If you’ve ever experienced that feeling of competitive dread, impending doom, overwhelming worry, or fear when you’re at work about to give a presentation, going to a party alone, eating in public, leaving the house in a suit, you’re not here. sure. walking down a street you don’t know or driving on the highway, chances are you’ve been feeling anxious. You will know the feeling of your heart racing, irrational but it feels like real thoughts running through your head of everything that could go wrong and then that feeling of hot or cold, palpitations, sweating, nausea and/or shortness of breath; This is what is known as a panic attack or extreme anxiety.

These feelings can be triggered by anything you experience sporadically or frequently, leading to a life of low confidence, low self-esteem, high levels of fear, social ineptitude, and worry, all of which fuel and are caused by anxiety. Debilitating worry about what others think of you or danger can consume vast amounts of energy, time, and life. We also have the potential to achieve anything we set our minds to, but anxiety can take over when the body and mind hold back in a comfortable zone of fear instead of trying to break free from the grip of this worry.

A certain level of worry is actually healthy, because if we weren’t afraid, we would make a lot of the wrong decisions, hurt ourselves, or get into some kind of trouble. Worry offers a calculated risk that is healthy. However, for millions of us, this worry increases and has caused excessive anxiety and fear in us, causing us to withdraw from many things in life and causing a spiral of negative behavior. However, we don’t realize that anxiety and worry can be fought and stopped if they are addressed in the right way. One way is to use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is a technique used to change your cognitive (thought) processes from negative to positive in order to change your behaviors in the same way. Here are 5 ways you can use CBT to beat that worry and anxiety so you can lead a life of confidence, high self-esteem, and happiness.

1: Knowledge

Find out as much as you can about CBT, anxiety and worry. We can go through life not realizing that we can help ourselves and that we can make changes. We don’t have to accept things as they are most of the time. Learning about anxiety and worry will begin to give you a realistic foundation on which to present your thought processes and therefore your behaviors. Knowing things like we can’t change the past so worrying about it is useless, the things we worry about statistically probably won’t happen and most of our worries are about things we don’t really need to seriously think about.

2: Write it all down

Keep a small notebook or journal with you at all times.

– Write down every time you are anxious or worried, repercussions of this, thoughts, feelings, actions, anything that affects your day and you think is worth mentioning.

– At the end of the day, look at the things you write down and scale from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the highest) based on how intensely you felt worry or anxiety.

– Then classify each point into 4 sections: 1 – Worried that it might happen 2 – Worried because it happened in the past 3 – Worried about the little things of the day (little things that will probably go unnoticed by most) 4 – Worried about things big (Something that will really have an impact on your life).

– Look at the list and see how it is distributed and see if the points are relative between the score you gave them and the categories in which you put them.

– Seeing them this way will give you insight into false and irrational beliefs and give you the tools to make changes, as you can start working on changing your thinking and moving these points to lower scores and different, more realistic categories .

– From this you can begin to take the initiative to make decisions and take responsibility and control of your life.

3: Get out of your comfort zone of fear

The results of anxiety and ingrained false beliefs in our minds and behaviors can ironically leave us in a comfort zone of fear. This means that we are more comfortable feeling negative and leading an anxiety controlled life than facing our fears and making changes to get the life we ​​should have. Getting out of this area can be daunting, but it is necessary. We have to face our fears. Although this can be overwhelming, it can be done. However, facing your fears using exposure therapy should be done carefully, it is not about ripping off the band-aid in one fell swoop when it comes to this. By taking small steps and using a combination of positive affirmations and techniques, you can slowly expand the boundaries of those comfort zones until you can confidently walk through them. Make plans to address your worries and fears to help you, try using a perspective from others’ point of view, and practice.

4: Anchor

Anchoring is a common technique used within CBT, it is a method of connecting a positive association to something you currently find traumatic by using a trigger.

– Choose an object that you have with you every day, such as jewelry (a ring or necklace is good). If you don’t have this, you can use the knuckle of your left hand to pinch or poke your leg with your finger.

– Find a quiet place to go where you won’t be disturbed.

– Think of a moment, situation or event in which you felt completely relaxed, confident and happy.

– As you imagine this time feel the positive energy and as you do so rub the jewel, tap your finger or pinch your knuckles. Repeat this process over and over again, use different happy images to layer different positive emotions to strengthen the anchor.

– When you find yourself in a situation that leaves you feeling worried and negative, repeat the action and feel how differently you feel as your brain triggers more positive emotions towards something you would normally perceive as negative.

– Practice makes perfect when it comes to anchoring, so try to exercise this every day to establish these positive associations in your subconscious.

5: relax

An increased sense of worry causes great amounts of stress on both the body and the mind. This reaction is what leads to anxiety and causes a vicious circle. But learning to relax and combat anxious feelings and behaviors can alleviate worry levels, helping you to see beyond your false beliefs and react realistically, making calculated decisions and managing your own life.

– Breathing: Breathing techniques should be done carefully, but as long as you remember to exhale more than you inhale, you can master relaxation to calm anxiety and worry. So inhale for a count of 4, hold, and then exhale for a count of 8. You should always exhale for a double count of the inhale. Think about where you are breathing from (your chest or your diaphragm) by placing your hands on top to see which is higher. Try to make sure that your diaphragm rises higher than your chest.

– Have fun: By letting our hair down and doing something we want, we can forget about the stress that worry generates and you can use this energy for anchoring techniques and positive visualization.

– Sleep: try to sleep all those important hours. If your sleep pattern is disturbed by worry and anxiety, don’t stress yourself out trying to get 8 hours of sleep, because the more you worry, the more stress it creates. Instead, set yourself a realistic goal, even if it’s 2 hours, this will immediately relieve stress and help you sleep. Getting into a routine, staying active throughout the day, eating right, avoiding stimulants, and having a hot drink and bath before bed will help.

Follow these 5 tips and use the research you do to learn more about how to combat worry and anxiety and rid yourself of a life run by negativity.