Impact of Thoughts on Anxiety
Goal
To be able to understand the connection between anxiety, breathing, and thoughts
Anxiety, Breathing, & Thoughts
Panic attacks often affect breathing. Shortness of breath, for example, is a sensation that many people experience during a panic attack. Sensations related to breathing can lead to thinking that you may die as a result of not being able to catch your breath. Thinking about the possibility of dying is an example of a thinking mistake since shortness of breath is not actually harmful. Oftentimes in instances of panic, no real threat exists despite how real the threat may seem. When experiencing anxiety, it is easy to overestimate risk and make unfounded negative conclusions about the outcome of an anxiety-ridden situation.
One way to try to overcome thinking mistakes is by treating your thoughts as guesses in need of further exploration. Many thoughts are automatic and occur without prompting. When they are not based on facts and we treat them as though they are, problems arise. If you were to view the thought that experiencing a racing heart during a panic attack leads to a heart attack as a fact, your anxiety symptoms would likely be prolonged. By treating that thought as a guess in need of evaluation, there is greater potential for coming to a more accurate interpretation of the situation. The accurate interpretation in turn helps decrease anxious feelings.
Challenging Thinking Mistakes Exercise (Barlow, 2008, p. 101)
Instructions: Identify a thinking mistake that you often make when you feel anxious and evaluate it on a separate piece of paper using the following questions:
- What is the evidence for and against this idea?
- If your belief a habit or based on facts?
- Are your interpretations of the situation too far removed from reality to be accurate?
- Are you thinking in all-or-nothing terms?
- Are you using words or phrases that are extreme or exaggerated? (i.e., always, forever, never, need, should, must, can’t, and every time)
- Are you taking the situation out of context and only focusing on one aspect of the event?
- Is the source of information reliable?
- Are you confusing a low probability with a high probability?
- Are your judgments based on feelings rather than facts?
- Are you focused on irrelevant factors?
Next Step
Identify additional faulty thoughts and evaluate them using the above questions.
