The ‘Futile Task’ of Fighting Anxiety

There are a number of different ways of explaining anxiety. One way is to say that anxiety is what happens when we try to solve a problem that can’t be solved. This is a very simple approach to anxiety, and it is also very helpful….

The Anxiety Cycle

A very rough-and-ready way to define anxiety is to say that when I am anxious I am unsuccessfully struggling to prevent something bad happening. It is important to add the word ‘unsuccessfully’ because if I was able to successfully struggle against the thing that I…

Displacement

It is fair to say that we are all, from time to time, get upset by things that go on around us. Sometimes we get upset more and sometimes we get upset less – sometimes something that really would annoy me a lot won’t annoy…

Refusing Radical Risk

There are many ways to explain anxiety. The most essential way is probably to define anxiety as what happens when we refuse (or attempt) to eliminate radical risk. This definition is very helpful, but in order to appreciate it we first have to explain what…

Working With Thinking

One thing that is not very well understood at all in our culture is how to deal with thinking. What we tend to do is to label certain types of thoughts as ‘negative’ and then try to fight back at them. Put simply, this means…

NOT ANTICIPATING OUTCOMES

  There is an answer to all of the problems and difficulties that we struggle with, but because this answer is so obvious, we very rarely see it. What happens when we don’t ‘see it’ is that we get locked into thinking about the problem…

REMEMBERING YOUR INTENTION NOT TO FORGET

THE EXERCISE For the purpose of this exercise it is necessary to sit still for ten minutes, and take notice of your breathing. The point is to follow each breath, in and out, without going off at a tangent and forgetting what you had intended…