Part 1: Anxiety Assessment — GAD-7

The GAD-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006) is a validated 7-item screening tool for generalized anxiety disorder. Complete this at the start and every 2-4 weeks to track your progress.

Part 2: Understanding Your Anxiety

Anxiety is maintained by three key processes: (1) threat overestimation — overestimating danger; (2) avoidance — which prevents disconfirmation of threat beliefs; and (3) safety behaviors — actions taken to reduce anxiety that inadvertently confirm danger.

Part 3: Worry Analysis

Borkovec (1994) distinguished between two types of worry:

Type 1 worry (current problems): Concerns about real, external situations that exist right now and could potentially be solved.

Type 2 worry (hypothetical situations): 'What if' worries about events that may never happen. These are not solvable because they are not real problems yet.

Part 4: Challenging Anxious Predictions

Anxiety involves two common errors: overestimating the probability of a negative outcome, and overestimating how catastrophic it would be.

Part 5: Grounding & Regulation Skills

When anxiety spikes, this technique uses sensory anchoring to bring attention into the present moment and interrupt the worry cycle.

Part 6: Interoceptive Awareness

Anxiety is a whole-body experience. Use the body map below to mark where you feel anxiety in your body. Awareness of physical anxiety cues is an important step in early intervention.