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AnxietyFor yourself50 min read

Understanding and easing anxiety

What relieves you in the moment is what keeps anxiety going. This programme explains exposure in the opening pages, then puts it to work in eight precise steps, from the week of observation to the relapse plan.

In short

This programme is for an adult living with too much anxiety. It applies cognitive behavioural therapy, the best-established psychological treatment for anxiety disorders. It comes in four parts: understanding the mechanism, following an eight-step exposure programme, adapting it to your form of anxiety, and dealing with everything around it — breathing, the body, medication.

Topic
Anxiety
Who it's for
For yourself
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The programme

This programme supports treatment; it does not replace it. It describes the criteria clinicians use, but reading a description does not allow you to diagnose yourself: only a professional can do that, after an interview and after ruling out other explanations — including medical causes, described in section 27. Never change a treatment on your own initiative, and in particular never stop a benzodiazepine by yourself: abrupt withdrawal can cause severe symptoms. If you have suicidal thoughts, if you can no longer leave your home, or if you drink to get through the day, make an appointment this week rather than starting this programme alone.

1. Before you start

You check three times before leaving. You rehearse what you are going to say on the phone. You take the seat near the exit, the one you could leave from. You no longer use the motorway, or the lift, or speak up in meetings. You wake with a knot in your stomach without knowing why. And year after year you have built up a set of precautions so natural that you no longer see them — precautions that hold your life together, and that also make sure nothing changes.

This programme is made for that situation. It applies cognitive behavioural therapy, the best-evaluated psychological treatment for anxiety disorders in adults, recommended first-line by international guidelines.

The rest is for members

Create your access to read this programme in full, along with every other resource.

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Printable worksheets

The exercises from this programme, as printable PDFs. Members only.

See the plansThe printable worksheets are included with access.
  1. 01The anxiety logStep 1 — seven days of observation, changing nothing.
  2. 02My avoidance and my crutchesStep 2 — the list nobody guesses without writing it.
  3. 03My exposure ladderStep 3 — ten to fifteen rungs, rated 0 to 100.
  4. 04The exposure sheetStep 4 — one sheet per exercise. Reprint as many times as needed.
  5. 05The exposure logStep 5 — four weeks. You will see here what you cannot feel day to day.
  6. 06Removing a crutchStep 6 — the step people skip, and the one that decides the result.
  7. 07Exposure to sensationsIf it is panic attacks — the object of the fear is the body, not the place.
  8. 08Turning the spotlight aroundIf it is social anxiety — self-focused attention is the real problem.
  9. 09Worry: sort it and defer itIf it is generalised anxiety — there is no situation to avoid, but a mental activity.
  10. 10My relapse planStep 8 — one page, written now, to reread in six months.

Every worksheet in one file, with a table of contents.

anxietyCBTexposurepanicworryavoidance

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