Category: Anxiety

The Anxiety Plan is PsyBlog’s third online course, after Spark and Activate, all of which are included in the Premium Membership.

The course is designed to help you regain freedom from anxiety, transform your thinking and make lasting changes.

With a Premium Membership you can now access the whole of The Anxiety Plan course immediately online.

A Premium Membership also gives you access to all members-only articles, premium content and other courses, as they become available.

The Anxiety Plan course

Severe anxiety is a trap that can destroy your quality of life.

It stops you from doing the things you want and enjoying everyday aspects of life.

Years of research shows that the most powerful way to change the emotions is to change the way we think about them.

Within everyone is the capability to live well — but learning to do so is not always easy.

This is not a ‘think-positive’ style course: it is a realistic and rational course about dealing with anxiety.

It will help you transform your thinking and make lasting changes.

It is possible to discover the capability within yourself to live well.

Start now.

A practical, easy to read self-help guide

This anxiety course is all about doing and changing.

It encourages a focus on changing your thoughts, behaviours and responses to situations.

There are numerous short sections with many action points.

It contains no theory and very little technical psychological information.

However, it is based on the latest anxiety research.

The points will be useful for anyone experiencing common anxiety problems.

The aim is to help you to see your anxiety differently.

Covers all the main anxiety issues

This anxiety course covers the most common types of anxiety issues and how to deal with them.

These are:

• Generalised anxiety and worry: for people who constantly worry about a wide range of issues, rather than something specific.
• Social phobia: for people who feel that social anxiety is blocking them from getting the things they want: relationships, promotions or just human contact in general.
• Specific phobias: for those with fears of things like the environment, snakes, spiders, enclosed spaces, blood, injections and so on.
• Panic: for people experiencing intense fear, including a very strong physical reaction and the sensation of being about to die or losing complete mental control.
• OCD: for people experiencing intrusive thoughts that are repulsive to them and possibly engaging in repetitive behaviours.

Each section contains specific strategies that are most useful for each type of anxiety issue.

These, along with the general guidance for anxiety issues, can all help.

This anxiety course can help you

This four-part anxiety course describes scientifically-proven strategies for dealing with anxiety.

Most are derived from a type of long-established technique called ‘cognitive-behavioural therapy’ (CBT).

This has been used for many years to successfully help people improve their lives.

Part 1: Changing thoughts

• Changing damaging self-talk like catastrophising, black and white thinking and noticing the negative.
• Guidance on how to accept thoughts that cannot be changed.
• Exercises to help you monitor your thoughts.
• Ways to escape from ingrained habits of thought.

Part 2: Changing behaviours

• Conduct simple behavioural experiments to explore and deal with your anxiety.
• Learn to face fears that may have plagued you for years.
• Understand how to take risks in everyday life.

Part 3: Strategies for specific anxiety issues

• Generalised anxiety and worry.
• Social phobia.
• Specific phobias (such as fear of spiders, blood or flying).
• Panic.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Each section has specific exercises tailored for that type of anxiety.

Part 4: Keep going

Coping with common problems that people face in trying to make progress with their anxiety, including:

• Choosing targets for your plan.
• Tracking your progress.
• Solving common problems.

Practical exercises

Throughout the course there are 42 practical exercises designed to help you change your perspective on anxiety.

They are designed to help you:

• Identify the way thoughts interact with behaviours and emotions.
• Deal with the tendency to avoid situations.
• Address negative self-talk.
• Learn to take small risks.
• Incorporate mindfulness into everyday life.
• Sort ‘hypothetical’ fears from fears about real events.
• Maintain these changes over time.

Enroll in The Anxiety Plan and transform your thinking today.

Researchers reveal the truth about shopping to feel better.

Shopping to try and recover from negative emotions can only make things worse, research finds.

Typically, negative events make materialistic people run to the shops — but it only helps them feel better in the short-term.

The results come from a study that examined how people coped with terrorist attacks.

Professor Rindfleisch, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Materialistic people cope with bad events through materialistic mechanisms.

People who are materialistic suffer higher levels of distress and are more likely to compensate for that through higher levels of compulsive and impulsive purchasing.”

The researchers found that people who were more materialistic had higher post-traumatic stress along with higher compulsive and impulsive consumption.

Professor Rindfleisch said:

“In times of stress, people often seek solace through shopping.

The idea here is that we need some form of a cultural-based coping mechanism, because the research suggests that there is actually a short-term fix with retail therapy.

Soon after purchasing something, there is a reduction of anxiety.

But it doesn’t last very long.

It’s fleeting.

Materialists seek that as one of their coping mechanisms.”

A separate survey carried out in the US found that low self-esteem made it harder to cope with difficult events.

Professor Rindfleisch concluded:

“If you’re a materialistic individual and life suddenly takes a wrong turn, you’re going to have a tougher time recovering from that setback than someone who is less materialistic.

The research is novel in that an event that’s unrelated to materialism will have a stronger impact on someone because of their materialistic values.

In other words, materialism has a multiplier effect.

It’s a finding that I think is especially interesting given our consumer-driven economy.”

The study was published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (Ruvio et al., 2013).

Both techniques can reduce that anxious, rushed feeling on a daily basis, research finds.

It can feel like we have less and less time to get things done.

But there are two easy ways to increase the feeling of having time.

The first — slow breathing — is simple enough to do (see the end of the article if you would like some instructions).

The second is reframing stress and anxiety as excitement.

This can be done by simply telling yourself that you are excited.

Excitement has many of the same feelings in the body as stress and anxiety but has a positive meaning.

The idea is to reframe what you are feeling.

Research finds both techniques work well to decrease that anxious, rushed feeling on a daily basis.

The study’s authors write:

“Beyond the number of activities actually competing for their time, emotional conflict between activities makes consumers feel that they have even less time.

Emotions such as guilt about where time is being spent or fear over loss of income both generate stress, and make a person feel more pressed for time than they actually are.”

The reason for having such stressful lives is the complexity of everyday life, the study’s authors write, as people…

“…exist in a complex social environment that often activates multiple goals at the same time.

People may simultaneously have goals to be successful at work and a good parent at home, save money for retirement and buy nice things, or be healthy and indulge in tasty treats.”

Of course this pressure has a knock-on effect:

“Feeling pressed for time impacts how consumers spend time, and how much they are willing to pay to save it.

From a consumer standpoint, feeling pressed for time can have many harmful consequences such as poorer health, trouble sleeping, and depression.

By pausing to breathe or envision the source of stress in a more positive light, people can enjoy the time they actually have in a healthier and happier way.”

Here are the breathing instructions:

“…breathe so that each complete breath (inhale plus exhale) lasts 11 counts.

The inhale should last 5 counts (i.e., 1-2-3-4-5) and the exhale should last 6 counts (i.e., 6-7-8-9-10-11).

Please complete 10 of these 11 count breaths now.”

The study was published in the Journal of Marketing Research (Etkin et al., 2015).

One hour of this type of singing can improve mood, immune function and more…

Singing in a choir for only one hour can improve mood, reduce stress and even boost immune proteins, a study finds.

The largest improvements in mood were seen among those suffering with the greatest level of depression and lowest mental wellbeing.

The research involved 193 people whose lives had been touched by cancer and who were members of five different choirs.

Dr Ian Lewis, one of the study’s authors, said:

“These are really exciting findings.

We have been building a body of evidence over the past six years to show that singing in a choir can have a range of social, emotional and psychological benefits, and now we can see it has biological effects too.

We’ve long heard anecdotal evidence that singing in a choir makes people feel good, but this is the first time it’s been demonstrated that the immune system can be affected by singing.

It’s really exciting and could enhance the way we support people with cancer in the future.”

Dr Daisy Fancourt, the study’s first author, said:

“Many people affected by cancer can experience psychological difficulties such as stress, anxiety and depression.

Research has demonstrated that these can suppress immune activity, at a time when patients need as much support as they can get from their immune system.

This research is exciting as it suggests that an activity as simple as singing could reduce some of this stress-induced suppression, helping to improve wellbeing and quality of life amongst patients and put them in the best position to receive treatment.”

Diane Raybould, 64, who was diagnosed with breast cancer and has been singing in a choir since 2010, said:

“Singing in the choir is about more than just enjoyment, it genuinely makes you feel better.

The choir leaders play a huge part of course, but so does the support of the other choir members, the inspirational programme and uplifting songs.

The choir is a family, simple as that.

Having cancer and losing someone to cancer can be very isolating.

With the choir, you can share experiences openly and that is hugely important.”

The study was published in the journal eCancer Medicalscience (Fancourt et al., 2016).

Neuroticism is a personality trait that is strongly linked to anxiety, sadness, irritability and self-consciousness.

Learning to value taking action is an important way of reducing the harmful effects of neuroticism.

People high in anxiety and neuroticism dislike taking action, research reveals.

Neuroticism is a personality trait that is strongly linked to anxiety, sadness, irritability and self-consciousness.

When faced with major or minor decisions in life, neurotic people tend to avoid taking action.

Naturally, this can sometimes have negative consequences.

The study’s authors describe their results:

“People who are less emotionally stable have less positive attitudes towards action and more positive attitudes toward inaction.

Furthermore, anxiety was primarily responsible for neurotic individuals’ less positive attitudes toward action.

The link between neuroticism and less positive attitudes toward action was strongest among individuals who endorsed more collectivistic than individualistic beliefs.”

The results come from surveys of people in 19 different countries.

Almost 4,000 people were asked about their attitudes towards action and inaction, along with depression, anxiety and neuroticism.

The study’s authors argue that learning to value action is very important for neurotic people:

“People who are interested in reducing the harmful consequences of neuroticism in their own lives should think about how their attitudes toward action might be affecting their behavior.

By learning to value action, they may be able to change many of the negative behaviors associated with neuroticism and anxiety — such as freezing when they should act, or withdrawing from stress instead of dealing proactively with it.

These findings lay the groundwork for finding new methods of studying and ultimately preventing the negative consequence of neurotic action avoidance.

Specifically, increasing exposure to action may be sufficient to combat tendencies to avoid proactive behavior.”

Related

• 2 psychotherapies that reduce neuroticism dramatically.

The study was published in the Journal of Personality (Ireland et al., 2014).