on a scale of one to four one 
being yeah i noticed it but it wasn't a big deal two is i felt anxious but i was able to get 
through just fine three is i felt really anxious but i managed somehow to get through it and 
pushed through but it was really really hard and four the anxiety was overwhelming i just i 
couldn't i was paralyzed so date time triggers intensity duration did it last five minutes or 
five hours and what interventions what things did they do that helped to either reduce their anxiety 
or help them recover after the anxiety episode and then henceforth each week we review their 
anxiety logs that's like the first thing that i do with people after i ask them you know 
how's your week been we look at the anxiety logs and i evaluate it for repeating triggers and 
repeating themes for their anxiety then we process at least three of their triggers for their anxiety 
and i use the fcp method what are the facts for and against your belief about this situation what 
aspects did you have control of in this situation and based on the facts and your ability 
to control the factors you had control of what's the probability that this 
actually would have ended up being a catastrophe would have actually ended up 
being a notable threat that's where we start a lot of times helping people move away from 
emotional reasoning into factual reasoning gives them a sense of new perspective and a greater 
sense of mastery over the situation they may not feel like they can control it yet but they're 
feeling like they have a better understanding eventually as we go through the treatment process 
people will learn about cognitive restructuring dialectics living in the and purposeful action and 
hardiness and we'll apply each one of those tools as they learn them when we process their 
triggers i also look at their anxiety logs for potential vulnerabilities and i and i 
identify mitigation strategies include setting and maintaining boundaries assertiveness 
and trigger management so for example if one of their common triggers was interacting 
with their boss or interacting with their sister-in-law then i would say okay what 
mitigation strategies could we use how can you effectively set and maintain healthy 
boundaries and manage this trigger in a meaningful way may not be able to completely prevent the 
anxiety but how can we help you move from a four where you're completely paralyzed by your anxiety 
to a three where you can start you can get through it it sucks but you can get through it and 
then eventually we'll get down to a one we discuss what tools have been effective 
in the past week it's really important in my mind to help people identify and build on 
their strengths and realize the power that they already have realize the resources that they 
already have that they may be taking for granted and then i provide a video handout and worksheet 
on a particular psycho-education topic and it's important for a lot of people to have a video 
that kind of explains it and walks them through it and then a handout or worksheet to apply 
it why do i do this for in between sessions because i feel that people's money is best 
spent when they're in session with me actually processing stuff the psychoeducation component i 
think is something in most cases is something that people can spend their time learning between 
sessions i don't want to waste their money lecturing them when they could watch a video on 
it i want to spend their time in session actually using what they've learned 
and applying the information so the psycho-education topics that i 
think are important for everybody to learn about the function of anxiety its connection 
to the stress response and the impact of fight or flight on perception and problem solving and i 
mentioned that several times in this video that when we're in fight-or-flight mode we don't pay 
attention to the good stuff we are actually more aware of more of the threats in the environment 
because we are on high alert so to speak which means we tend to perceive the world as 
more dangerous and because of all that because of the glutamate and the norepinephrine and 
everything else in our brain it makes it harder   to think clearly our brain is has tunnel vision 
adrenaline haze whatever you want to call it that is geared towards helping us fight or flee 
not think about all the possible options and problem solving so until people can get 
into what linehan called the wise mind until people can get out of that high anxiety state 
it's going to be difficult to problem solve then we talk about distress tolerance 
skills which are the skills that people   need when they feel anxious to help them 
remember that they can tolerate the distress so they don't feed into it by saying oh my 
gosh this is going to overwhelm me i'm not   going to be able to handle it these distress 
tolerance skills help people feel more empowered even in the face of anxiety and can 
help them get into their wise mind we talk about circadian rhythms and sleep 
hygiene because it's so important for developing new skills for learning new things 
as well as for helping the hpa access the threat and neurotransmitter support what we eat is 
broken down to make neurotransmitters to make hormones to repair the body so if we're eating 
like crap we're probably going to feel like crap a lot of people want to get straight down to the 
nitty-gritty of how can i improve my serotonin my dopamine my norepinephrine and ultimately 
everything is in a fine balance so if one goes up one happy chemical goes up the other ones are 
likely going to go up too but that requires a healthy diet for example making serotonin to 
break down tryptophan we need to have vitamin b we need to have calcium we need to have 
zinc we need to have iron we need to have   tryptophan itself and then to break down it goes 
from tryptophan to 5 ht then to break that down even more we need even more vitamins and 
minerals so it's important that people understand the importance of a healthy diet but 
also understand the regular foods that they can eat to support their body's ability to make those 
neurotransmitters like spinach and bananas and cocoa and tea and colorful vegetables it's not 
anything that's really weird wild and radical next we talk about mindfulness the difference 
between focused mindfulness so you're focusing on something like a candle flame or open 
awareness mindfulness where you're walking through a park for example and you're not focusing on 
any one thing in particular you're just noticing quote everything as you walk down the 
path that open awareness encourages you to be mindful be in the moment instead of 
thinking instead of being in your own head and then mindfulness in terms of the self scan 
mindfully scanning your your head heart and gut so to speak how am i feeling emotionally how am i 
feeling physically what am i needing emotionally what am i needing physically right now the next 
lesson is on compassion and loving-kindness developing compassion for yourself as well 
as other people a lot of times anxiety comes from fears of being rejected 
fears of being criticized fears of not being good enough and sometimes that comes 
because your own inner critic is just harsh and hateful so developing self-compassion 
recognizing that it's okay to be imperfect can be helpful to encourage people to move towards 
self-acceptance as opposed to self-abandonment and loving-kindness meditation is helpful to   inspire compassion for others even 
others that are being kind of difficult the next unit or topic is cognitive distortions 
what they are their function and restructuring them cognitive distortions include think 
things like all or none thinking mind reading and catastrophizing and over personalization so 
we talk about how those thinking errors are likely thinking strategies that formed in childhood 
before you could think more critically so to speak and often remained unchecked then we talk 
about alternatives such as looking for alternatives instead of thinking it always 
happens or it never happens looking for exceptions you know when has this happened if i if i say it 
never happens is that true or are there exceptions if i'm taking things too personally instead of 
saying it's all about me or the person's mad at me or hates me what are three other explanations 
for why they may have given you a dirty look besides you you were they even did they even see 
you or were they caught in their own thoughts then we move on to optimism and i 
have in here tragic optimism because unbridled optimism can be just as unhealthy as 
unbridled pessimism tragic optimism includes an element of dialectics and living in the 
and in tragic optimism we recognize what is but we have hope that it can get better we 
recognize the good and the bad and the present and we have hope that we can make a difference 
to move towards a more rich and meaningful life unit 9 looks at schema schema 
are our brains cliff notes our brain shortcut to help us interpret what 
to happen you have schema about everything stop lights i'm assuming everybody who's 
watching drives and so you have a schema when you see a stop light that's on yellow 
you have a schema that tells you how to react if you think that yellow lights are really long 
and you've got plenty of time to get through then you're going to keep on going or maybe even 
floor it if you think that yellow lights tend to change really quickly and you don't want to run 
the red light then you're probably going to stop   so based on your past experiences with yellow 
lights you're going to react in the current moment probably without thinking about it you're 
not going to sit there and go okay well the   last three times i came to this light it changed 
really fast it's just sort of an automatic process that's the beauty of schema it helps us do some 
of our things in default mode or on autopilot unfortunately if somebody's been exposed to trauma 
or has been anxious for a long time then their schema may have been altered to expect that 
the world is going to always be a dangerous disempowering un unpleasant place so it's going 
to be important to evaluate their schema back then that may have been true in the current context 
at the current time is this schema still accurate if so okay how do we deal with it if not how can 
you adjust your schema relationships are the same way if you've been in multiple bad relationships 
you may expect that people aren't trustworthy but that really sets everybody else up to be 
at a loss because you're just expecting they're going to behave badly if you adjust your schema 
and you say okay in this context at this time with this person are my beliefs about 
what's going on are my expectations true or am i just assuming based on other 
people's behaviors and past experiences number 10 is creating a rich and meaningful 
life vision board helping people visualize what things are important in their rich and meaningful 
life what things do they currently have that are important in their rich and meaningful life and 
instead of using their energy just holding on to anxiety and tossing it around in their hands like 
a hot potato how can they instead use that energy to nurture the things that are important in their 
life and what kind of a difference would that make number 11 is acceptance purposeful action 
and heartiness helping people recognize that sometimes life just sucks it is what 
it is so to speak but using their energy purposefully instead of using their energy 
to be angry about it and stew on it and pout using their energy and saying okay can't change 
this situation but what can i change what can i use this energy for that would help me 
move closer to a rich and meaningful life number 12 moves into relationships and 
interpersonal behaviors and i start out with setting and maintaining boundaries a 
lot of times people feel anxious because they have never been taught how to set boundaries 
and maintain them they have other people have encroached on their boundaries and told them 
what to think or what to feel or criticized them for how they think or how they feel and so 
learning how to set and maintain boundaries is really important to helping people feel empowered 
and safe in any relationship in section 13 we talk about secure attachment positive self-talk and 
the inner child so there's a lot there hopefully by this point in treatment people's triggers 
and anxiety experiences are a lot less intense and a lot less frequent so they have more time 
to spend on developing additional skills but in order to feel safe in order to feel loved people 
typically need to have some secure attachments including a secure attachment with self feeling 
like you can be there to respond to your own needs so we talk about what secure attachment 
looks like how secure attachment is developed how to use positive self-talk to enhance 
your secure attachment with yourself and to help heal your inner child that may 
have been wounded because of past things in unit 14 we talk talk more about the inner 
critic because the inner critic is huge and contributes to a lot of people's anxiety the 
inner critic may bring up past stuff remember back then you failed you're going to fail again 
which can trigger anxiety or the inner critic can bring up anticipatory things you 
think you're going to be able to   do this you're going to fail and 
then this is what's going to happen and the sky is going to fall so getting that 
inner critic under control is really important in 15 we talk about listening without 
defensiveness because defensiveness is a anxiety anger threat reaction when people feel 
like they're being criticized or when people feel like others don't necessarily agree with 
them the automatic reaction for a lot of people is to feel threatened and to get defensive 
so we talk about how to hear other people's opinions maintain your own boundaries and not 
get defensive you don't have to agree with them but it's important to be able to listen and then 
finally in unit 16 we talk about assertiveness in order to feel safe and empowered which is what 
you need to do to feel not threatened to feel less anxious it's important to be able to assertively 
communicate your thoughts wants and needs so we talk about any barriers to assertiveness 
and how to assertively communicate what you need to others while still respecting 
their boundaries and maintaining yours that gives you a general overview of the types 
of things that i go through in a 12 to 16 week treatment program with somebody who presents with 
generalized anxiety now remember every individual is different so i may add things like a unit on 
abandonment anxiety or a unit on grief and loss for people based on what their the themes of their 
anxiety triggers are but the skills that i have already gone over the skills that i've highlighted 
in this presentation i think are essential foundational skills for anybody to prevent 
anxiety and to deal with it when it does happen

#Top #Cognitive #Strategies #Reduce #Anxiety

source

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