While we all get anxious at times, sometimes anxiety can seemingly take over our thoughts and even our lives. A key to keeping anxiety in check is to know some of the right questions to ask when you are experiencing a heightened sense of anxiety. Here are three questions that can help assess and even reduce your anxiety:

Are my thoughts based on facts or feelings?

This is a powerful question. Often, when you are feeling anxious you are worrying about feelings and not the facts of the situation. Anxiety feeds off of assumptions and the unknown. If you focus on what is known, the facts, you have a much better chance of calming your mind and bringing your anxiety to a much more manageable level.

What are the assumptions I am making?

Closely related with the question of facts or feelings, identifying the assumptions you have made can often calm your mind to a reasonable level. Assumptions come in a variety of forms (such as black and white thinking, overgeneralizing, and filtering) and will either fuel or starve your anxiety. Remember, you have the ability to tell your mind what to think! Much of that has to do with our assumptions. Work on assuming the best outcomes and motives, not the worst!

Is there evidence contrary to my thought?

When you wrestle with anxiety, you often search for evidence in support of your assumptions and worries. That only feeds your anxiousness and creates more stress and distortion. Rather than searching for support, it is more helpful to search for evidence contrary to your thought. In other words, if you are worried that you will have a bad time at the beach, try to find evidence that suggests you will have a great time at the beach! Search hard enough and you often find a lot of evidence contrary to your anxious thoughts.

Conclusion

The anxious brain can seem unbearable and uncontrollable. However, with the right tools and questions, you can retrain your brain to find a new normal and find peace. These three questions can start you down that road. While there is much more to overcoming anxiety, out of the many anxious individuals we have helped overcome their anxiety, we have found these three questions to be a strong foundation to taking your life back. If you’d like us to take the journey with you, reach out to us or you can schedule securely online through out client portal.