When I look back on my anxiety filled days, what I remember most is feeling like I was on something like a hamster wheel. Instead of a hamster wheel, I guess it was really an anxiety wheel. One physical symptom would lead to another, one thought that caused me anxiety would lead to another.  Just over and over again.  Running in circles, never getting anywhere, never finding a solution to my anxiety.

Those of us who experience chronic anxiety and worry have this type of thinking that causes us to spend a great deal of time on that anxiety wheel.  The technical term for that type of thinking is Cognitive Distortions. I prefer simple words that are easy for me to remember, so I call this type of think warped thinking, or my not well thinking.

For me, in order to do away with my not well thinking, I had to recognize what was going on in my head when I was experiencing it.

• I had an all or nothing mentality – I saw everything as black and white and if something I did was not perfect than I considered it and myself a failure.  I have been known to throw out something I cooked if it did not look as good as the picture in the cookbook.
• Overgeneralization – I would create an expectation from one single negative experience.  I believed that if it happened one time, it would always happen.
• The Mental Filter – Focusing on the negatives while filtering out the positives.  I would notice the one or two things that went wrong rather than focus on the all the things that had gone right.
• Diminishing the positive – I would come up with reasons why the positives did not count.  If I crocheted something and it turned out beautiful, it was not because I was skilled at it, it was just because I lucked out when I read the pattern.
• Jumping to conclusions – I would know that something terrible would happen, even if I had no evidence.  One of my biggest anxieties was being afraid that something horrible would happen if I left the house.  It usually centered around the house burning down.  I knew that if I left my safety zone, my house would be gone by the time I got home.
• Catastrophizing – I always expected the worst case scenario.
• Emotional Reasoning – I had the ability to convince myself that what I was feeling was reality.  I would create something to worry, it usually involved something bad happening to my family, and I could actually convince myself that it was real.  I would cry and everything.
• Shoulds’ and Should nots’ – There was a whole long list of things I would allow myself to do and things I was not allowed to do.  If I broke any of my own rules, I would beat myself up about it.
• Labeling – I applied very negative labels to myself.  I was a failure, a loser, a bad parent, a horrible wife, a terrible daughter and so on.
• Personalization – I assumed responsibility for things that were outside of my control.

Identifying these types of thinking was an important key for me to learn how to not be filled with constant anxiety.  If  caught myself engaging in any of these not well thoughts,  I would instantly try and replace it with something more positive.  Eventually, I was able to move completely away from this not well thinking.  Once I did this, my life on the never ending anxiety wheel came to an end.