What are the odds?
For anxious people their associated level of fear makes the possibility of a bad thing happening feel like a certainty to them. This emotional reasoning results in them miscalculating the odds of impending disaster.
One technique that helps people to deal with this distortion is to break the situation down and think about the likelihood of all the separate elements that have to be in place for the unwanted outcome to occur.
If you suffer from health anxiety you might feed your fear by constantly picturing yourself in the terminal stages of cancer. But in order for this image to become true what would have to be in place or what would have to be true? These are the necessary conditions of your belief:
- I would have to contract ...
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