Embrace your fear of evaluation
Fear of evaluation is a complex mix of biological sensitivity to embarrassment, shame, and loneliness plus reactions to previous experiences and cognitive and behavioral responses to your current life.
Belief problems and workable attitudes
The opposite of a belief problem is a workable attitude.
The difference between productive and unproductive worry
Worriers have a paradoxical relationship with their worries because a part of them wants to stop worrying, but another part of them thinks that worrying shows them what they care about, prevents future catastrophe, prepares them for the worst-case scenario, and keeps them from getting more anxious. Worriers want to end the incessant, intrusive flow of thoughts that pops up at unwanted times, but they frequently keep worry going on purpose, thinking that it is helpful.
Functional worry
Scheduled worry time should challenge the idea that worrying is reasonable.
An introduction to worry
Worry is a two-part process including an uncertain question and an attempt to answer it.
Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly
Anxiety says that every moment matters. Your mind arrives at what you should be doing, you need to be doing, or how things are supposed to go. You get stuck. Anxiety can’t think flexibly or change its course.
Writing exercises that can help you manage your distress
There are different types of writing exercises that are likely to be helpful for different types of suffering.
The role of a healthy lifestyle in overcoming emotional disorders
Relaxing your attempts at control of your internal experience and relating to your thoughts, feelings, and sensations with compassion and courage is a learnable skill.
Create the conditions that make sleep more likely
Just like you can't force yourself to have good mental health, you can't force yourself to fall asleep. You can create the conditions that make good mental health more likely and you can also create conditions that make sleep more likely.
Create the conditions that make good mental health more likely
A good plan for making good mental health more likely includes both planning for increasing or maintaining your functioning and managing your distress more effectively.
Process vs. outcome
Orient yourself around the therapeutic attitude of willing acceptance and create structure around a process-based goal. If your goal is to cultivate a more effective relationship with your anxiety, your process can include any behavior that gives them the opportunity to practice going towards and accepting anxiety.
Making helpful commitments
When you are reflecting on the challenges in your life and deciding how to set goals to overcome them, you want to get as specific as possible about what the issue is and break the solution down to the smallest next step.
Your disorder undermines values-based living
You are not your disorder. Untreated or unmanaged anxiety, OCD, and mood disorders can make you act in ways that are not consistent with your values. Your symptoms show up differently based on your biological vulnerabilities and your social conditioning.
When your values turn against you
Knowing your values can be one of your best defenses against anxiety, OCD, and depression.
An introduction to values
No matter how anxious you feel, you can get a hint at what you value by the content of your anxiety. Oftentimes, people value the opposite of what they fear.
The impact of emotional disorders on relationships
Living with an anxiety or mood disorder or OCD can feel like a lonely journey, but it often influences your relationships with your loved one too. The people you love, and the quality and quantity of those relationships, can be influenced by anxiety, mood, and OCD symptoms in a number of ways.
When emotions escalate
If your feelings often escalate, show yourself compassion first. Your suffering is real. Try to identify your first feeling. Oftentimes it’s easier to stop resisting a feeling than it is to accept it. Try to identify the interpretation that leads it to escalate and challenge that interpretation.
Self-talk for experiencing guilt, shame, and uncertainty
Helpful self-talk orients you towards acceptance. Unhelpful self-talk facilitates avoidance.
Observing loneliness
Loneliness is the feeling you experience when you believe that you are disconnected from others.