I hope all is well. I’d like to welcome every self-healer to this channel. Today, we are continuing our healing from anxiety. Anxiety is a life interfering condition. I need your attention for about 15 minutes because I’m here to provide you one of the most effective and proven tools for regulating anxiety. It’s called CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. So let’s dive in.
Hello everyone, my name is Hong Jeong and I’m a psychotherapist based in Los Angeles, California. Welcome back and welcome to newcomers. This is our virtual therapy session #5 on how to deal with anxiety. And we’re putting it all together using CBT because it is our last session. Healing is not a linear process so I’d encourage you to go back to my previous videos and keep doing what works for you. Healing is not moving from point A to point B. It is about finding your awareness within yourself and of course it's an ongoing process.
Alright, it is a virtual therapy session which means I’m talking as if we’re having a conversation. In other words, I will ask you a set of questions and you can pause the video and process your thoughts and feelings. By all means, please give yourself enough time to process and digest each question.
REVIEW:
Step #1
First, we talked about the GAD-7, the inventory for anxiety symptoms. GAD-7 measures your anxiety levels by measuring nervousness, restlessness, worrying, trouble sleeping, and other signs of anxiety. There is a link to GAD-7 down below in the description box. Please take your time to fill out the form.
https://www.integration.samhsa.gov/clinical-practice/gad708.19.08cartwright.pdf
-Is your score higher or lower than your earlier score?
-What symptoms have decreased? Which have increased?
Step #2
How would you describe your mood lately?
Let’s measure your recent anxiety levels. To be objective, rate your anxiety on a scale from 0 to 10 (At 0, you feel emotionally and physically stable. 10 represents the most anxious you can feel)?
Step #3
In our session, we’ve discussed about all or nothing thinking and steps to notice and change all or nothing thinking patterns.
What physical, emotional, and cognitive change did you notice due to your awareness around all or nothing thinking?
In our previous sessions, we’ve touched base on CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). Our behaviors can affect our thoughts and feelings and vice versa. Today, I’d like to borrow one of the CBT skills, called behavioral activation, in order to put together all the skills we went over together. Mental health is also behavioral health. When we go through anxiety, we often engage in certain behaviors such as avoiding social situations, overplanning, acting aggressively, and etc. Again, it is important to notice significant or subtle changes in our behaviors while noticing our physical and emotional state.
What I mean by this is that our mind has two modes. We use doing mode to achieve goals or complete tasks such as making a to-do list, working on a project, attending appointments, paying bills, etc. Whereas, being mode helps us live in the moment and focus on here and now. In being mode, we do not have to achieve anything or think about anything. It is a state of no thinking. Here is an experiment we can try. Place your hand on your chest. Listen to your breathing and feel your body. What’s happening here and here. Alright again, please listen to my voice. What’s happening here and….here. It was a brief moment of silence. Where was your mind in this brief moment? Was it hard to understand my instructions? Was your mind trying to analyze or judge what just happened? My guess is that you effortlessly listened to my voice and noticed the silence of here and now. Yes, this is being mode, a state of no thinking.
Behavioral activation is designed to help individuals become more active in terms of self-care and self-development. It is important to balance these two. Anxiety often is caused by tendency to avoid people and situations and lack of positive reinforcement. A study found that people who engage in behavioral activation were less likely to fall back on certain behaviors associated with anxiety. It is because it reinforces non-anxious behaviors.
Alright,
Step #1
Identify 2 activities that trigger your anxiety and you tend to avoid:
Examples include meeting new people, giving a presentation, dealing in conflict with friends and family, or simply having too much to think or do. Let’s notice the pattern of your avoidance.
Step:2
Identify 2 mindless activities that you enjoy:
The purpose of doing mindless activities is to be in the moment. Self-holding exercise, calm place, and any activities in which you can experience 5 senses fall into mindless activities. Personally, my mindless activities are dancing, swimming, yoga, weight lifting, playing a guitar, and so on and so forth. We’re not doing mindless activities to feel relaxed or achieve something. Just being in here and now is the key point,
Step #3
Identify 2 activities that you want to take care of and help you get closer to your goals.
In this step, we’re practicing doing mode. What can you do to strategically move from point A to point B? If your goal is to get promoted or make more money, what skills or knowledge do you want to obtain? For example, I want to have more subscribers on my Youtube channel. So the activities that I engage on a regular basis are writing at least 3 video ideas a day, meeting with my consultant every month, learning video editing skills and the list goes on.
Step #4
Develop a daily schedule of your activities. I’d encourage you to make your behavioral activation schedule very time sensitive. Instead of saying I’m going to exercise today, we want to say, “I’m going to run for 20 minutes at 2:00 pm and weight lift for 20 minutes at 2:30 pm.”
Step #5
Monitor the intensity of anxiety on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being the neutral and 10 being the most intense both physically and emotionally).
*Daily check in is necessary.
Step #6
Identify 3 positive reinforcements (e.g. less anxiety, better work performance, positive attitude, improved relationships with family and loved ones).
Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is a part of behavioral activation. I suggest you start with simple and easy activities and then work your way up to more challenging activities. Therefore, you will eventually become tolerant and resilient with your anxiety triggers. I hope you found some values through our sessions on how to deal with anxiety. Please continue taking care of yourself and do your healing every day.
If you need assistance with dealing with anxiety, please schedule a 20 minute free consultation with me.