Stress Center Peer Support

After this Program, it'll be helpful to remember that I cause my anxiety. Since I decide how I react, I'll choose not to succumb to my feelings of anxiety and depression. The feelings may still be there, but this is a knee-jerk reaction and the remedy is simply practicing my new skills. I've been lo...

I am having anxiety for finishing the Program and while I've been distracted with moving these past few weeks, I've put off the last two lessons. I continue to review Sessions and write in my journal but I've taken a few weeks to see how I can handle my anxiety without the tapes and homework. I've h...

Looking forward to even just one event in my day can mean the difference between obsessing about my schedule or lack thereof and a healthy state of mind. I'm learning that it really doesn't matter what I have planned, it's my attitude toward these "events" that makes the difference. My willingness t...

Session 11 has been helpful because it's shown me how to face a decision about medication head on. I was either afraid to start meds or afraid to come off them. It's the not knowing that I'm afraid of because it allows me to "what if". I'm no longer afraid to to start meds even after this Program if...

I am beginning to see how my justified beliefs maintain my anxiety and depression. I see how I've used others to not only criticize, but to use in contempt of my own irrational justification. It's easier to do rather than take a hard look and challenge what I believe. This is reacting. This is blame...

I began my treatment for social phobia with Effexor. I worked my way up to 75 mg daily and took the drug for at least five years. I felt that I would be on the drug for the rest of my life because I was afraid to come off it. While on the drug, I was more sociable but I was only more tolerant of soc...

Often, I think about how I sabotage myself. I don't ever seem to make the right decision. I also worry when I have ridiculous, hurtful thoughts concerning strangers or how I can never say the right thing. Then I try to figure out where exactly I let things go wrong, or how I could allow myself to th...

When I was younger, it seemed easier for me to live in the moment. How do we lose this perspective? I look back to the anxious episodes in my life and can plainly see that guilt and worry led me there. In turn, because I deemed these thoughts powerful and manifested these behaviors into habits. It's...

by Randy J. Paterson This is a great book for hands on exercises in being assertive as well as understanding the techniques, negative or positive, we use to communicate with each other. Like the Program, the Workbook uses cognitive therapies to undo our passive, aggressive, or even passive-aggressiv...

Worrying is my forte. I'm really good at it. Unfortunately, I've missed out on some important life events because of anticipatory anxiety. It's not even what will happen, as I am beginning to understand and question "What's the worst that can happen?", it's that I won't be able to handle my feelings...