Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety Quotes

“I’m having an anxious thought, I’m feeling a whoosh of fear, and my heart is beating”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Instead, moving toward the uncomfortable feelings, embracing them, and surrendering to them is the way out of this anxiety trap.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“while trying something new is never a guarantee of success—the act of not trying is sure to guarantee failure.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“We start every new experience as a beginner. Remember that the most expert, most self-assured individual you know started out as a rank beginner. Almost always, beginners feel awkward, anxious, and uncomfortable and yet proceed to make choices along with or in spite of these emotions. And, if you wait to proceed until your awkwardness or anxiety dissolves, you might wait forever!”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Too much thinking is not solved by more thinking.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“anticipatory anxiety is the expectation of distress and the push toward avoidance that occurs before you encounter the situations or experiences you fear in real life.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Anticipatory anxiety is a powerful motivator of avoidance because it specifically focuses your attention on the negative things that could possibly happen.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Keep in mind that anticipatory anxiety varies widely in the way it appears and looks different in different settings. It can present as phobic avoidance, fear of being alone, performance anxiety, or insomnia. It can look like the elaborate planning that someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder must do to avoid encountering contamination or the agony that a person with illness anxiety goes through waiting for test results. It can be the haunting fear of the return of an unwanted intrusive thought.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“If you look closely, you will see that your anticipatory anxiety increases with indecision and decreases with each decision you make. Interestingly, this is true whether your decision is to avoid or, conversely, if your decision is to firmly commit to action no matter what.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“You say to yourself, I can’t back out of this. I will just HAVE to do it. No matter how awful I feel, I’m gonna get through this. This is going to be terrible. Unfortunately, most of the time, this is a formula for ensuring that anticipatory anxiety wins the battle. One of two things will happen. Either, as you get closer to the actual event, your anxiety skyrockets, and you decide to cancel anyway. Or, you do go, but your experience leading up to the event is such an ordeal that, no matter how it goes or how you do, the misery of anticipation becomes vividly embedded in your memory. And your experience of anticipatory anxiety usurps the memory of the actual event, so you feel no better the next time.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“The person is stuck in the thinking about, the researching about, or the talking about. It doesn’t matter because the end result is still inaction. No amount of discussion, thinking, or research results in an actional decision. Too much thinking is not solved by more thinking.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“When focused on being certain that you are making the right choice, what might seem like a simple choice can become overwhelming. In the end, you may lose options as others decide for you.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Stickiness tends to make thoughts seem important even when they are not and to demand attention and response to the inner workings of your mind when no response is really needed.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Your mind’s stickiness can also be worse when you are very hungry, lonely, angry about something, or working too hard and not sleeping much. And Knowing that you are more sensitized at a particular moment can help you understand what is happening. It can help you remember that your sense of danger is exaggerated and that your feelings and thoughts are not facts or accurate predictions merely because they are strong, repetitive, loud, and sticky.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Avoidance makes it impossible to check out your what-if thoughts and imagined catastrophes. It eliminates the possibility of learning that your anticipatory anxiety might be an inaccurate predictor of the upcoming event.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Thoughts do not change probabilities in the real world. While worrying about someone might make you feel like you are doing something to protect them, in reality you are only training your brain to reinforce a cycle of worry.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Psychologists call this myth “thought-action fusion” (Amir et al. 2001; Salkovskis 1985) or “magical thinking.” The fact is that a thought is not a message about what is going to happen. Similarly, a thought is not a prediction or warning of an awful future action or occurrence.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking

“Myth: Thoughts that repeat are important. The importance or meaning of a thought has little to do with how much it repeats. Thoughts tend to repeat if they are resisted or pushed away. Any thought that you attempt to squash is more likely to keep repeating, like Don’t think about that itchy spot, or Stop noticing the piece of food in her teeth.”
― Sally M. Winston, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking