PREVIOUS PROGRAM CALLS WEEK 2 

Download Workbook ENGLISH
Download Cahier de travail FRENCH

Download Workbook ENGLISH
Download Cahier de travail FRENCH

Homework
Download Monitoring the Three Components of Anxiety ENGLISH
Download Évaluation des trois composante de l’anxiété FRENCH (coming)

Share inside the Private Telegram Group.

The Three Components of Anxiety

These symptoms are common for people suffering anxiety. And they are broken down into 3 categories that make up the 3 components of anxiety:

• Physiological
• Cognitive
• Behavioural

Physiological Component of anxiety:

• Includes bodily feelings and sensations, like racing or pounding heart (heart palpitations)
• Shakiness
• Tingling in the fingers or toes
• Dizziness

Cognitive Component of anxiety: 

• Cognitive means thoughts and attention

Example: Edna thought she would die; she was trapped; she was suffocating

Addressing the cognitive component of anxiety is extremely important in treating anxiety disorders. 

What we tell ourselves has a greater impact on how we react or feel. We’ll be spending a lot of time in treatment looking at the types of thoughts we have when we are anxious. 

Behavioural component of anxiety:

• Is ‘what do you do when you are anxious’
• There are 3 types:
  1. Nervous behaviours
  2. Escape /avoidant behaviours
  3. Coping behaviours

Downward Spiral of Anxiety

The strength of the 3 components of anxiety will vary from person to person, and even from situation to situation. 

However, despite the strength of the three components of anxiety, all three components are present to some extent when someone is anxious. 

And all three components affect each other, which can increase the intensity of the anxiety episode. 

Treatment Components of Anxiety

Now that you understand a little better what anxiety is and how it affects you, we’ll go over anxiety treatment and how the different parts of it will work to break the negative spiral of anxiety. 

Education and Self-Monitoring

This first part of what we’ve been covering is education and self-monitoring. This part focuses on teaching you a little about anxiety and anxiety disorders. This helps make sure that we are all speaking the same language. And many people find that once they understand their anxiety difficulties, it helped reduce anxiety. 

Specific Cognitive Restructuring

By the time we are done this 6 weeks, and you’ve done the homework, you’ll be able to master this treatment component. This is a set of skills designed to help identity and reevaluate the ways of thinking and interpreting situations that are contributing to the fears. The other part of this treatment component is designed to help break the downward spiral by working against the cognitive component of anxiety. We carefully analyze your thoughts as they relate to your specific fears. Then you learn strategies on how to help you rationally examine all the evidence about whether or not something is dangerous.  

•  Graduated Exposure

This isn’t covered in this course, but is covered in Unlearn Anxiety. Exposure means facing the things you fear. It may sound scary, but I teach you a few techniques to help you successfully complete the exposures. We start off with easier things and then gradually build up based on your successes. Exposure is a powerful technique because it works on all three components of anxiety. 

• Generalized Cognitive-Restructuring

A lot of research shows that people with anxiety disorders don’t just have negative thoughts or interpretations of things they fear. People with anxiety disorders tend to show these thinking patterns in quite a few areas of their lives. The anxious style is important because we believe that such general negative ways of thinking may increase the changes of your same fears returning or new fears developing. At the end of Unlearn Anxiety, we focus on developing a more rational and less anxious view of the world.