Four Questions to Help You Turn Off Your Anxious Autopilot
A therapist explains how to live a more thoughtful and less frantic life
Anxious people often come to therapy for answers. But as a therapist, I’m more interested in questions. Questions engage the front part of our brain, the part that solves problems and set goals. They direct us away from our fight-or-flight response, the anxious autopilot that chooses calmness at any cost.
If anxiety is running your life, it can be useful to have a set of questions that help tease out your best thinking about how to navigate the day. Here are four questions I ask my therapy clients to help them dial down their anxious autopilot and live a more thoughtful life.
- If you’re not paying attention to your anxiety, what will happen?
You can’t change change anxious behaviors if you are unable to define them. So sit down and describe to yourself (in writing or out loud) what it looks like when you’re stressed and running on autopilot.
Anxious autopilot could look like:
- Avoiding everyone who makes you anxious.
- Imagining everyone is upset with you.
- Randomly attacking tasks without any plan.
- Focusing on how others need to…
