If you have ever been battling anxiety, it is likely that your mind at the time was bombarded with a series of anxious thoughts that you could not control. These thoughts generate even more anxiety, usually because they amplify worries to catastrophic limits.
The problem is, as long as you have anxious thoughts, you will feel overwhelmed and confused, so you won't be able to think clearly. It is as if you are living in a storm with no possibility of glimpsing when calm will return.
In fact, anxious people are more likely to distort reality, largely due to those intrusive thoughts. This mechanism produces a vicious circle because it will activate maladaptive coping mechanisms that will generate more problems than they will solve. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to anxious thoughts that indicate that we are oversizing the problem.
The anxious thoughts that generate even more anxiety
- Fear of making mistakes. Murphy's famous law says: "Anything that can fail will fail." However, living every minute thinking that something could go wrong is simply exhausting. It is one thing to prepare for setbacks and another to imagine that everything we do will go wrong, because it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the long run, it will eventually generate a level of anxiety that will actually affect our performance.
- Fear that something bad is going to happen. Fear does not always come from our actions, but it can also be generated by the unpredictability of circumstances. This anxious thought will cause us constant tension and make us think about all possible dangers, including those to which the people we love could be exposed. This will make us live in a state of constant anxiety and anticipation, as if we are constantly waiting for bad news.
- Forget something important. One of the most common anxious thoughts is believing that you have forgotten something important. It is the result of a process of constant scrutiny, not only internal, but also external. You wonder a thousand times if you closed the refrigerator, turned off the light or turned the key in the lock. In turn, this will trigger catastrophic thoughts such as "what if ...?" Sometimes the tension generated by these anxious thoughts is so great that it is not possible to overcome the urge to check several times, to make sure you have not forgotten something important.
- Fear of not being able to control what will happen in the future. Anxiety is inextricably linked to uncertainty, so it's no surprise that many anxious thoughts revolve around the inability to control what may happen in the next few days, weeks, or even years. Anxiety about the future is just terrible because if you don't learn to flow with life, you won't be able to do anything anymore.
- The fear that those we love are angry with us. “Why does it take so long to reply to my message? Will he be mad at me? Maybe I made him angry ”. This is one of the most common anxious thoughts, intimately related to guilt. The anxious person often blames himself, taking responsibility for all the problems in the world and worrying excessively about the consequences of his actions, quickly moving from the real world to the fantastic one he has created in his mind.
- Fear of social judgment. "Are they laughing at me?" Often the anxious person also suffers from social anxiety, he can feel uncomfortable in situations where he feels judged. As a result, he adopts a hyper-vigilant and somewhat self-centered attitude, taking note of everything others do from a self-referential perspective.
- Getting trapped. A common anxious thought refers to the fear of being trapped. As soon as the anxious person steps into the elevator, imagine being trapped. The same thing happens if she has to go to a meeting or an appointment, she immediately thinks she could get stuck in traffic. That fear arises from the fear that something will hold it back and take it out of control over the surrounding environment.
- Thinking that we can get sick at any moment. We all worry about getting sick, but anxious people turn a tension-type headache into a brain tumor. Anxiety and fear lead them to worry excessively, so they always imagine the worst possible scenarios.
- Fight against time. Time passes faster when we feel anxious. Therefore, it is normal for anxiety to make us fear that we will not have enough time to tackle all the tasks ahead or that we will be late for an important appointment. This feeling of struggling against time, which inevitably escapes, generates even more anxiety and makes us make mistakes that will delay us even more.
- Feeling anxious simply by being anxious. The greatest anxiety usually comes from anxiety itself, from that tendency to constantly peer into ourselves. Many people wonder why they feel anxious if they have no apparent reason for being anxious. The prospect of reacting anxiously, or that anxiety may appear at any time, generates even more anxiety, which closes a vicious circle.
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