Download This Free Workbook on Anxiety and Coronavirus
If you, like me, suffer from anxiety disorder , this whole pandemic situation has probably made life especially difficult for you. And with all the uncertainty and lack of control over almost everything right now, even those who usually don’t have anxiety problems feel it. Regardless of which category you fall into, chances are that you need a little help right now, especially if that help is free .
Several years ago, my therapist recommended that I purchase and use an anxiety workbook . It was full of activities and exercises to help me understand the root causes of my anxiety and help me rethink my thinking patterns as a coping mechanism. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been revising my workbook to remind myself of what’s really going on in my brain as a strategy for getting me to feel more in control of things.
I recently came across a free downloadable workbook specifically dedicated to dealing with anxiety during the coronavirus outbreak. Written and published by The Wellness Society , an organization that seeks to bridge the gap between people without access to traditional therapy. The study guide was created by mental health professionals to address the unique challenges of life during this pandemic.
The study guide contains several sections with a variety of exercises, including planning an information diet, understanding your areas of influence, learning to use complex thoughts as a strategy, and coming up with distractions that actually work. Many tools are very similar to those described in my book on general anxiety.
Exercises that stimulate thought processes have been the most helpful for me. They work by forcing you to question beliefs that you may think are absolutely true, but in fact are not and are probably the main sources of your anxiety. For example, I have a problem to catastrophize – or assume that the worst possible scenario will happen in any given situation, and then convince myself that this is inevitable. This is a useless way of thinking at any time, but especially during a global pandemic.