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Workplace Anxiety: Strategies and Support

Anxiety about work is a common experience driven by how we interpret and respond to work-related situations, often involving excessive focus on future problems and attempts to control the uncontrollable. Effective self-help strategies include developing awareness of triggers, practising acceptance and mindfulness, gradually facing feared work situations through exposure, reinterpreting anxious thoughts, using relaxation and breathing techniques, and writing down worries. When workplace anxiety is severe, professional help is available. An anxiety coach can provide guidance on tackling avoidance and managing internal states. An anxiety therapist offers structured treatment to understand and modify responses to anxiety. For extreme anxiety or that linked to trauma, a Havening practitioner may provide help, including processing experiences without detailed verbal disclosure. Managing anxiety about work involves understanding its mechanisms, employing targeted techniques, and seeking appropriate professional support when necessary.

How to Stop Anxiety’s Grip

Stopping the disabling effects of anxiety, while acknowledging its natural presence, is achievable through various self-help methods and, when needed, professional support. Key self-help strategies include employing physiological techniques like deep breathing and relaxation to calm the body, and engaging in exercise. Mental approaches involve using mindfulness to manage focus, questioning anxious thoughts, and employing distraction. Behaviourally, actively facing fears through methods like graded exposure and stopping avoidance behaviours are crucial. Lifestyle changes, such as improving sleep and diet and reducing stressors, contribute to resilience. Tracking anxiety patterns through journaling and focusing on progress and strengths also aids in the process. For severe, complex, or persistent anxiety that doesn’t improve with self-help, seeking professional help from qualified practitioners is a valuable and courageous step towards regaining control and significantly stopping anxiety’s negative impact on life.

Managing Automatic Negative Thoughts

Automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) are spontaneous, often negative and distorted thoughts that can significantly impact well-being. Experiencing frequent ANTs can lead to mental exhaustion, overthinking, and negative self-perception, potentially linked to overactivity in brain regions like the anterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala, and the development of negative thought habits. However, various self-help strategies, including increasing awareness, challenging and reframing thoughts, practising thought defusion, engaging in positive self-talk, focusing on solutions, and acceptance, can help individuals to manage and reduce the impact of these unwanted thoughts.

The Underlying Mechanisms of Anxiety

Anxiety arises and persists through a combination of the body’s stress response, specific brain mechanisms involving threat detection and information processing, neurochemical influences, and the impact of learned psychological patterns like worry, avoidance, and negative thinking. The brain’s neuroplasticity allows anxiety responses to become entrenched habits, while psychological factors such as fear of anxiety and non-acceptance further perpetuate the cycle.

Addressing Nervousness: Insights from Your Sources

Nervousness involves a complex interplay of mental and brain processes. Mentally, negative self-talk, cognitive biases, overthinking, unhelpful interpretations, and rigid thinking contribute significantly. Neural pathways involving the cortex and amygdala play key roles in initiating and maintaining the physiological and cognitive aspects of nervousness. Reducing the impact of these thought patterns involves increasing self-awareness, challenging and reframing negative thoughts, using more flexible language, focusing on the present, altering the narrative around nervousness, practicing self-compassion, engaging in valued activities, and managing sensory input.