If you pay attention to your anxious thoughts, you will notice that they tend to be loud, persistent, and aggressive. Imagine them as a running monologue incessantly repeating itself in the background, like a soundtrack that you neither chose nor desired to hear. The anxious statements may be general (“Something bad is going to happen”) or specific (“You are going to crash your car"). Either way, they disrupt the baseline of a normal day and cause you to feel worried, tense, and stressed.

Viewing anxious thoughts as inner statements allows us to meet them with statements of challenge. If anxious thoughts are statements promising danger, then contrary statements are those which instill a sense of safety. And this is the type of self-talk we can utilize to turn down the volume of our anxious monologues. The framework is simple; if the anxious thought is “I am in danger,” the thought that........

© Psychology Today