Mastery of Your Anxiety and Worry: Workbook (Treatments That Work) by Craske Michelle G. & Barlow David H

Author:Craske, Michelle G. & Barlow, David H. [Craske, Michelle G.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2006-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

Beginning to Change Your Anxious Thinking (Self-Statement Analysis)

As a first step, it is essential to know exactly what it is that you tell yourself in different situations. The more specifically you can describe your thoughts, the easier it will be to correct or challenge your assumptions.

For example, simply stating, “I am worried about my child getting sick,” is not specific enough. Instead, ask yourself about the details of the worrisome thought. What do you think might happen if your child were to become sick? Do you think your child might die or be disabled for life? Do you worry that his or her sickness means that you have failed as a parent? Do you worry that his or her sickness would be unbearable? The following is a description of how a therapist is helping a client, Joan, to describe her thoughts and worries more specifically:

Therapist: You said that you are constantly worried about others watching you at work. What is it that you’re worried that they might see? And what leads you to assume that they’re watching you?

Joan: I feel like they’re watching to see that I’m doing everything that I’m supposed to be doing... that I’m not making mistakes.

Therapist: What kind of mistakes?

Joan: Well, for example, typing errors and wasting time retyping letters over and over again.

Therapist: Do you often retype letters over and over again?

Joan: No, actually, believe it or not, I’m a pretty good typist. I guess it’s just that I worry that if I did make a mistake, they would see it.

Therapist: And what if they did notice that you made a mistake? Then what?

Joan: Well, I would worry that they might tell my boss.

Therapist: Go on. What next?

Joan: Well, my boss would either keep an eye on me continually or ask me to leave, and then I’d be without a job. I don’t want to lose my job.

Therapist: So, the bottom line for why you’re concerned that others are watching you is that you could be fired. Anyone who believed that they were about to lose their job would most likely feel some anxiety. We need to examine whether the evidence is consistent with you being fired, such as whether your colleagues really are watching you, what they would actually do if they did notice a mistake, and what your boss would actually do if someone mentioned that you had made a mistake.

As an exercise, choose three to four examples from your Worry Records over the past two weeks. Now, think back to those events, and read the anxious thoughts that you recorded. Can you expand on those thoughts and provide a more detailed description of what you thought might happen or what you were worried about? Ask yourself the kind of questions that the therapist asked Joan. What, specifically, did you think could have happened? In the following example, Joan describes her worries about her boyfriend, Rob.

When Rob didn’t call me last night, I thought it was because he didn’t like me anymore, or that I wasn’t good enough for him.

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