Cognitive resources and coping skills for anxiety are essential in working with different types of anxiety. We want to work on challenging our thoughts, beliefs, expectations, assumptions, and any mental pictures to something more positive, calm, safe, realistic, confident, and coping. It’s important for us to develop a individualistic plan for each person because everyone is different in terms of what they think and have for mental pictures. To start it can be helpful to have clients explore and identify what they picture and say to themselves in anxious situations. We are going to provide a worksheet below to assist in this process for individuals.
We’d be happy at Orchard Valley Counselling Services to also help you with this as well. Email us at admin@ovcs.ca, if you would like assistance.
Take Our Questionnaire Below.
Ask yourself the following questions. This questionnaire will help you to know what your thoughts, assumptions, expectations, beliefs are when your anxious. This will help you to create new ones that are more positive and helpful.
- Is there any hard evidence to suggest that your thoughts, beliefs or assumptions are true when you are struggling with anxiety? Have you tested out your theory or did you just decide to accept it to be true?
- Will this hold 100% true, 100% of the time in similar situations?
- Ask your friends and family, is there anybody that would agree with your assessment of the situation? Or think this is at all healthy?
- Do you think this has always been true? Looking back have you ever done anything in your life that turned out to be an exception to this or that contradicted this?
- Would you view this as being a flexible way of thinking, or not? Is what you would say to yourself have any grey areas, exceptions, or is it very black and white thinking, rigid, with no exceptions?
- Who says this is true? Compared to what? Compared to who? Based on what standard? Who decided what standard?
- Is having this belief helpful or harmful? Does it make you feel better about yourself, even more in control of your life, better able to cope, or does it make you feel worse, less in control and less able to cope?
- Would you say this keeps you focused on the bigger picture or does it keep you focused on a narrowed viewpoint like having tunnel vision?
- Does this help you to over-exaggerate or over-emphasize the negative thoughts and make you under-exaggerate or minimize the positive aspects?
- Is your logical, reasonable, objective side of your brain telling you this or is it all based on intense feelings and emotions?
- Is this something that you decided to believe and think on your own, or did you get it from the past or from people like your parents, teachers;etc.
- Would you take the same attitude about a best friends’ situation, that you would about yours?
- If you can envision someone who is more like the way you’d wish you could be, would they say the same things to themselves as you do?
- If you could take this less personally or magically get rid of it would you? What would you be able to do, to feel, to believe, and to manage that you can’t now?
- What is the worse thing that could happen and how likely is that?
- What would be different if you could stop saying this to yourself? Who’s stopping you from doing this?
