Anxiety Rumination

Of course with CBT, though, there aren’t any side-effects or worries of dependency which can be a concern with medications.  

With CBT you’re really changing your overall thinking so that you can get right to the root of your problem (your thoughts and overall beliefs about things). 

While CBT definitely takes some work, it can definitely pay off.  One of the things you’ll likely notice happening the more you do the steps of CBT to analyze our thoughts is that you’ll find yourself getting insights and ideas that are very helpful to you.

When you are doing CBT exercises, I believe that they may very well unleash both the logical and creative aspect of your thought processes – the same thought processes that seem to get mowed over by anxiety and panic. By having these processes come back, you’ll likely notice your control coming back and that your performance in a variety of situations can exceed your expectations.

Let me discuss a personal example.  I was at a meeting recently with about 20 people and because of what I brought to the table I was put on the “hot seat.”  All of a sudden I was being peppered by questions.  My initial reaction was to get very nervous and I instantly got an extreme tightness in the pit of my stomach.

I knew the material, though, and began speaking.  Something great happened: although I was very nervous, I began speaking and did just fine.  My anxiety lessened dramatically and I gave answers in a calm but effective manner.

Now I am not providing this example to show off. Rather, I want to illustrate that when we are required to do something, because of one situation or another, we often do much better than anticipated and nothing drastic happens. 

Furthermore, because we were not able to “wriggle out” of the situation or back-out, we face the situation head on and do just fine.  Often an anxiety sufferer will avoid many situations where he or she would have done just fine.  Susan Nolen-Hoeksema of Yale University defines rumination as the tendency to passively think about the meaning, origins, and consequences of our negative emotions.¹

This process of rumination will naturally lead to some folks trying to avoid situations because, as stated, rumination is a passive process and basically being totally passive can make one more passive and likely to do anything to challenge the feelings we have and moving forward in any proactive way.  You see Rumination is harmful regardless of who does it.²

As in the personal example I just provided: when we are put in a situation in which we need to act calmly and logically, we become calm and logical.  It’s obviously very helpful that we’re preoccupied with something else that we cannot focus on our anxiety.

Let me put this example another way. 

If you’ve ever heard a performer talk about the experience he or she had when acting or performing before a live audience, you’ll likely have heard it said that at first he or she was very nervous.  (Even Robin Williams has reported suffering from anxiety before a performance!)

Yet someone these performers make it through just fine and the anxiety subsides.  Why do you think this is so? This is because when performers need to focus on their lines and actions and they cannot focus on both their anxiety and their lines so the anxiety falls away. 

The above examples definitely relate to the techniques of CBT because the process involves us putting ourselves on the hot seat so to speak.  That is we are putting our own thoughts under the magnifying glass and through the process of analyzing them we’re finding the cognitive distortions (causing our anxiety) and then substituting healthier thoughts that allow us to see things in a more logical and realistic fashion (making us feel better). 

This also means that when you, as an anxiety sufferer, go through the process of CBT you are focusing on the CBT process, the logical process, not your anxiety.

1. Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1991).  Responses to depression and their effects on the duration of
depressive episodes.  Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100, 569-582
2. M. Anestis. Rumination: How just thinking about the problem can make the problem worse.
Retrieved November 6, 2010 from Psychotherapy Brown Bag website:
http://www.psychotherapybrownbag.com/psychotherapy_brown_bag_a/2009/03/rumination-how-just-thinking-about-the-problem-can-make-the-problem-worse.html