What do I mean when I say “Let’s beat anxiety”? A common misconception people have is that they can get rid of anxiety all together. Unfortunately, that is not the case. When I use the word beat, I mean you feel in control of your anxiety and not that your anxiety is controlling you. I mean you are one step ahead of anxiety so that you know how to respond in an effective way when it pops up. It is absolutely possible to lessen the intensity and frequency of anxiety you experience (yay!). You are going to learn all of this from me!

Okay, so what do I do with this information?

With kids and even adults I work with, we practice externalizing our anxiety (which I refer to as our “anxiety monster”). That basically means labeling our anxiety as something separate from ourselves. For example, I’m Andrea and I might label my anxiety monster as Susan (no offense to any Susan’s out there!!). This helps us to start separating out our anxious thoughts (typically irrational) from our own (typically more logical).

With patients of mine, we talk about beating our anxiety monster as being a game. It looks like this:

Every time I believe what Susan is telling me, get anxious by what she is telling me, or do what Susan is telling me, Susan gets a point. For every time I stand up to Susan, don’t believe her lies, and do something other than what she is telling me to do, that’s a point for me! The more points you get, the better!

Example time! I get invited to a party and Susan tells me “You really shouldn’t go. No one likes you there, you are just going to say something embarrassing and everyone will laugh at you.” Let’s say I believe this, I get really anxious by this thought, and then decide to not go to the party. That is a point for Susan. Now let’s say that I recognize that thought is ridiculous (i.e., I know I have friends there that like me, I have good social skills, it is not realistic that EVERYONE would laugh at me) and decide to go to the party. That is a point for me. To me, that is beating anxiety at it’s own game.

What would you label your anxiety monster? I typically encourage people to choose a name that they do not really like or a villain from a TV show or movie. Feel free to comment below on what name you chose!

xoxo,

Andrea