Anxiety Disorders can be distilled down to two words: What if….(insert worst case scenario)? No one has ever come to see me and asked, “What if everyone loves me and thinks that I am great?” It is always worst case scenario after worst case scenario. Believe me – I hear so many of them that I even start to wonder when something bad will happen. But, in the 14 years of practicing Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, almost no one has had their worst thing happen to them, and those that did realized that it was nowhere near as bad as they thought it was going to be. So, anticipation is almost always worse than reality.

Therefore, think about things that you assume will go awfully wrong and then ask yourself why it has not happened yet or why it does not happen to everyone else (and why are they all not afraid of it either?). And, if it has happened, you did handle it. So, work on giving yourself credit for what you have been through instead of fearing it happening again.