Unfortunately, feeling anxious in some situations is normal, especially when you are under pressure in work or daily life. According to Our World in Data, 3.8% of the world’s population suffers from anxiety disorders of various kinds (2017 data).
With anxiety, people tend to develop limited ways of thinking and negative thought patterns that are difficult to eradicate.
Generally some effects of anxiety on thinking are the tendency to catastrophize, to think in black and white, to overgeneralize etc.
Trying to counter these patterns is not easy, but there are a few small strategies that can be applied:
-recognize the symptoms of negative patterns
– Give a name to these patterns to recognize them (and know that you have already experienced them before)
-Separate fears and doubts from facts
-Build “stories” about our negative predictions, positive and negative stories to have more points of view to evaluate
-When you are faced with a question that seems to have no answer, you have to ask yourself, if we were not involved personally, what advice would we give to a colleague or friend who is in the same situation?
It is wise to write certain tricks so that in the event of a lack of clarity we can easily retrieve this information.
Furthermore, we must remember that certain states of anxiety are normal and in a sense they are also positive, but they must not exceed otherwise they end up compromising our normal activities and having an extremely negative influence in our life.
If you want to learn more about these strategies, we recommend this HBR article. Enjoy the reading!