Treating Anxiety

What exactly is anxiety? Discover the numerous relationships between the three elements of anxiety: thoughts, physiological sensations, and behavior. As you'll see, anxiety can start with any of these three elements and amplify from there. But what if your anxiety didn't hold you back? Learn the difference between goals and values, and how to create your own personal Challenge List.

Worry that feels uncontrollable and physical tension are the two pillars of a very common anxiety diagnosis called general anxiety disorder. Explore why we all worry from time to time and the difference between worry and general thinking. Most important, you'll learn about the four cornerstone tools from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that can help you start to decrease your worry load today.

Explore the causes of the physiological symptoms of anxiety from blushing to shortness of breath to trembling hands. And how does potentially helpful anxiety turn into its most extreme form-panic? Learn about the panic cycle, why our avoidance behaviors do more long-term harm than good, and the simple physiological and cognitive tools you can use to make a very real difference today.

Of the three components of anxiety, behavior is the factor we can best control. Participate in an exercise to identify your values and then learn how those values drive your behavior and affect your anxiety. Explore Choice Point, a mental-health tool that can help you assess behaviors. Are your behaviors moving you toward or away from your personal values?

Because we are social animals living our lives in social situations, social anxiety can have a significant affect on our ability to attain our goals. Learn why this type of anxiety is all about our fear that people will find something deficient about us that we would rather hide-our "fatal flaw." Explore two skills that can help you get around social anxiety and its fears.