Category: Anxiety

Are you a worrier stuck in endless “What-ifs” and worst-case scenarios? Your mind constantly running through fears and uncertainties? Here are six proven techniques to reduce worry and GAD, along with one common strategy that just makes things worse.

The first is postponing worry. Whenever worries pop into our heads – “What if I can’t get this done on time?” “Will I lose my job?” “Why haven’t they texted me back?” “Are they ghosting me?” – instead of giving them attention and dwelling on them, we just write them down and set them aside and postpone thinking about them until a scheduled worry or thinking period later in the day. And then redirect our attention back to whatever we’re doing, knowing we’ll have time to look at the worry later to see if it’s important. But in the meantime, instead of worrying, we’re going to focus on the task at hand.

Then during our worry period or thinking period, we set aside a maximum of 30 minutes (and make sure we don’t do it right before bed) to review the list of worries we noted throughout the day and decide if any of them require attention. When we postpone thinking about our worries, they can seem less important when we revisit them, and we often find that a worry we had during the day isn’t worth thinking about anymore. There’s nothing to worry about, so we can just let it go.

Postponing worry helps us realize that worry isn’t uncontrollable and that we have the ability to set aside our worries in the moment and postpone thinking about them until a time that’s more convenient, and not be compelled to worry about something just because a thought happened to arise.

Now during our worry/thinking period, if we decide a worry does require our attention, we can start by problem-solving. Often worry feels like problem-solving, which is one of the reasons we do it so much. We think we’re being productive and trying to resolve something that’s making us anxious. But worry is different from problem-solving. It’s repetitive, unproductive thinking and that doesn’t lead to solutions.

So how can we tell the difference between unproductive worry and productive problem-solving? By asking ourselves:

• Is the problem I’m worrying about plausible or reasonable? A lot of the things we worry about have almost no chance of ever happening, so worrying about them isn’t productive.
• Is it something I have some control over? If we’re worrying about something we don’t have control over, then there’s no way we can problem-solve it.
• Is there something I can do about it now to help solve the problem? Often our worries are focused on future hypotheticals that we have no way of solving now because the problem hasn’t even happened yet.

Let’s look at some examples.

We’re worrying: “I’m going to fail my exam or mess up my presentation at work.” Doing poorly on an exam or presentation is plausible, and we have control over our preparation. So instead of worrying, we can study and prepare, review the material, and ask for help if needed. This is productive problem-solving, and continuing to worry about “What-ifs” is not productive at all.

“What if my partner leaves me?” While that’s something that’s always possible, worries like this are often based on fear rather than evidence. Is this something I have control over? Only partially. We can’t control another person’s feelings or decisions, but we can communicate openly and work on the relationship. So while there’s no solution that can ensure our partner never leaves us, we can reframe the problem to focus on maintaining a healthy relationship rather than worrying about future hypotheticals.

“What if I say something awkward at a social event and I never live it down?” While something like this isn’t really that plausible – even if we say or do something awkward or embarrassing, it’s unlikely anyone will remember or dwell on a small social misstep – so there’s nothing productive to be gain by worrying about it.

But what if we’ve done our problem-solving, where there was nothing we could do about the situation, and we’re still worrying? We can respond to our worries mindfully, noticing them and acknowledging them without getting caught up in them. And a simple way to do this is to label our thoughts. As a worry passes into our minds – “I’m going to bomb my presentation,” “I could lose my job over this,” “Why haven’t I heard from her?” “What if she got in an accident?” – we simply label it as “worrying,” “catastrophizing,” “what-ifs,” just giving a brief label that describes the nature of the thought rather than focusing on its content. This takes away some of the power our thoughts have over us and makes them easier to let go. And we can add the word “just” – “This is just a worry,” “This is just a what-if” – which helps us step back from our worries even more, making it less likely we get caught up in a cycle of worrying and easier to let our worries go.

When we feel anxious, we often look to others for reassurance. We might ask, “What if something bad happens?” “What should I do?” “Is it going to be okay?” At first, it feels comforting when someone tells us everything’s going to be fine, you don’t need to worry about this. But this relief is only temporary, and when it expires, we need more reassurance. And even if someone tells us everything is going to be okay, it doesn’t feel like enough. So we start asking more people for reassurance, we’re asking the same person over and over, or we start searching online for answers. But the anxiety never really goes away, and we’re teaching ourselves we can’t manage anxiety on our own.

So reassurance seeking is not an effective way to manage anxiety. Instead, we can learn to reassure ourselves by challenging our worries and responding with less anxious, more realistic ways of thinking. So if we’re waiting for an important text or email and start worrying, “Why haven’t they responded yet? Did I do something wrong? Are they ignoring me? I can’t stand waiting to hear back,” we might be able to modify these worries to something like, “It’s normal for people to take time to reply. It doesn’t mean I’ve done anything wrong. If I don’t hear back today, I can follow up tomorrow. In the meantime, I can put my phone away and distract myself with something else so I don’t keep obsessing.”

Or we’re starting a new project at work and start worrying, “What if I don’t meet expectations? If I fail at this, I’ll mess up my whole career.” We might modify these thoughts to something like, “I felt this way before when starting something new. It’s been challenging sometimes, but that’s normal and it’s always worked out. If I get stuck, I can ask for help, and it’s highly unlikely anything about this jeopardizes my career.”

Or we’re trying to make an important decision and keep worrying, “What if I regret this and it turns out to be a huge mistake?” We can try telling ourselves, “I’ve put enough thought into this that I know it’s a reasonable decision. There’s nothing more I can do now. There’s no way to predict exactly how the future is going to go, and if things don’t work out like I thought they would, I’ll find a way to deal with that then.”

Modifying our thoughts to reassure ourselves reduces anxiety and helps us worry less. And you’ll find a number of videos that describe strategies to do this in more detail in my free self-help for worry course.

When we worry, we focus on negative outcomes, often predicting worst-case scenarios. We expect things will go badly and we won’t be able to cope. But then once what we’re worried about passes, we rarely take the time to reflect on how accurate our worries really were. It’s helpful to use our worries as a learning tool with a mindset of “What can I learn from this experience that might help me in future situations?”

We start by writing down what we’re worried about – “I won’t know anyone there” – and what we expect or predict will happen – “I’ll feel shy, awkward, and embarrassed and just want to go home.” And then we go into the situation with an open mind, seeing how things actually go. And then once the situation has passed, we can look back and see whether or not our predictions came true. “That wasn’t as bad as I expected. I actually enjoyed myself. I was really nervous at first, but once I started talking to people, I relaxed more.”

Often than not, we’ll find things didn’t turn out as badly as we feared. This helps us build a clearer picture of how our worries measure up to reality and how often we trick ourselves into fearing things will be worse than they actually turn out. And then the next time we start to worry about something – “What if I embarrass myself tonight and never live it down?” – we can use this information to reassure ourselves, reminding ourselves that the last time we worried like this, things turned out better than expected. And this helps us modify our anxious thoughts about a situation and reduce how much we worry about it.

And intolerance of uncertainty – a fear or dread of the unknown – often contributes to worrying. We get really anxious in situations in which we can’t be sure of the outcome. “Why haven’t I heard back from my partner?” “What if my test results come back positive?” “What if I don’t get this job?” We can’t tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing, so we keep looking for answers, running through lists of hypotheticals, seeking reassurance, and so on. But those answers just aren’t there, and the harder we try to find them, the more we worry and the more anxious we get.

The alternative is to willingly experience the discomfort of not knowing and accept that uncertainty is an unavoidable part of life. Instead of getting stuck in a cycle of worry, we can tell ourselves, “It’s okay not to have all of the answers right now.” We acknowledge that uncertainty is uncomfortable, but since there’s nothing we can do to resolve it, we choose to sit with this discomfort rather than fighting it. It may feel overwhelmed at first, but as we accept the uncertainty, the discomfort gets less intense. And this helps us gain a sense of control – not by eliminating uncertainty, but by changing how we respond to it. “Let’s focus on what I can control. I can start preparing for the interview,” teaching us we can manage uncertainty and helping build our tolerance for it.

Now while all of these strategies can be really effective, sometimes it’s really difficult to implement them, especially if we’ve been worrying for a while and our mind is racing. In which case, it can help to temporarily distract ourselves to clear our minds with activities such as physical exercise, socializing or talking to a friend, engaging in Creative Outlets like drawing, painting, or playing an instrument, listening to music or a podcast, doing puzzles or games, or whatever helps us unwind and get our mind off our worries. And practices like mindfulness meditation – where just following our breathing for a while – can also help. And then once we’ve cleared our minds, the other strategies in this video can seem more manageable.

So postponing worry, problem-solving, mindfully letting go of worries or challenging them and reassuring ourselves by modifying our thoughts, learning from our worries, and learning to tolerate uncertainty better are all effective ways to reduce worrying.

Do you ever get anxious not knowing what the future holds, worrying about all the what-ifs? Well, what if the key to reducing your worry and anxiety isn’t trying to plan for all possibilities or control what happens in the future, but learning to live with and accept uncertainty? Uncertainty is an unavoidable part of life, from everyday decisions to major events, whether it’s waiting for medical tests, facing career challenges, dating and relationships, dealing with unpredictable situations, and so on. Uncertainty influences many aspects of our lives, but a lot of people have difficulty tolerating uncertainty and the unknown and find it incredibly stressful and uncomfortable and can go to great lengths to avoid uncertainty even if it means sacrificing opportunities or happiness.

Intolerance of uncertainty, or fear or dread of the unknown, can be like a magnifying glass focused on negative possibilities, magnifying even minor uncertainties and making them feel overwhelming. Intolerance of uncertainty can lead to things like health anxiety, chronic stress, general anxiety disorder, and OCD. Learning to tolerate anxiety involves accepting the inherent unpredictability of life and developing strategies to live with the discomfort it can bring. This doesn’t mean we ignore risks or stop planning for the future, but that we learn to handle the unknowns in a healthier, more balanced way.

So how do we do this? First, we can challenge our beliefs regarding our need to avoid uncertainty by asking: what are the benefits of striving for certainty in life, and what are the costs? Well, there are often some short-term benefits. We may get some temporary relief from anxiety and discomfort and feel more in control, but in the long term, not learning to tolerate uncertainty leads to increased anxiety and stress.

Efforts to eliminate uncertainty and gain control over the unknown are very time-consuming. Constant reassurance seeking can put a strain on relationships, limits adaptability and openness to new experiences and opportunities, and makes it harder to cope with unexpected changes and challenges. Since we can never get rid of all uncertainty, ultimately, our attempts to do so are futile.

Common behaviors related to intolerance of uncertainty include seeking excessive reassurance from others, like repeatedly asking friends or family for advice or comfort whenever we start to feel anxious, or consulting a doctor or the internet every time we notice a possible health symptom, excessive list-making and planning, writing out scripts for phone calls or conversations, triple and quadruple checking for mistakes or to make sure that loved ones are okay.

These behaviors can be helpful or even important in moderation, but when they become excessive, not only can they consume us, they make us less equipped to cope with uncertainty since we never give ourselves a chance to learn to manage it better and more prone to anxiety in the future.

So we want to stop engaging in these types of behaviors, but the goal isn’t to just tolerate our anxiety over uncertainty through force of will. Willpower alone isn’t effective because eventually, we’ll usually give in and resort back to our old behaviors to try to get some relief. Instead, we want to approach things from a mindset that anxiety is a natural human emotion. It can feel really unpleasant or even distressing, but it’s tolerable, as is the discomfort that arises from uncertainty. We want to give ourselves the opportunity to learn that we don’t need to rely on these behaviors in order to tolerate anxiety and discomfort and that we’re able to function in our daily lives despite feeling anxious.

When our anxiety starts to rise, instead of trying to fight it off by resorting to our habitual behaviors, we respond to it mindfully. We start by acknowledging and accepting that we’re feeling anxious in this moment: I’m feeling anxious right now and that’s okay. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s not dangerous. It can’t hurt me, and I’m willing to experience it now in order to learn to manage anxiety better and improve my quality of life. Fighting it doesn’t even help; it can make my anxiety even stronger.

Responding to anxiety in this way often calms our anxiety at least a little. If we’re feeling really anxious or starting to panic, we can calm our anxiety with our breath, slowing down our breathing by breathing in through our nostrils for a count of two, pausing, and then breathing out through pursed or puckered lips for a count of four, and just continuing with this until we start to feel better. Allowing ourselves to experience uncertainty can be challenging, and learning emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills can help.

Now let’s look at our thoughts. If we have difficulty tolerating uncertainty when faced with the unknown, we often imagine and expect worst-case scenarios, the outcomes we fear the most, which increases anxiety and makes us worry even more.

To reassure ourselves, we can ask: Am I worrying about the worst possible outcome, and then, how likely is that to happen? Not very. What are some other possible scenarios, outcomes, or ways things might turn out? I’m pretty nervous and I make a few mistakes, but it’s good enough. Everything goes fine and I worried over nothing. What’s the most likely thing to happen? I do get pretty nervous and make a few mistakes, but everything’s fine. If that were to happen, how could I cope? It’s not a big deal. I’m my own harshest critic and others won’t even notice some of my mistakes. I definitely won’t lose my job.

Sometimes analyzing our anxious thoughts like this just feeds into our worrying and can make us even more anxious. Instead, we can try just letting go of our worries, which can be difficult to do on its own. So we can start by labeling our anxious thoughts as worrying, catastrophizing, worst-case scenario, which helps us focus on the nature of these thoughts rather than their content. This gives us some perspective, which makes the thoughts easier to let go. We can add the qualifier “just”: I’m just worrying. I’m just imagining worst-case scenarios, which creates some distance between ourselves and our worries and makes them easier to let go.

We can also use a technique called postponing worry, where we just write down our worries and then set them aside for now and postpone thinking about them until a scheduled worry period later in the day, by which point often our worries don’t seem that important anymore, and so we don’t need to worry about them. If they are important, we can deal with them now on our own terms and not just because a worry popped into our heads because we were feeling anxious. I have videos that go into these techniques in more detail.

Learning to tolerate uncertainty not only reduces anxiety, it also boosts our resilience and allows us to adapt more effectively to unpredictable situations, which helps us become more confident and flexible in the face of change. As a result, we’re willing to take more calculated risks and become more open to new opportunities and experiences.

Do you frequently worry about your health, preoccupied with having or acquiring a serious illness, or constantly checking for signs that something’s wrong? Worrying about every body sensation and symptom and obsessively researching them online or frequently visiting doctors? Or maybe you avoid doctors altogether out of fear of getting a serious diagnosis. While it’s natural to be concerned about our health sometimes, if we have health anxiety or illness anxiety disorder, these concerns can become debilitating and disruptive to daily life. So let’s look at what health anxiety involves and how we can manage it.

First, there’s a trigger which could be an uncomfortable body sensation or any sort of symptom, which we then misinterpret as a sign of a serious health issue, and this makes us anxious. The trigger could be some health-related news or something we read online, and this leads to anxiety. Once our anxiety kicks in, there are a few paths we can go down.

We can start over-monitoring our symptoms, looking for any sign that there might be something wrong, frequently checking our symptoms for any changes, and being on the lookout for any new symptoms that might arise.

Health anxiety can also lead to excessive reassurance seeking, checking with external sources to evaluate our health, which can involve frequent visits to the doctor or obsessively researching our health online. These behaviors sometimes offer temporary relief but often leave us even more anxious, and this hypervigilance about our health means we’re always going to find something new to trigger our anxiety.

Sometimes we respond to health anxiety with avoidance, either avoiding situations due to fear of getting sick or avoiding health professionals out of fear of getting a bad diagnosis, which can offer some temporary relief but may end up ignoring legitimate health concerns. This temporary relief can offer some short-term comfort, but it does nothing to alleviate anxiety long-term, and so our health anxiety will keep getting triggered.

We can reduce health anxiety by making changes to various parts of this cycle. With health anxiety, we typically respond to triggers by imagining the worst-case scenario. Our headache is a brain tumor or aneurysm, stomach pain is bowel disease or cancer, if we feel dizzy we worry it’s a neurological disorder, and any mole or rash is skin cancer. The list of possible symptoms and self-diagnosis is endless. So we need to replace these catastrophic thoughts with more realistic interpretations.

People get headaches for all sorts of reasons, and they’re usually harmless and go away on their own. Mild stomach or chest discomfort is likely due to something I ate, or stress, or anxiety, or maybe I strained a muscle. Modifying our thoughts about our symptoms from catastrophic worst-case scenarios to more likely explanations can help ease our anxiety.

This often helps relieve our symptoms because if we have a headache or stomach ache or any uncomfortable sensations in our bodies and start getting really anxious about it, our anxiety can make these physical sensations stronger, whereas calming our anxiety helps calm these sensations as well. Learning to modify our anxious thoughts can be challenging, and I have some videos that can help.

There’s nothing wrong with occasionally monitoring symptoms or checking for new ones, but with health anxiety, these behaviors can become excessive and go far beyond what’s necessary to evaluate or catch health issues. One way to start reducing monitoring and checking is to schedule a health check-in in the evenings. During this time, we take a moment to assess how we’ve been feeling overall. We can note any new symptoms experienced during the day or any significant changes from the previous day. There’s no need to spend more than a few minutes on this.

We don’t want to engage in a prolonged checking session, just aim for a general awareness of how our health has been throughout the day. If we’re keeping a wellness journal, we can briefly note any significant symptoms and the context in which they occurred, and if something needs to be checked out, we can make a note to contact our doctors. If we’re already checking less frequently than this, it’s certainly not necessary to do this every day to maintain our health. This is just a strategy to reduce excessive checking and symptom monitoring throughout the day.

Then if we do start worrying about our health during the day or a symptom arises unexpectedly, unless it’s something that requires immediate medical attention, we simply acknowledge it. We can write down the worry or symptom if we think it’s important, briefly modify any catastrophic thoughts, “something’s wrong with my heart, it’s probably just anxiety or indigestion,” then rather than fixating on it or seeking reassurance right away, we just set it aside for now and postpone thinking about it until our health check-in later in the day. Then we redirect our attention back to our current task because continuing to think or worry about our health right now isn’t going to be productive, and it’s not going to accomplish anything except make us anxious.

Knowing we have time set aside later to reflect on our health makes it easier to not get caught up in minor sensations or symptoms we might experience throughout the day. This teaches us that our health anxiety isn’t uncontrollable, and we have the ability to focus our attention where we want it instead of constantly being carried away by worries about our health. If you do experience sudden, severe, or debilitating symptoms such as intense pain, a high fever, or difficulty breathing that isn’t related to a panic attack, it’s important to seek immediate medical attention.

We can try responding to health concerns and perceived symptoms with mindfulness. It’s completely natural to experience a range of body sensations throughout the day: general aches and pains, muscle tightness or tension, or tingling, digestive processes, and so on. Often, uncomfortable body sensations arise out of our emotions and have nothing to do with our physical health. I have a video that looks at this in detail.

Most of these sensations don’t require our attention. We don’t need to do anything about them. So when we notice the sensation in our bodies, we simply acknowledge it, “I’m starting to get a headache, there’s some tightness in my throat, there’s a funny feeling in my stomach,” and then as best we can, we gently shift our attention away from the sensation and back to whatever we’re doing.

Anytime a new sensation arises, we just use the same process of noticing and acknowledging it, maybe even reassuring ourselves with a phrase like, “This is just a natural body sensation, and it’s completely normal for feelings like this to come and go throughout the day,” and then we gently shift our attention away from the sensation and back to what we were doing. We might want to breathe with the sensation for a few minutes, which can help ease tension and calm emotions, using our breath to bring our awareness to the sensation as we breathe in and then allowing it to soften and relax as we breathe out.

If we start having thoughts about our body sensations like, “Oh no, there’s something wrong with me, what if I have cancer?” rather than getting caught up in these thoughts, we can respond to them mindfully and simply acknowledge them, “I’m having the thought there’s something wrong with me, I’m worrying what if I have cancer,” and then as best we can, we let these thoughts go and redirect our attention back to whatever we’re doing. We can add the qualifier “just,” “This is just a thought, this is just a worry,” which can help make it easier to let the thoughts go. I have a number of videos with various mindfulness strategies that can help us manage anxiety.

If we do get fixated on a body sensation and have trouble letting it go, we can try to distract ourselves by switching tasks, going for a walk, exercising, or engaging in any activity that requires our full attention. Grounding exercises that focus on the external environment can also help divert our focus away from internal sensations, such as naming five things we can see, four things we can touch, three things we can hear, two things we can smell, and one thing we can taste.

Now let’s look at reassurance seeking. If we have health anxiety, one of the most counterproductive things we can do is engage in online health research regarding our symptoms. If we look up every body sensation or symptom we’re experiencing, we’re going to find it could potentially be a symptom of any number of serious diagnoses. Also, we’re likely not qualified to make sense of the information we find and be able to distinguish between something that’s harmless or might indicate an underlying health issue. So this sort of checking doesn’t reduce our anxiety, it increases it by giving us lots of different health issues to worry about. Even if we do learn something that eases our mind for a moment, checking and reassurance seeking offers at best very time-limited relief. Once this time runs out, anxiety returns, and we feel the need to check again.

Of course, there are times when checking with a health professional is warranted, but it’s easy to go overboard. If we frequently seek medical advice for symptoms that turn out to be insignificant or get second and third opinions that tell us the same thing, we should talk to our health care providers about how often we should be consulting them. Instead of constantly seeking reassurance, we need to learn to reassure ourselves, which we can practice with a couple of strategies we’ve talked about already: modifying our catastrophic thoughts with more realistic interpretations and practicing mindfulness. We can reassure ourselves that a lot of the sensations we experience in our bodies are related to emotions: “This tightness in my throat is because I’m sad, this feeling in my stomach is anxiety, why am I so hot? It’s just my anger.”

Another key component in managing health anxiety is building up a tolerance for uncertainty. It’s impossible to have complete certainty about our health, and that can be stressful. Seeking constant reassurance or excessively monitoring symptoms doesn’t resolve the uncertainty, so instead, we need to learn to manage the uncertainty of not knowing whether a symptom is serious or not a big deal. The uncertainty associated with waiting for information from an upcoming doctor’s appointment, for test results, and so on. This practice of accepting uncertainty can reduce the compulsive need to seek reassurance and monitor symptoms excessively. I have a video that looks at ways to build up our tolerance for uncertainty that I’ll link to in the description.

Finally, avoidance, which is often accompanied by safety behaviors, actions taken to feel safer or to prevent feared outcomes. For example, we might frequently wash our hands, avoid touching door knobs, or carry medical supplies or instruments like a thermometer or blood pressure monitor at all times. We can reduce avoidance and safety behaviors through exposure, which involves intentionally placing ourselves in situations that make us anxious in order to learn that our feared outcomes are less likely than we predict, that we can handle these situations even if things don’t go the way we want, and that the anxiety we experience is manageable even if it’s uncomfortable. As a result, these situations start causing us less anxiety, we’re less compelled to avoid them, and we can resist engaging in safety behaviors. I have videos that describe how to practice exposure and exposure and response prevention, which is designed for OCD but can be helpful with managing safety behaviors and excessive checking in the context of health anxiety.

By changing the way we interpret our symptoms, reducing our symptom monitoring, checking, and reassurance seeking, and no longer practicing avoidance, we can start to relieve our health anxiety while also weakening or even breaking the connections that keep the cycle of health anxiety going.

This transcription was auto-generated by YouTube and formatted by ChatGPT.

Do you get anxious in social situations? Maybe you feel shy or nervous or uncomfortable. Or maybe you absolutely dread some types of social situations so much that you’ll do anything to avoid them altogether. Almost everyone experiences social anxiety to some degree. Any type of interaction with others can be a potential trigger. In this video, we’re going to learn how to reduce social anxiety with strategies from behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and mindfulness.

So first, let’s look at the behavioral component. Treating any source of anxiety benefits from what’s known as exposure. This means putting ourselves in situations that we’re anxious about, which helps us become more comfortable in them. It acts as a sort of experiment that allows us to test our hypotheses, beliefs, and expectations about what we think is going to happen. We learn that these situations aren’t as big a threat as we fear. Things usually don’t go as badly as we predict they will, and the outcomes we’re most worried about usually don’t happen. Even if they do, we’re generally better able to cope with them than we expected. All of which helps us feel less anxious about these and similar situations in the future.

There’s a step-by-step process for exposure therapy that I talk about in another video. But we can also do exposure more informally and apply the principles from exposure therapy to the anxiety-provoking social situations and interactions we experience in the course of our everyday lives.

So let’s look at an example. We’re invited to a social event where we won’t know most of the people, and we’re anxious that we won’t fit in or have anyone to talk to. Now our first inclination might be avoidance – to just turn down the invitation because then we don’t have to feel anxious about it anymore. But if we avoided everything that gives us social anxiety, we wouldn’t have much of a social life, and we don’t want that for ourselves. We’d love to feel more comfortable in social situations in general, so we decide to take a bit of a risk and go and just see what happens. Treat it as an opportunity for learning.

So beforehand, we ask ourselves: What am I expecting or predicting will happen? Well, I won’t know anyone there, and I’ll feel really uncomfortable. Nobody will talk to me, and I’ll feel self-conscious and just wish I’d stayed home.

And what am I most worried about? Someone will try to start talking to me, but I won’t know what to say, and I’ll be really awkward and just embarrass myself.

And are there any feelings or emotions I’m afraid I’ll experience that I won’t be able to tolerate? I’ll be so anxious that I’ll find it difficult to carry on a conversation, or I might even have a panic attack and embarrass myself in front of everyone.

And then we put ourselves in this situation. We go to the gathering and see what happens.

And then afterward, we ask ourselves: What happened? Did our predictions, expectations, or worries come true? I barely knew anyone there, and I did feel uncomfortable and self-conscious at times. But people were friendly and talked to me, and I was a little awkward but still able to hold up my end of the conversation. And were we able to tolerate our feelings and emotions? I did feel nervous and anxious at times, but it was manageable and didn’t prevent me from being able to talk to people. And I didn’t come close to having a panic attack.

And how was this outcome different from what we predicted, expected, or feared? Well, people were friendlier than I’d expected, and the situation never really felt out of place. I was able to carry on conversations with people I didn’t know. And even though I didn’t have the greatest time, it was okay and better than staying home by myself.

And what did I learn from the experience? I can go to a social gathering where I barely know anyone, and people will be friendly and start talking to me. Even if I am feeling uncomfortable or awkward or anxious, I can still manage to carry on a conversation and at least not have a terrible time and feel like I need to escape and go home.

But when we expose ourselves to things we’re anxious about, they’re not always going to go that well. So what if nobody comes up to talk to us, and we’re too anxious to approach people we don’t know? And we start feeling a bit panicky, and we end up off by ourselves on our phones most of the night until we feel so self-conscious we go home without even talking to anyone. So this outcome was as bad as we’d expected, or maybe even a little worse. So what can we learn from an experience like this that can help with our social anxiety? Well, even though I felt really anxious, I don’t think anyone noticed, and I didn’t embarrass myself. And I learned that even though feeling anxious and self-conscious is really unpleasant and uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean anything catastrophic is going to happen. And I can tolerate these feelings without there being any serious consequences. It just means I’m going to feel uncomfortable for a while, which of course I’d rather avoid feeling, but not at the cost of having no social life.

And I learned that people won’t necessarily start talking to me. In which case, I may need to initiate some conversations myself. And the idea of doing that may cause me a lot of anxiety. But I have learned that I can tolerate anxiety without anything terrible happening. And if I ever want to feel more comfortable in these types of situations, I need to start putting myself in them in the first place. So we vow that next time we’re in a similar situation, we’re going to talk to at least two people we don’t know, even if it’s just small talk for a few minutes to gather some data and maybe find some evidence that could alter our beliefs about these types of situations, that’ll make them less anxiety-inducing in the future.

We can also reduce social anxiety by modifying our anxious thoughts, which can cause anticipatory anxiety beforehand. I won’t have anyone to talk to. I’ll be so awkward. I’ll embarrass myself. Instead, we might think, people are generally friendly at social gatherings and probably will talk to me, even if I am a little awkward. Nobody will care. But it can be really hard to believe our modified thoughts if we don’t have any actual evidence to back them up. And that’s one of the positive byproducts of exposure. It provides us with the evidence we need to help us think about these situations in the less anxiety-provoking light.

We can also modify our negative thoughts during the actual social situation. Often these involve thoughts about our performance. Instead of, ‘I’m being so awkward, why aren’t I saying anything, what’s wrong with me?’ More helpful thoughts would be things like, ‘It’s okay to be quiet sometimes. It’s natural to feel uncomfortable and shy around people I don’t know. And just because I’m feeling uncomfortable doesn’t mean I’m making others feel uncomfortable. It’s okay to just take my time to observe and listen. And I can make eye contact and smile to show that I’m paying attention.’

Someone might even ask, “Why are you being so quiet?” Which is probably just going to make us feel more uncomfortable and quiet. But they’re not making a judgment and just trying to be friendly and don’t know what to say. We can simply respond with something like, “I’m just feeling a little quiet tonight because I don’t really know anyone here.” This leads to another category of thoughts that can induce anxiety – thoughts about our feelings and emotions. Instead of, “I’m so anxious I don’t think I can talk right now,” it’s okay to feel anxious. I can take a moment to gather my thoughts before speaking. And if I stumble over my words a bit, it’s not a big deal. Other people might not even notice.

It’s also common to have anxiety-inducing thoughts about how other people are reacting to and perceiving us. “Why isn’t anyone talking to me? They won’t even make eye contact. They can tell how awkward I am. They must be avoiding me.” Instead, we can tell ourselves, “They’re probably just already engaged in their own conversations.”

Instead of, “They must be thinking how boring or awkward I am,” they’re more likely focused on themselves and their own experiences than judging me.

If I’m wondering why isn’t she making eye contact with me, maybe she’s feeling just as nervous as I am. Or maybe she’s got a lot of other things on her mind and is just distracted. Or better still, who knows? I can’t read her mind, and there’s no point in trying.

Or if I’m wondering why did she just look away when I said that, people often look away momentarily to gather their thoughts. Or it could be completely unrelated to what I said. Maybe she was just distracted by something across the room. Again, who knows? It’s important not to jump to conclusions regarding other people’s actions and behaviors. I don’t need to interpret every small action as a negative response to me.

We often have negative thoughts after a social situation – dwelling on things that didn’t go well or that we think we did or said wrong. We can modify these self-critical thoughts by looking at the situation more objectively and focusing on what actually happened. This helps us feel better in the moment and can reduce our anxiety about similar situations in the future. And if none of these modified thoughts resonate with you, you might need to come up with your own. I link to some videos in the description that can help with this.

But we also don’t want to get too caught up in trying to modify our thoughts in the midst of a social situation because that’s distracting and prevents us from being fully engaged with the people we’re interacting with.

So instead, we can respond to our thoughts mindfully – observing them without judgment and recognizing them as simply passing mental events. We tell ourselves, “This is just a thought. I don’t need to react to it or modify it or do anything about it.” Then we just let our thoughts come and go as they pass through our minds, like clouds passing through the sky. This helps us stay present and keep our attention focused on what we’re saying and the people we’re talking to. I link to some videos in the description with strategies that can help us respond to our thoughts more mindfully.

Mindfulness also helps us manage our emotions. If we’re feeling embarrassed or ashamed, we can simply acknowledge the feeling and accept that we’re feeling this way right now. Maybe first with a little CBT, telling ourselves it’s okay. Everyone has awkward moments and feels embarrassed at times. Nobody is really judging me as much as I think. And then mindfulness – this feeling will pass. And even if it takes longer than I’d like and I feel uncomfortable for a while, I’ll survive.

And if we’re anxious, mindfulness allows us to notice our anxiety without becoming overwhelmed by it. Accepting anxiety is uncomfortable but just a passing emotional state. We allow our anxiety to be here but in the background of our awareness, without allowing it to consume us. As we shift the focus of our awareness towards our social interaction. I have some videos with strategies to help us be more mindful and less reactive towards our emotions. Responding mindfully to our thoughts and emotions can be easier said than done and take some practice. That’s why practicing mindfulness on a regular basis is so beneficial – it helps us develop mindfulness skills that we can then apply to situations in our everyday lives.

Now earlier, we touched on how we can tend to mind read and interpret other people’s reactions in ways that suggest they’re responding negatively to us. And if we have social anxiety, we’re also more likely to notice cues in our environments that we do interpret as negative. This is known as negative attentional bias, and we can become really focused on other people’s actions and behaviors, looking for signs of disapproval or negative judgment.

For example, if we’re talking with a group of people, we might focus on the one person who’s looking at their phone and think, “Wow, I must be really boring him,” while ignoring that everyone else seems interested in what we’re saying. This is another instance in which mindfulness is beneficial. It teaches us to be aware of where our attention is at any given moment, such as scanning the room looking for signs of disapproval. And to be able to better focus our attention where we want it to be – the actual interactions that we’re having.

So the keys to reducing social anxiety are to expose ourselves to the social situations that make us anxious, rather than avoiding them. To find new ways of thinking about these situations and our abilities to perform in them that are less anxiety-inducing.

And to develop mindfulness skills that allow us to respond mindfully to our thoughts and emotions and to be more mindful and aware of what we’re paying attention to.

This transcription was auto-generated by YouTube and formatted by ChatGPT.

Are you an overthinker? Excessively analyzing and evaluating things, sometimes to the point of becoming obsessive? When we overthink, we tend to focus on the negative aspects of a situation and can experience a sense of dread or anxiety. We might worry about something that’s coming up or hypothetical scenarios that may or may not happen. Or dwell with regret on our mistakes or anger about something that’s happened. Or stress about how we’re going to be able to manage everything we’ve got going on right now.

Or we might overthink what we say or do in social situations and then afterwards replay interactions we’ve had over and over in our heads. We can overthink personal issues such as relationships or health problems. And it’s really common to overthink decisions.

So why do we overthink, and what can we do about it? Often, overthinking arises out of fear of the unknown. We attempt to think through every possible outcome and scenario as we try to gain some control over a situation, hoping that eventually, we’ll figure out a way to resolve it that avoids any possible negative consequences. If we find ourselves doing this, we can ask ourselves, “Is this something I have control over?” And if it is, then we ask ourselves, “Is there anything I can do about this now?” And if there is, then rather than continuing to think about it, we take some action.

Engaging in productive action is an effective way to break free from overthinking, especially when it stems from feeling stuck or powerless in a situation. Shifting our focus towards taking action can help us feel more in control, lower our anxiety, and reduce the time we spend worrying, ruminating, and overthinking.

But often, there’s no action to take because our overthinking is an attempt to control the uncontrollable or to answer questions that just don’t have any answers, at least not with the information available to us right now. And so, these aren’t things we can act on, but we’re just so uncomfortable with the uncertainty, we keep trying to think our way out of it.

So setting boundaries and limits is crucial. Rather than allowing ourselves to constantly worry and overthink throughout the day, we set aside a specific time to spend 20 to 30 minutes looking at these situations and our thoughts and feelings about them. And we use this time for structured problem-solving or reflecting about a difficult situation, or maybe journaling or talking to a friend about what’s going on, or engaging in whatever activities help us explore our thoughts and feelings. And then once our 20 to 30 minutes are up, we allow ourselves to stop thinking about this because thinking about it any longer is likely to become unproductive and just lead us back into overthinking. So instead, we let go of these thoughts and move on to something else, which is easier said than done. But we’ll learn some strategies to help us do this in a moment.

Setting boundaries is also crucial if our overthinking stems from perfectionism and we get stuck agonizing over the smallest details. We can limit the time we give ourselves to find the best way to do something and set limits on our expectations. And resist falling into all-or-nothing thinking, recognizing that we can strive for a very high level but still be satisfied with the result that is good enough.

And if our overthinking is triggered by decisions, in addition to setting a time limit on how long we’re going to give ourselves to think about the decision, we can try to limit the number of decisions we have to make or limit the options or choices we give ourselves.

And then, regardless of the source of our overthinking, once we’ve reached whatever limit we’ve set for ourselves, rather than continuing to engage with our thoughts or trying to forcibly push them away, we can practice being mindful of our thoughts, which involves simply noticing our thoughts as they arise, and acknowledging them, and choosing whether or not we want to continue thinking about them right now. And if we don’t, rather than allowing them to pull our minds away from what we want to be doing or thinking about, which is often the first step in overthinking, we can simply let them go.

A common metaphor is to just allow our thoughts to come and go through our minds like clouds passing through the sky. They float into our minds, and we notice them, and then they float away.

Another mindfulness strategy is to label our thoughts. And as each thought passes into our minds, labeling it as thinking, or worrying, or obsessing, and so on. And this labeling helps create some distance between ourselves and our thoughts, reducing our tendency to get caught up in them. And using the qualifier “just” can also help give us some distance from our thoughts and put them into perspective, reminding ourselves, “I’m just thinking,” “I’m just imagining,” “I’m just having the thought I can’t deal with this,” or “This is just a thought and not a fact.” And when we create this distance between ourselves and our thoughts, it’s less likely we get pulled into a cycle of overthinking, and it becomes more possible to let these thoughts go.

Mindfulness is also a great way to prevent overthinking from getting started in the first place. We often become caught up in our thoughts without even noticing we’re doing it. But if we can become more aware of our thoughts as we’re having them, then we can choose how we engage with them and consciously decide whether or not this is a line of thinking we want to go down right now. And if our thoughts are unrelated to what we’re doing at the time, like worrying about our relationship while trying to get work done, then probably not.

And the 10-second rule can help whenever we notice overthinking starting to take hold. We pause for 10 seconds and take a slow, deep breath. And then, during this pause, remind ourselves that we have a choice in how we engage with our thoughts. And instead of getting carried away by worries or frustration, we can simply ask ourselves if dwelling on this issue right now is helpful or if there are better ways to approach it, like taking action if there’s anything we can do about it right now, or engaging in some sort of structured problem-solving. We’re just giving ourselves permission to not think about it now, letting the thought go, and refocusing our minds on whatever we want to be doing or thinking about.

We can also try modifying our negative thoughts. When we overthink, we often magnify problems and imagine worst-case scenarios. And these types of thoughts can be difficult to just let go. So it can be helpful to take a step back and try to objectively evaluate the situation. Ask ourselves if our thoughts are based on evidence or if they’re simply assumptions or fears. And then consider alternative perspectives and try to challenge negative or unhelpful thoughts that may not be completely accurate. And once our thoughts become less negative, less worrisome, or anxiety-provoking, there’s more chance we’ll be able to let them go.

But this can be a double-edged sword because it involves thinking about our thoughts. It can feed into more overthinking. So anytime we notice that we’ve slipped from trying to modify our negative thinking back to overthinking, we need to take a break, set some boundaries, postpone thinking about it until later, and come back to it with a clearer mind.

So sometimes we might prefer to take a few minutes to just write down our thoughts or worries without trying to change or modify them. And just this act of writing can help get our thoughts out of our heads and clear our minds a bit. And then, once we look at what we’ve written down, sometimes it can all seem a bit ridiculous, which can help make it easier for us to let go of thinking about this for now. Talking to a friend about what’s been going on and what we’ve been thinking about can have a similar effect.

And finally, distraction is often the first thing we try when we find ourselves overthinking. And sometimes it works. The more engaging the distraction, the more likely it is to help. Something like watching TV or scrolling through our phones often won’t be interesting or compelling enough to hold our attention, and our minds will keep wandering back to whatever we’ve been thinking about.

Doing something with our friends or something a little physical, like going for a walk, can help get us out of our heads a bit. But still, it’s often not enough to keep our minds from wandering back to whatever we’ve been thinking about. And many people find that strenuous exercise is the only thing that helps clear their minds. But even if distraction does work, often once the distraction ends, we resume our overthinking almost immediately. So distraction can be hit or miss.

But we don’t need to be discouraged if it doesn’t work because there are lots of other strategies we can try. And whatever strategies we use, the key is to implement them as soon as we’ve noticed we’ve started to overthink because that’s when they’re going to be most effective. And let me know in the comments how you manage overthinking.

This transcription was auto-generated by YouTube and edited with ChatGPT

Exposure therapy is a type of behavior therapy that’s an important component in treating many types of anxiety as well as PTSD.

When we fear something or something causes us anxiety, our natural inclination is to want to avoid it. And avoidance can provide some short-term relief. As long as we can avoid whatever we’re afraid of, there’s nothing to feel anxious about. But in the long term, avoidance only increases our fear and anxiety because each time we avoid something that we’re anxious about, we’re reinforcing the idea that this thing is scary and dangerous. So we begin to fear it even more, and it causes us even more anxiety.

Avoiding things we’re anxious about deprives us of the opportunity to have new experiences and new learning that teach us that these things aren’t as threatening or dangerous as we fear. And that even if we do have some anxiety while we’re in these situations, it’s okay to have some anxiety. It’s uncomfortable, but anxiety itself isn’t dangerous, and we’ll get through it. We don’t need to avoid things just because we’re going to feel anxious while we’re in those situations.

Now the opposite of avoidance is exposure. Instead of avoiding the things that make us anxious, we expose ourselves to them. Put ourselves in those situations, and as we do this, they start to cause us less fear and anxiety.

There are a couple of ways of doing exposure therapy that we’re going to look at in this video. The traditional method involves what’s known as graded or graduated exposure. We make a list of about eight to ten situations related to what we fear or are anxious about, and then rank them into a fear hierarchy or ladder based on how much fear, anxiety, or distress they each cause us. Then we gradually expose ourselves to our fears by starting with a situation that causes us the least amount of anxiety and working our way up the list.

Now most of you watching this video aren’t going to set up experimental exposures to practice putting yourselves in situations that cause fear and anxiety. But these situations arise naturally in our lives, and we can still apply the things we’ll learn in this video, especially with regards to the second type of exposure therapy we’ll be talking about to everyday situations to help decrease the amount of fear and anxiety they cause us over time.

So each exposure exercise involves putting ourselves in one of the situations from our exposure list and then staying in that situation until our fear begins to subside and we experience some level of reduction in anxiety. And we repeat each exposure situation until it no longer causes us significant fear or anxiety, and then we move on to the next item in the list.

This is known as habituation-based exposure, and habituation is the process through which we experience a decrease in our fear or anxiety responses as a result of repeated exposure to a situation or stimulus. As we become less sensitive to it, we get used to it.

And there are three types of exposure. In Vivo, we simply put ourselves in real-life situations that cause us fear or anxiety. If we have a fear of dogs, we put ourselves in a situation where there is a dog.

Now, with imaginal exposure, we don’t actually put ourselves in a situation. We imagine the situation. This is common in treating PTSD. Imaginal exposure helps us process traumatic experiences in a safe and controlled environment, revisiting the traumatic event in our minds and imagining it in detail. This helps us gradually reduce the distress and anxiety associated with traumatic memories.

Interceptive exposure involves exposing ourselves to physical sensations in our bodies that cause us fear and anxiety. Usually, these are sensations that lead us to start panicking. So we might do some exercise that increases our heart rates and leaves us short of breath to help us learn the symptoms we have when we’re feeling anxious, like a racing heart or shortness of breath. This teaches us that these symptoms don’t necessarily mean we’re having a heart attack. Or we might spin around until we’re feeling dizzy to teach us that feelings of dizziness don’t mean that we’re having a stroke or about to pass out.

But if you’re not sure that your physical symptoms are the result of anxiety and are concerned there may be an underlying medical condition, then please consult a medical professional before trying interceptive exposure.

Recent research suggests that habituation isn’t the most effective or reliable way to reduce anxiety through exposure, and there’s been a shift towards what’s known as inhibitory learning-based exposure. Inhibitory learning involves new learning that takes place during the exposure that inhibits or suppresses our previously learned fear or anxiety response in that situation. Our goal isn’t to experience a reduction in anxiety during the exposure, although that may happen. Instead, there are two main things we want to accomplish: we want to violate our expectations about what we fear is going to happen, which leads to new inhibitory learning that inhibits or suppresses our previously learned fear and anxiety responses to these situations that stem from our beliefs that these situations are threatening or dangerous. And we want to learn that we can still do things even if they cause us some fear or anxiety.

We can apply this inhibitory learning-based approach to fear and anxiety-provoking situations that arise naturally in our lives to help learn new ways of thinking about these situations that lead to a reduction in our fear and anxiety responses. So keep that in mind as we look at the formal process of inhibitory learning-based exposure therapy.

So let’s look at how this works in practice using social anxiety as an example. First, we come up with a list of exposure exercises related to our social anxiety. With traditional exposure therapy, we would rank these situations based on how much distress they cause us and then start from the one that causes us the least amount of distress and then work our way up the list in order. But now it seems to be more effective if we go through the list in a quasi-random order.

We can still start with the situation that causes us the least amount of anxiety if that makes it easier for us to get started, or we can prioritize situations that seem most important or relevant to us. So, if we’ve been criticized at work for not speaking up enough at meetings, we might prioritize doing an exposure exercise related to this, even though it may cause us a great deal of anxiety compared to some of the other items on our list, like talking to a cashier, which may not seem like a particularly valuable situation for us to prioritize.

So now, let’s go through some examples of inhibitory learning based exposure for social anxiety, and you can download a copy of an exposure therapy worksheet that guides you through this process from the link in the description. Let’s say our anxiety prevents us from attending a lot of social events that we’d like to go to because we’re just too uncomfortable being around people we don’t know, and we decide that talking to someone we don’t know in a social setting would be a useful exposure exercise to prioritize, even though the thought of it causes us a lot of anxiety.

So first, we need to set a specific and measurable goal for the exposure, not just something like, “next time I’m at a social event, I’m going to try to talk to people I don’t know,” but something like, “at Mia’s party this weekend, I’m going to talk to two people I don’t know for at least five minutes each.” We want to make sure that the goal is something we expect is going to be challenging because we want to give ourselves a chance to violate our expectations about what’s going to happen as much as possible because that’s going to lead to the greatest amount of learning.

So, something like, “I’m going to say hi to someone I don’t know, and then if I’m feeling uncomfortable, I can excuse myself to go to the restroom,” isn’t going to be that productive. First, because we don’t expect that anything that bad is going to happen, so there’s not that much opportunity for inhibitory learning to take place. Second, we’re getting out of the situation as soon as we start to feel uncomfortable, so we’re depriving ourselves of the opportunity to learn that it’s okay to have some anxiety in these situations, that we can tolerate this anxiety, and it’s not something we need to avoid.

Then we predict what’s going to happen and write down our expectations and the feared outcome or outcomes we’re most worried about, and the feelings and emotions we’re worried that we won’t be able to tolerate. “I’m going to feel so anxious it’s going to be difficult for me to speak properly,” “My anxiety will be so bad I’ll start having a panic attack,” “I’m not going to have anything to talk about, and the other person is going to get so bored they’ll make an excuse to get away from me before the five minutes are up.” Then we rate on a scale from zero to a hundred how much we expect that these outcomes will actually happen.

Then we do the exposure, and afterwards, we compare our expectations of what we thought was going to happen with what actually happened. The first conversation went on for a couple of minutes, and then someone they knew joined us, and I felt a little awkward and didn’t have much to say after that, but they didn’t abandon me or seem to mind that I was still there. The second person I talked to turned out to have some friends in common with me, and so we talked about them for a while, and after some initial anxiety, I felt pretty comfortable once we started talking.

And were we able to tolerate the distress? I felt anxious but not so anxious that it was hard to speak. I did feel pretty anxious a couple of times but never close to panicking.

And how was this outcome different from what we expected? I felt anxious but not as anxious as I thought I would, and my anxiety never made it difficult for me to get my words out. Once we started talking, the other person was really friendly and easier to talk to than I feared.

And what did we learn from this experience? Even when anxious, I’m able to carry on a conversation with someone I don’t know, and once we start talking, I start to feel more comfortable. I didn’t really need anything that interesting to talk about; we just talked about random stuff, and it was fine. So through this exposure, we’ve experienced quite a bit of discrepancy between the bad things we feared and expected were going to happen and what actually occurred. This learning will help inhibit our fear and anxiety responses in similar situations in the future. We can apply this process to situations that arise naturally in our lives: look at what we expected was going to happen in a situation we were having some fear or anxiety about and how that was different from what actually happened, and then ask ourselves what we can learn from this result that can help reduce our fear and anxiety in similar situations in the future.

And here’s an example from an article I’ll link to in the description that has examples and case studies of how to use exposure therapy to treat a wide range of issues, and also covers everything we talk about in this video in much more detail. I like this example because it demonstrates the type of exposure exercise that might not occur to us on our own to help test the hypothesis that the emotions we’d experience in certain types of situations would be intolerable and therefore need to be avoided at all costs. In this case, the emotion being embarrassment or humiliation in public. So the goal of the exposure is to ride the elevator at the local mall for 30 minutes, calling out the number of each floor in a loud voice.

What are we worried will happen? People will look at me angrily and ask, “What’s wrong with you?” I’ll feel so humiliated and embarrassed I’ll start crying and have to run out of the elevator.

And then we do the exposure, and afterwards we look at what actually happened. When I called out the floor numbers, some people looked over at me with a confused look on their face, but nobody seemed angry, and most people just kept their heads down and ignored me. I did feel really embarrassed and humiliated, but not to the point of crying, and I was able to stay in the elevator the whole time.

How is this different than what I’d expected? Well, people seem more confused than angry, and nobody said anything to me, and most people just ignored me altogether. And even though it was really humiliating to embarrass myself like that, and I did feel really uncomfortable, I was able to tolerate these feelings and stay in the elevator until the end of the exercise.

And what did I learn as a result of this exposure? Even if I do something really embarrassing in public and humiliate myself, it’s not the end of the world. And this exercise seems way more embarrassing and humiliating than anything that would actually happen in real life. So if I can get through this, I can get through whatever embarrassment or humiliation I may experience in the course of any sort of typical real-life situation.

So as a result of this exposure exercise, we’ve experienced new learning about the effects of feeling embarrassed or humiliated in public, which has taught us that these experiences are actually tolerable. So in the future, if we find ourselves in situations in which we fear we may be embarrassed or humiliated, or if we do in fact embarrass or humiliate ourselves, this new learning will help inhibit or suppress our previously learned fear or anxiety responses regarding these types of situations or these emotional responses.

Exposure is an important component in treating many types of anxiety, as well as PTSD, because it gives us the opportunity to learn that the bad things that we fear or expect or predict are going to happen in certain situations usually don’t actually happen or aren’t as bad as we’d worried they’d be, which helps inhibit and suppress our fear and anxiety responses in these situations. And we learn that we can still do things even if they cause us some fear or anxiety, and so we don’t need to avoid things, especially things that are important to us, just because they provoke fear or anxiety.

Abramowitz, J. S., Deacon, B. J., & Whiteside, S. P. H. (2019). Exposure therapy for anxiety: Principles and practice (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press.

Craske, M. G., Kircanski, K., Zelikowsky, M., Mystkowski, J., Chowdhury, N., & Baker, A. (2008). Optimizing inhibitory learning during exposure therapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(1), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2007.10.003

Craske, M. G., Treanor, M., Conway, C. C., Zbozinek, T., & Vervliet, B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: An inhibitory learning approach. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 58, 10–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2014.04.006

This transcription was auto-generated by YouTube. I’ve only added minimal editing, so I apologize for any errors, run-on sentences, etc.

How to make a decision. In this video we’re going to look at why some decisions are so hard and what we can do if we’re having trouble coming up with a decision. And we’re going to learn a decision-making process that can help us make decisions that we can be comfortable with and confident in.

Often it’s difficult to come to a decision because of the stakes involved: the higher the stakes the more careful we tend to be when making a decision. But even seemingly insignificant low stakes day-to-day decisions like what to wear or what to eat can sometimes seem overwhelming.

Sometimes decisions are hard because we feel like we don’t have enough information to make an informed decision other times we have too much information and just don’t know how to make sense of it all. Or there can be too many options to choose from. Or we can’t find any options that we’re happy with or that meet our criteria.

And sometimes when we’re struggling with a decision it’s not the actual decision that’s so challenging; our indecisiveness is a symptom of something else: like decision overload where we’re overwhelmed by the number of decisions we need to make and we just can’t deal with another one.

Or we’re afraid our decision is going to disappoint someone so we keep trying to put it off.

Or we avoid making a decision because we don’t know how to act on it.

Or don’t want to have to act on.

Or our difficulty making a decision could be related to anxiety about something connected with the decision for example we’re getting ready to travel and having trouble deciding what to pack being really anxious about it. But it’s not really the decision about what the pack that’s causing our anxiety we’re anxious about traveling and we don’t have much control over the aspects of traveling that are actually causing our anxiety so we redirect our anxiety onto our packing because that’s something we have control over. But unfortunately there is no perfect way to pack that’s going to make our travel anxiety disappear.

And making decisions can often be really hard if we’re depressed for many of the reasons above so do you recognize yourself in any of these.

Now let’s look at some of the ways we make decisions and see if any of these sound familiar a pros and cons list which could be an actual written list or it could just be a process we go through in our heads.

Or we go with our guts or intuition and choose whatever feels right.

Or we make decisions based on our values and goals.

Or we make impulsive or emotional decisions and choose whatever offers the most instant gratification or makes us feel better right away i can’t deal with all of this stress i quit.

Or we hate making decisions so much and just want to avoid them that we go with the first option that’s at all tolerable just to get the decision over and done with so we don’t have to think about it anymore whatever this is fine.

Or we can spend a long time agonizing over decisions continuing to mull things over and unable to come to a decision even though we’ve looked at it from every angle multiple times and already spent more time on the decision than is warranted based on the importance of the decision.

Or we make a decision and keep changing our minds second guessing ourselves and going back and forth between different choices.

Or make a decision and keep asking others for reassurance that we’ve made the right choice should i wear my navy suit are you sure that one’s okay.

Or maybe we ask someone else to decide for us can you please just tell me which one to wear.

So in most cases making a good decision is going to involve coming up with a list of options going through the pros and cons of each while listening to our guts and intuition and then making a decision based on our goals and values.

So let’s say we’ve been offered a new job and we’re trying to decide whether to take the new job or stay at our current jobs so first we take some time to think about all the various options we have and write them down and then we just go through these options and see which are worth further consideration. And let’s say we’ve narrowed it down to just two candidates worth considering.

And so now we make a pros and cons list for each. So we start with our first option and we come up with a list of pros of staying at the current job and cons of staying at the current job and then also pros of not saying at the current job, and cons of not staying at the current job.

And then we look at the second option and consider the pros of taking the new job and the cons of taking the new job, as well as the pros of not taking the new job and the cons of not taking the new job.

So now we look over our pros and cons list with the intention of selecting the option that scores highest. But often our pros and cons lists don’t point to a clear winner there are pros and cons to each option that are relatively equal and seem to balance each other out so what do we do now.

Well we can go back to our list of options and see if there’s another option we overlooked that didn’t make our original list. But assuming there’s nothing we left out and there is no better option that we’ve overlooked then what often happens is we keep going through the pros and cons hoping we’ve missed something and that if we keep thinking about it long enough eventually the right decision will become clear. But this usually just leads to us thinking in circles we’re changing our minds back and forth and back and forth again and in the end still never getting any closer to making a decision.

So then the next step is to try listening to our guts and intuition and see if they’re telling us anything. So what does this mean? Well sometimes we just get a feeling about something and so if our intuition is pointing us in a certain direction then we can factor that into our decisions. So maybe when we went for the interview we just had a bad feeling about the new place our intuition was telling us something was off so maybe that points us towards staying at our current jobs.

Or maybe our guts are telling us no matter how long we stay at our current jobs things just aren’t going to get any better and so that helps tip the scale towards accepting the new job.

And then before making the decision we want to consider our goals and values. So maybe our goal right now is to advance our careers as much as possible and one of our values is we’re not going to let fear rule our lives. So we single out the things on our pros and cons list related to these goals and values and maybe assign them a little more weight.

Or maybe one of our goals is wanting to work less and spend more time with our families and one of our values is we don’t want to decide things just based on money. And so we single out the pros and cons related to these and so considering our goals and values can bring some clarity to our pros and cons lists and can help us make a decision.

But let’s say we’ve done all this and we’re still no closer to being comfortable making a decision now what do we do? So at this point first we need to realize that we’ve been using a solid decision-making process and we’ve spent enough time on this decision that whatever we choose is going to be a reasonable decision and we’re making a good choice. But still how do we actually make that decision?

Well sometimes we can try on a decision for a while. So maybe we’re leaning towards taking the new job but still not ready to commit and so we decide to try acting as if we’ve taken the new job for a while and just see what that feels like. We visualize ourselves in our new jobs tell our friends we’re pretty sure we’re going to take the new job and just talk it through a bit with other people and just see how it feels living in that decision for a while and if it feels comfortable that can help us feel more comfortable committing to that decision.

And we can look back at our goals and values and maybe we decided you know i promised myself not to let anxiety rule my life. But there’s nothing so compelling about this new job that means I’m letting myself down if i don’t take it it’s okay to stay where i am for now while i try to find a better opportunity.

Or related to our goals and values we can ask ourselves if i choose this option will i be able to accept the results of my decision even if they’re not what i wanted? And maybe we think at least i know what my current job is like and if i stay here and things don’t get any better it’s not great but it’s tolerable and if i have to stay here for a while longer i know i can manage that but my new job could be a lot worse and i don’t know if I’d be able to deal with that. So I’m going to go with the option that has the least possible downside or the highest floor and I’m going to stay at my current job because worst case scenario i know I’ll still be okay working there for a while.

Or we could choose the option that has the highest ceiling or best possible outcome. I know what my current job is like and i know it’s never going to get much better than this but this new job could be so much better. And so we use that as the basis of our decision and if we still can’t decide we need to understand that if we’re unable to make a decision then by default we’re actually deciding that things are going to stay as they are the job is going to get offered to someone else before we decide whether or not to take it. So in the end one way or another a decision is going to be made.

And sometimes it seems more comfortable to allow that decision to be made for us as a result of our inaction because then if things don’t work out the way we wanted we don’t feel as responsible for the results since technically we didn’t choose that option. But the flip side to this is that then we can start to feel like we don’t have much control over our lives.

So what if we still can’t decide well when we get this stuck? Often one of the issues is that before we’re willing to commit to a decision we’re looking for some sort of certainty about what the results of the decision will be—which makes sense because it’s going to be the results of our decisions that ultimately impact our lives. But often decisions involve situations that are inherently uncertain. There’s just no way to know in advance if we’d like the new job any better than our current jobs and so the amount of certainty we’re seeking before we feel comfortable making a decision is never going to be possible.

And so here the issue isn’t with our decision making but with our difficulties accepting uncertainty. And managing the stress and anxiety and worry associated with that uncertainty and we’ll look at some ways to help us manage these challenges in a minute. But first let’s talk about uncertainty regarding the results of our decisions so in a moment I’m going to flip a coin and you need to decide whether you want to choose heads or tails and if you need a moment to think over your decision you can pause the video.

And here we go.

So did you make the right decision? Well if you chose tails you got the result that you wanted but does that mean if you decided to pick heads you made a bad choice? Well no because in this example either option was a perfectly reasonable choice because each outcome was equally likely and you had absolutely no reason to choose one option over the other. And so based on the information available there was no way to know to choose tails and so choosing tails wasn’t a better decision than choosing heads, it just led to a better result but you had absolutely no control over what that result was going to be when you made your decision.

And did you spend much time making your decision to choose heads or tails? Hopefully not because there was nothing to be gained by spending any time on that decision because unless you can see into the future there was no information available that would have been relevant to your decision one way or another.

Now not all of our decisions are coin flips but a lot of the time when we’re having trouble coming up with the decision it’s because the various alternatives are so close that they might as well be coin flips. And no matter how long we spend researching our decisions there’s usually going to be an element of chance influencing the results that we’re not going to be able to eliminate. So in most cases there’s no way to know what the right decision, if we’re judging based on results, is going to be.

So in order to come up with good decisions we need to focus on using a good decision-making process like the one we’ve been learning rather than trying to get certainty about what the results of our decisions will be, because to at least some extent the results of our decisions are going to be beyond our control and all we really have control over is the process we use to make our decisions.

And now instead of flipping a coin I’m going to roll a die and you have to decide whether you think I’m going to roll a 2 or below or 3 or above and you can pause the video if you need time to make your decision I’m going to roll the die in three two one.

So did you make the right decision? Well if you picked two or below you got a good result but you made the wrong decision. Because there’s six numbers on the die I’m gonna roll a three or above four out of six times. So two thirds of the time it’s going to be 3 or above. So in this case using a good decision making process—the laws of math and probability—the correct decision is clear. We should always pick 3 or above. But the thing is a third of the time I’m gonna roll a two or below and you’re gonna get a bad result even if you made the right decision.

So the point here is that we can make what’s clearly the right decision and it still leads to a bad result. And we can make what’s clearly the wrong decision yet have it lead to a favorable result. And so this is why we need to focus on the process of making the decision rather than worrying about having certainty about what the eventual results of our decisions are going to be, because it’s the process that we have control over, and there’s always going to be some uncertainty surrounding the results.

And one last thing about results is that in most cases even if we’re not happy with the result of the decision we made we’ll rarely know what the results would have been if we’d made the other decision. So if we take this job, for example, and we don’t like it, that doesn’t necessarily mean we got the worst result, because if we’d stayed in our current jobs maybe things would have ended up just as bad or even worse.

And so if we start second-guessing our decisions based on the results and telling ourselves things like i knew i should have gone with the other decision, if only I’d gone with that things would be so much better now, how could I’ve been so stupid, I’m ruining my life, we usually have no way of knowing if this is actually true or not and are just making ourselves feel bad for no reason.

Okay but we still haven’t decided whether or not to take the job. What do we do now? Well at this point it doesn’t really matter what we choose. We’re not going to find any more information that’s going to make our decision any clearer. So we just need to pick something.

And then once we’ve made our decision the final step is that if we’re still feeling anxious about the decision and finding the uncertainty difficult to tolerate we need to focus on managing our anxiety and accepting the uncertainty, rather than second guessing our decisions and going through the whole decision-making process over and over and over again hoping we’ll find a decision that eliminates all anxiety and all uncertainty because that’s never going to happen.

So how do we do this how do we manage our anxiety and learn to accept uncertainty? Well i have a number of videos with strategies that can help that I’ll link to in the description. And we can also use our less significant decisions when there’s not so much at stake to practice managing our anxiety around decisions and uncertainty.

And as we become more comfortable making these smaller decisions and managing the anxiety and uncertainty around them they start to cause us less anxiety. And we’re building skills that transfer over into our bigger more important decisions where we’re feeling even more anxiety and more discomfort with the uncertainty about the results of these decisions. But this anxiety and uncertainty is somewhat more manageable now as a result of the practice and experience we’ve gained through our smaller decisions.

So some decisions are always going to be difficult but as long as we have a good decision-making process in place, and understand that there’s almost always going to be at least some uncertainty surrounding the results of our decisions, and have some practice from our smaller decisions managing the anxiety around decisions ,then we’ve prepared ourselves to be able to make any types of decisions that might arise, even though we may still experience some anxiety making the decisions and accepting the uncertainty surrounding the coming videos when they come out

One of the basic premises of cognitive behavioral therapy is that our thoughts have a powerful influence on our moods and how we feel. If we can change our thoughts – change the way we’re thinking about situations or circumstances we find ourselves in – then we can change the way we feel. So if we’re feeling anxious and having a lot of anxious thoughts, if we can change or modify the nature of these thoughts to make them less anxious, then our levels of anxiety will decrease. In cognitive behavioral therapy, we change or modify our thoughts with a technique called cognitive restructuring. In this video, we’re going to learn how to use cognitive restructuring to modify our anxious thoughts in ways that help make us less anxious.

When we have anxious thoughts, we tend to overestimate the likelihood that something bad will happen and overestimate how bad things will be, and underestimate our abilities to cope with bad things if they do occur. Sometimes it’s just one of these, and sometimes it’s two or all three.

My boss wants to meet with me this afternoon. She must be disappointed with my work. I’m probably gonna get fired, and then I’m never gonna be able to find a new job.

My partner was supposed to be home an hour ago. They’re not answering my texts. Something must have happened to them. What if they were in an accident? What if they’re really hurt?

I have to go to Sam’s birthday thing this weekend. It’s going to be really uncomfortable. I’m not going to know anyone there. I’m not going to have anything to say to anyone. Everyone’s going to think I’m some kind of weirdo. I’m just going to embarrass myself.

Oh no, what’s this feeling in my chest? What if there’s something wrong with me? I’m having a heart attack. I’m starting to have trouble breathing. I think I’m dying.

When we have these types of thoughts, they make us anxious. If we’re already feeling anxious, we tend to have more of these thoughts, which make us even more anxious, leading to even more anxious thoughts that increase our anxiety, creating a vicious cycle. The more anxious we are, the more anxious thoughts we have, and the more anxious thoughts we have, the more anxious we feel, and so on. But if we’re able to change our thoughts with cognitive restructuring to make them less anxious, then we reverse this cycle. As our thoughts become less anxious, our levels of anxiety begin to decrease, which leads to us having fewer anxious thoughts, which reduces our anxiety even more, and so on.

When we have these types of thoughts, they make us anxious. If we’re already feeling anxious, we tend to have more of these thoughts, which make us even more anxious, leading to even more anxious thoughts that increase our anxiety, creating a vicious cycle. The more anxious we are, the more anxious thoughts we have, and the more anxious thoughts we have, the more anxious we feel, and so on.

But if we’re able to change our thoughts with cognitive restructuring to make them less anxious, then we reverse this cycle. As our thoughts become less anxious…

So, how does cognitive restructuring work? How do we change these thoughts to make them less anxious? We can’t just change our thoughts because we decide we want to. If we try to do this and engage in some sort of positive thinking, for example, if we’re having the thought, “This is going to be terrible,” and we tell ourselves, “No, you can’t think that, it’s making you anxious, you need to change that thought to ‘This is going to be great’ or even ‘Everything’s going to be fine,” the problem is we don’t believe that this is going to be great or that everything is going to be fine.

And since we don’t really believe these thoughts, they’re not going to affect the way we feel, they’re not going to make us any less anxious. If anything, this type of positive thinking only makes us feel worse because we’re trying to force ourselves to believe things that we don’t really think are true. So the key to cognitive restructuring is to replace or modify our existing thoughts with thoughts that are less anxiety-provoking but that we can believe. Let’s learn how to do this.

So, first, we start with a thought we’re having that’s associated with our anxiety. Then we’re going to assess how accurate that thought is. We want to see how well that thought fits the facts of the situations or circumstances we find ourselves in that we’re feeling anxious about. And then if we discover that our thought isn’t that accurate, it doesn’t fit the facts that well, then we change that thought to make it more accurate so that it fits the facts better.

And instead of just trying to come up with a new thought off the top of our heads to replace this anxious thought with, there are a series of questions we can use as prompts to help us come up with new less anxious thoughts or ways of looking at things. You can pause the video and read over them now if you like, or you can download a copy of these questions from my website from the link in the description. But we’re also going to go through them now with some examples. And it can help to actually write down our answers because that gets us out of our heads a bit, and sometimes it’s easier to see things from a different perspective when we’re looking at them on paper rather than trying to sort it all out in our heads.

So, we have a presentation coming up that we’re feeling anxious about. So we ask ourselves, what’s going through my mind? What am I thinking? I hate speaking in front of people. I’m no good at it. It’s going to be terrible. And what am I worrying will happen? I’m going to embarrass myself and let people down. What am I predicting will happen? I’m not going to be prepared enough, and I’m going to forget what I want to say. And then what’s the worst-case scenario? I’ll completely freeze and make a fool of myself, and people will think I’m stupid, my boss will be disappointed, and it’s going to hurt my career.

What evidence do I have that this worst-case scenario will come true? I’m always uncomfortable when I speak in public. I never do as well as I think I should.

What evidence do I have that the worst-case scenario may not come true? Even if it hasn’t always been perfect, it’s always gone okay when I’ve given a presentation, and I’ve always managed to get through it. How likely is it that the worst-case scenario will come true? It’s not very likely.

If the worst-case scenario did happen, what could I do to help me cope with it? If I start to freeze and figure out what I’m supposed to say, I can drink some water to help calm myself down and gather myself, and then I can start reading off my notes for a bit until I get back on track. What are some other possible scenarios, other outcomes, other ways things might turn out? It could go fine, and no one will notice that I’m nervous, and I might stumble a bit, but I’ll get through it. And what’s the most likely thing to happen? Well, I’ll be nervous beforehand, and when I first start speaking, but once I’ve been going for a while, I’ll settle down, and I’ll do okay, even if it’s not perfect.

So if that most likely case scenario were to happen, how could I cope? Well, there’s not much to cope with, and that actually isn’t so bad.

Have I ever been in a similar situation? How did that turn out? How was I able to cope then? Well, I always feel really nervous when I know I’m going to have to do a presentation. I never feel like I’m prepared enough, and I usually make a few mistakes or forget something, but nothing bad has ever really happened, and I’ve always gotten through it.

And what have I learned from past situations that can help me deal with what I’m going through now? Well, I’ll be uncomfortable when I first start talking, but then I’ll calm down, and things will go okay. Even though I never feel prepared, I usually prepare really well, and so if I get stuck, I can always refer to my notes until I get back on track.

What advice would I give to a friend or loved one who is in a similar situation, or what advice might a friend or loved one give to me? Just prepare as much as you can and know that you’re probably going to be nervous at first, but a lot of people get nervous speaking in front of people. If you stumble over a few words or speak too fast or forget something, people will understand, and once you start talking, you’ll start to feel less anxious, and it’ll probably go okay. And you’ve never completely messed up a presentation in the past, so there’s no reason to think you will now.

So is there another way of thinking about the situation that’s more accurate or fits the facts better? I’ll probably be really nervous at first and feel unprepared, but once I start talking and settle into the presentation, I’ll start feeling less anxious, and the presentation is going to be fine.

We started off thinking, “This presentation is going to go terribly. I’m really going to mess it up,” and this perspective causes us a lot of anxiety. But then after some cognitive restructuring, we’re able to come up with a way of looking at things that’s more accurate and fits the facts better and helps us feel less anxious.

We don’t have to use all of these questions, just whichever ones seem most relevant or helpful for the situation. So let’s look at a couple more examples.

I’m feeling anxious about going to my friend’s birthday party on the weekend. What am I worrying will happen? Well, that I won’t know anyone there. What am I predicting will happen? I’ll be too uncomfortable to talk to anyone, and the worst-case scenario is I’ll just stand in a corner by myself looking stupid, or I’ll try talking to people, but I won’t have anything to say, and I’ll just embarrass myself.

And how likely is this worst-case scenario? Well, I probably won’t embarrass myself, but there’s a good chance I spend a lot of time avoiding people I don’t know, just staring at my phone.

And what evidence do I have that this worst-case scenario will come true? Well, when I’m around a group of people I don’t know, I’m usually very uncomfortable and quiet and keep to myself.

And what evidence do I have that it won’t come true? Well, I usually find at least one person I know that I can talk to, and even if I don’t, there’s usually someone friendly who comes over and starts talking to me.

And that’s also the most likely scenario. I’ll know someone there, but even if I don’t, someone will start talking to me, and as long as they’re outgoing enough, I usually don’t have a problem holding up my end of the conversation. And then once I’ve talked to one person, I start feeling less anxious, and I start enjoying myself.

And if the worst-case scenario does come true, how could I cope? Well, I can stick around for a while feeling uncomfortable and then go home, and at least Sam will know that I showed up, and that’ll mean a lot to them.

We started off thinking, “I’m not going to know anyone. I’m not going to have anything to say to anyone. I’m just going to look stupid or embarrass myself,” which causes us a lot of anxiety. But then after some cognitive restructuring, we end up with a more accurate perspective that fits the facts better, something like, “I felt this way about going to parties before and still had a good time, but I might be uncomfortable and not have much to say to anyone, and if that happens, I can just go home,” and this new perspective and new way of thinking about the situation reduce the amount of anxiety we’re experiencing.

Or finally, I notice an uncomfortable feeling in my chest, and I start worrying. I think I’m having a heart attack. The worst-case scenario is I’m having a heart attack, and I’m about to die. And obviously, as soon as we start thinking about this worst-case scenario, it causes us a lot of anxiety. But how likely is that worst-case scenario? Well, I’m pretty young, and I’ve never had any problems with my heart before, so it’s probably very unlikely that I’m having a heart attack.

What evidence do I have that the worst-case scenario will come true? Well, I feel horrible right now, and I’m not sure why my heart is pounding like this.

So what are some other possible scenarios? It feels like a heart attack because my anxiety has set off the fight-or-flight response, and that’s caused my heart to start racing, and it’s probably just a panic attack.

What have I learned from past situations like this? Well, I’ve had a lot of panic attacks in the past, and they often feel like a heart attack at first, but they always turn out to be just a panic attack.

And if this most likely scenario is true, what can I do to help me cope with it? If I can slow down my breathing, I’m usually able to prevent a full-blown panic attack, but even if I can’t, once the panic attack passes, I’m going to be okay.

So I’m not having a heart attack, I’m having a panic attack, and I have some tools that can help me cope with it, and even if they don’t work, I know that once the panic attack passes, I’m going to be okay.

So with the help of some cognitive restructuring, we’re able to change our initial thought that’s causing us so much anxiety, “I’m having a heart attack and I’m gonna die,” to a new, more accurate thought, “This is a panic attack and it feels really scary and uncomfortable, but it’s not gonna kill me and I’m gonna be okay once it passes,” and this new way of looking at things reduces our anxiety, which also makes it less likely that things do escalate into a full-blown panic attack.

So in each of these examples, we took our initial thoughts about a situation that were causing us a lot of anxiety and modified them with cognitive restructuring into a more accurate way of looking at things that reduces our anxiety.

This transcription was auto-generated by YouTube. I’ve only added minimal editing, so I apologize for any errors, run-on sentences, etc.

If you find yourself feeling stressed or anxious a lot of the time, or are struggling with low self-esteem or depression, one of the reasons could be all or nothing thinking. In this video we’re going to learn all about all or nothing thinking: what it is, why it can be such a problem, and what we can do to reduce our all or nothing thinking so that it doesn’t have such a negative impact on our lives.

All or nothing thinking is a type of cognitive distortion. Cognitive distortions are exaggerated and negatively biased patterns of thinking that distort reality and lead us to perceive or evaluate situations and experiences inaccurately. I have a video that describes a number of different types of cognitive distortions that I’ll link to in the description. But i wanted to make a video just about all or nothing thinking because it’s one of the most common cognitive distortions and it can negatively affect us in a lot of different ways.

So when we engage in all or nothing thinking, we see things as black or white with no shades of gray in between. Things are either all good or all bad. If we don’t do something perfectly, we failed. If we don’t accomplish everything we’ve set out to do, we’ve done nothing. Someone makes a mistake or disappoints us and they’ve let us down completely. All or nothing thinking arises in all sorts of contexts so let’s look at some examples.

All or nothing thinking often involves how well we do at something. Either we completely succeed—we ace the test, we come in first place, we get a promotion at work—or we’ve completely failed. We get a b plus when the class average is a c, but because we didn’t get an a plus, as far as we’re concerned we might as well have gotten an f. Or we come in second place with a personal best, but because we didn’t come in first who cares that means nothing. We get a raise, but someone else gets the promotion we wanted, so our careers are going nowhere and we’re terrible at our jobs.

All or nothing thinking can also involve how much we accomplish. If we don’t complete everything we’ve set out to do today, then we’ve achieved nothing. We had 10 things on our to-do list but since we only knocked off eight, what a waste of a day, we got nothing done. Or we were going to clean the kitchen tonight, but after we did the dishes and put them away and wiped the counters and cleaned the sink, we were too tired and had to be up early the next day. So we went to bed before we got around to sweeping and mopping the floor, so we’re just so lazy. Or we cleaned the whole kitchen but it’s not spotless so we might as well not bothered cleaning it at all.

And all or nothing thinking doesn’t allow for any understanding or compassion or mistakes. We get impatient with our children and we’re terrible parents, even if it’s just one lapse over a stressful day in which we handled everything else really well. And we can apply our all or nothing thinking to other people. Someone does us a favor but they forget one thing and so it’s like they’ve done nothing. Someone makes one small mistake on a project at work and they’re completely useless.

So what’s the impact of all or nothing thinking? Well when we apply all or nothing thinking to ourselves, we put so much pressure on ourselves to hit that all level, that we can push ourselves too hard, which can leave us feeling really stressed out or give us a lot of anxiety. And when we don’t accomplish or achieve all, we come away feeling like we’re left with nothing, which can damage our self-worth and self-esteem and can leave us feeling depressed. And when we apply our all or nothing thinking to other people, it can damage personal and professional relationships.

And all or nothing thinking can lead to procrastination, because we know it’s going to be so much work to try to hit that all, all of the time, that we can’t even bring ourselves to get started.

And all or nothing thinking can make it harder for us to achieve our goals, because we give up halfway through when we realize all is no longer a possibility. And so since we’re ending up with nothing, we might as well save ourselves the effort and just give up now. I wasn’t going to drink on weeknights anymore, but i had a glass of wine with dinner so i’ve ruined today and i might as well just finish the rest of the bottle.

So what can we do about our all or nothing, black and white thinking? Well the simple answer is to learn to recognize some shades of gray in between, and to see things along a spectrum rather than on a binary scale. So how do we get ourselves to do this?

Sometimes a helpful first step can be to find a good enough compromise in between all or nothing. We can strive to get ten things done, but seven is going to be good enough. We don’t have to do the next three if we don’t feel like it. We can aspire to achieve the equivalent of an a or a plus on whatever we’re working on, but once we reach a b or b plus level that’s good enough, and we don’t need to worry about getting that extra bit of improvement if it’s going to take too much effort, be too stressful, and cause us a lot of anxiety trying to get there. And it also makes it less likely that we fail in ways that damage our self-esteem and can lead to depression.

But that’s only half the story, because it’s still not really seeing shades of gray. It’s just a single shade of gray in between black or white, which means that if we don’t hit that compromise not quite all but good enough level, we still can end up feeling like it’s nothing.

But achieving c level work instead of b or a plus, getting five of our ten things done instead of seven or ten, is still not nothing. Sometimes that’s all we’re able to do. Sometimes we could do more but the costs in terms of stress or anxiety are too high. And sometimes we could do more, but we choose not to because there are other things going on in our lives that also need our time or attention, or that we just want to do instead. And that’s okay.

So in order to recognize the shades of gray in between black and white, and to be able to accept results and outcomes across a whole spectrum of possibilities, instead of focusing on what we didn’t do, what we didn’t accomplish, what we didn’t achieve, we need to learn to reframe things in terms of what we did do, what we did accomplish, what we did achieve, even if it’s not everything or all we set out to accomplish or achieve. And as long as we can name just one thing, then we’re no longer at nothing. And maybe we didn’t do as well or as much as we’d hoped or wanted or expected, but at least we did something. We barely got started on our to-do lists, but at least we replied to that one email we’ve been putting off for days.

And even those times when it feels like we didn’t do anything, we probably did do at least something. We finished some tasks for work, and even if we didn’t do a really good job, at least we got it done. Or at least we got part of it done. And sometimes these things may not seem like a lot, and they’re certainly not all, but they’re still not nothing.

And even if we spend all day lying on the couch watching tv or, in front of our computers watching YouTube videos, well maybe what we accomplished is that we gave ourselves a bit of a needed break. We took some time to look after ourselves, to reduce the stress and anxiety in our lives, and made it easier on ourselves to get back to doing more things tomorrow.

And even if we do achieve or accomplish so little that it might as well be nothing, that doesn’t make us bad people. When this happens there are reasons it’s happening. Maybe we’re just too tired, don’t have the energy, or are feeling too discouraged or depressed to be able to bring ourselves to do much of anything. And so in these cases we need to try to extend ourselves some compassion and understanding, rather than beating up on ourselves and feeling bad. Because when we don’t achieve or accomplish whatever we set out to achieve or accomplish, being too hard on ourselves serves no purpose. It’s just not helpful.

We often feel like we need to be hard on ourselves in order to push ourselves to do more and to reach our potentials. And while this attitude may be able to provide some motivation in the short term, in the end it catches up with us, because it increases our stress and anxiety, which eventually can become too much for us to manage, and it’s discouraging it can damage our self-worth and self-esteem and can leave us feeling depressed all of which make it more difficult for us to do things in the future. So if we don’t achieve or accomplish all that we set out to do, or even most of it, it’s much better to be understanding with ourselves, and learn to practice some self-compassion and self-acceptance.

And if we need to do better next time, being kind to ourselves now is not going to prevent this. It’s not going to get in the way. But if we adopt an attitude of, I’m such a failure, i can’t do anything right, i got absolutely nothing done, well that can get in the way because it’s so discouraging and demoralizing it can affect our motivation, damage our self-confidence and self-worth and self-esteem, which can negatively impact the quantity and quality of work we’re able to do.

Now we can still acknowledge if we didn’t try our best, if we could have done more, or could have done better, without being too self-critical and putting ourselves down. And maybe we do have to do better next time, but beating up on ourselves isn’t going to help us do that. And then instead of being self-critical and beating up on ourselves, we can reflect on anything we did accomplish—anything we did achieve, anything that went well—and try to find ways to do more of that in the future. And then look at what didn’t go so well and figure out what we need to do differently next time so that things go better.

And everything we’ve just talked about regarding ourselves applies to our interactions with other people as well. Holding others to strict all or nothing standards can damage personal and professional relationships, and doesn’t really encourage people to change their behaviors, and instead tends to lead to conflicts or just leaves them feeling discouraged or resentful.

So if we’re able to shift our mindsets away from all or nothing thinking, and recognize that accomplishments and achievements occur across a broad spectrum rather than just on a binary scale, we’ll be able to do more and perform better, while reducing the amount of stress and anxiety in our lives, and making it less likely that we become depressed, while improving both our personal and professional relationships.