Is anxiety causing you distress and holding you back in your career or personal life? Do you know that your anxiety is most likely being triggered by your own thoughts and thinking patterns?
Here’s some examples of thoughts and thinking patterns that often lead to anxiety:
“Catastrophising” thoughts, where we imagine things going wrong, such as:
- This will be a complete disaster
- Things always go wrong for me
- I’m going to fail / I’m going to get sick
- If I don’t take on this extra work, I will lose my job
- Soon everyone will find out that I don’t belong here
Or “abusive self-talk”, where we say mean things to ourselves, such as:
- I’m not good enough
- It’s all my fault
- I’m a terrible friend/partner/parent
- My life is a complete mess
- Everyone else is going ok, it’s just me who’s not coping
- I always say stupid things in front of others
These types of thoughts can make us feel frustration, fear, shame, guilt, anger, confusion, sadness, isolation, envy, rejection, abandonment. These are the stress-related emotions, which power up our nervous system and lead to the symptoms of anxiety and circular thoughts of self-doubt.
What can we do to reduce these unhelpful thoughts and calm our anxiety?
The good news is that there are a range of evidence-based techniques and skills that we can learn and practice in order to overcome our negative thinking patterns, calm our anxieties and live in a more content and less fearful way.
Wellbeing Partners teaches these techniques and skills through a four part course called Facing Anxiety and Flourishing which is run over four weeks – one hour per week. New courses start each month and both daytime and evening courses are available.
The Facing Anxiety and Flourishing course is led by a fully qualified and highly experienced cognitive behavioural science instructor who specialises in anxiety issues. The course will provide you with the advice, skills and exercises to manage your unhelpful thinking patterns, reduce your anxiety, balance your mood, build perspective and help you gain resilience.
The course utilises a blend of practices from CBT, psychology, resilience training, stress reduction, self-compassion, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence to give you a distinctive set of tools to respond to anxiety skilfully and with confidence.
The Facing Anxiety and Flourishing course runs monthly throughout the year and costs £180 per person for the four parts, materials and lifetime access to the Mindfulness UK app.