Brain researchers have found out a lot about how the brain works biologically, however, they still don’t have all the answers to how it works holistically. So they come up with models of how it works, to give them guidance.

Models are useful, and its good to remember that they are not the same as the thing they are modelling.

Part 1 – The Cognitive Model of Anxiety

This model is based on the idea that your thoughts are the cause of anxiety. (Cognition is just a fancy word for thinking.) You feel anxiety or fear because you are telling yourself that you are about to experience something unpleasant. If you are about to give a talk, lecture or presentation, and you tell yourself you are going to do a lousy job, the next thought may be that the audience will laugh in your face, and then your mind will go blank, and so on.

Your anxiety comes from thinking about what might happen, not from what’s actually happening (which is probably more along the lines of you sitting somewhere thinking about all this…)

There are three parts to this model of anxiety:

a)      Your feelings are caused by your thoughts

b)      Your anxiety is the result of distorted thinking – you are fooling yourself

c)      By changing your thoughts, and the way you think, you can change your feelings

As we do our day to day activities, we are constantly thinking about and evaluating our experience. As you read this article, you could be thinking, “This can’t help me, my doctor says I have to take medication for any real help.” In which case you may feel annoyed and ready to click away.

You could be thinking “This is really interesting. Perhaps it can help me” And you may be feeling energized, excited and curious.

It’s the same words on the page, however there are many different evaluations and interpretations that can be made, and many different ways of feeling about what you are reading. Your feelings are the result of your evaluations (your thoughts about), not from the actual words. How can words on a page, or images of words on a screen, affect the way you feel? It’s your evaluations of those words that cause your feelings.

The interpretation of your experiences goes on all the time, and will never stop until you take your last breath.

What are we telling ourselves when we feel anxious?

Most likely, it’s that there is imminent danger, and that something bad is about to happen. During a panic attack, this can be extreme, and you may feel that you are about to lose control, have a heart attack, or even die.

You may have noticed that your thoughts begin to reinforce themselves, creating a catch-22 effect. Sensing the worst, you begin to feel anxious and afraid, and those feelings cause more thoughts of imminent disaster. You may even tell yourself you must be in danger since you feel so much fear.

If you could stop and break down your thought/feeling process (and you can, actually) you would notice that your thinking is illogical, and you are just fooling yourself.

I want to distinguish here between healthy fear and unhealthy, neurotic anxiety. Healthy fear comes from the realistic perception of danger – like a bus coming down the road right at you! In this case, fear will most likely propel you out of the way, saving your life! Alternatively, unhealthy anxiety is not related to any real danger or threat, and serves no useful purpose. Your thinking that cause unhealthy, neurotic anxiety is distorted and is not logical.

Here are a few types of distorted thinking that may occur when you are feeling anxious:

1)      Predicting the future by telling yourself that there is something bad about to happened to you or someone close to you, or possibly even the world at large.

2)      Assuming you have the ability to read other people’s minds and thinking that they are looking down at you or just having negative thoughts about you, when in fact you have no evidence for this whatsoever.

3)      Exaggeration and magnification of the potential danger in a given situation. For example, you cut your finger while trimming the bushes, and it seems to be bleeding more than it should, and you start to think you have some terrible blood disease.

4)      “Necessity Thinking.” You think you “should not” feel so anxious, since other people don’t feel this way.

5)      Beating yourself up for feeling anxious or worrying.

There are other types of distorted thinking that are related to feeling anxiety. Which ones are familiar to you? I hope at least one or two, because that means you can make changes to your feelings by changing your thinking. You can make your fears disappear!

This is part one of a four part series.

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