Generalized Anxiety’s Lifetime Prevalence

If you have generalized anxiety disorder, the first thing is to begin understanding which thoughts help you and which thoughts are hindering you. It might be best to focus on the easy to identify thoughts that are hindering you. These will be the “what if…” thoughts. Whenever you have these thoughts, remember that it’s true that life is uncertain but if you just sit around doing nothing, that won’t accomplish anything. Try to go against these thoughts and prove that they are wrong. If you’re worried about going to the grocery store, start by just going for a drive to the nearest street. Try to rationalize with yourself that it’s unlikely anything will happen from your home to the next street. Then go to the next street and so on until you reach the grocery store. Once you have a good idea about which thoughts you can challenge, you can begin to get help for reducing your stress further.