10 Effective CBT Techniques to Reduce Anxiety
Clinically reviewed by: Hailey Perez, LMFT
Everyone experiences anxiety sometimes, but an increasing number of people are finding it overwhelming. Even if you are not one of the 19 million Americans who suffer from an anxiety disorder, you may be finding yourself more anxious, leading to distress and emotional strain. Turmoil locally and abroad is only adding to the stresses of work, financial planning, and other responsibilities.
Many people assume that anxiety is just a part of their lives. However, with therapy, you can learn to manage and reduce anxiety. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of the most popular and effective anxiety treatments. By providing evidence-based, practical strategies, CBT helps you recognize that you do not need to be at the mercy of anxious thoughts.
We’re going to discuss the 10 most effective CBT techniques to reduce anxiety. But first, let’s take a quick look at what CBT is and how it helps.
What is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a talk therapy that eases distress primarily by addressing the thoughts that trigger or amplify difficult emotions. It is built on the principle that feelings, thoughts, and behaviors all impact one another. Therefore, if you change thought patterns associated with an issue, the feelings change too.
Although CBT begins like other talk therapies – with a discussion about your life, issues that you’re grappling with, and what you want to get out of therapy – you do not spend most of your sessions exploring your psyche. Rather, your therapist guides you through practical techniques to challenge negative thoughts and behaviors.
CBT techniques are not reserved for the therapist’s office. A CBT therapist will provide you with ‘homework’, recommending that you practice what you have learned between sessions. By the time you end your course of therapy, you not only feel less distress but have also begun to build habits to maintain and continue your growth journey.
Decades of academic studies have consistently supported CBT’s effectiveness in treating mood and anxiety disorders. Additionally, countless people with no diagnosed mental illness have benefited from CBT, learning to manage stress and anxiety common in our fast-paced culture.
If you’d like to learn more, take a look at our primer on the basics of CBT.
How Common is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a normal feeling that serves an important function. When at healthy levels, it ensures that you are careful when risks are present and consider problems that may arise in the future. But for many people, anxiety is present more often than necessary and at higher levels.
If anxiety is causing you distress on a day-to-day basis and making it difficult to function effectively, you may have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety is now hindering you instead of simply keeping you prepared.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses diagnosed. Almost 20% of Americans suffer from an anxiety disorder each year. More than 30% experience an anxiety disorder over the course of their lifetime.
Generalized anxiety disorder is the most common diagnosis, but other types of disorders are also prevalent. Social anxiety disorder makes it difficult for people to make friends and enjoy social activities, while people with panic disorder experience panic attacks that can be extremely distressing.
Many people without anxiety disorders nonetheless struggle with high anxiety sometimes. It may not be causing them difficulty in functioning effectively, but it still causes distress and impacts their quality of life. It can lead to avoidance of new experiences, risk aversion that slows career progression, and conflict avoidance in relationships, among other issues.
There are still many misconceptions about anxiety. To learn more about the topic, this resource on anxiety disorders has everything you need to know.
10 Common CBT Techniques to Reduce Anxiety
CBT provides practical techniques to reduce anxiety. Many of these can be used outside of therapy. The following are 10 of the most common daily CBT techniques for anxiety:
Cognitive Restructuring: This technique is at the core of CBT. It involves identifying unhelpful thoughts associated with anxiety and questioning them. Your therapist guides you to examine the evidence for and against each thought, helping you challenge their accuracy and validity. Then, you reframe them through a more realistic and positive lens.
Problem Solving: One of the reasons future thinking can cause distress is that it creates a sense of helplessness. However, many problems which seem overwhelming can be approached with confidence. In CBT, you can learn problem solving techniques for dealing with challenges that arise in day-to-day life. You build a sense of agency and reduce the associated anxiety.
Behavioral Experiments: Anxiety often generates fear around certain situations and activities. Talking to strangers, public speaking, and traveling are common examples of situations people avoid due to anxiety. This can materially impact a person’s quality of life. Behavioral experiments are when you gradually confront feared situations or activities. When all goes as planned, you build confidence. If things do not pan out perfectly, you learn that the consequences are not as bad as you thought and that you can handle them.
Behavioral Activation: It is not just avoiding feared situations that reinforces anxiety. If you are approaching life with negativity, you may start avoiding doing things that bring you meaning. Your life begins to revolve around situations that trigger anxiety, further amplifying the fear. This CBT technique helps you schedule and follow through with activities that bring pleasure and purpose.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Emotions are felt in the body. Anxiety tends to be expressed through tension, especially in the face, neck, shoulders, and chest areas. Progressive muscle relaxation is the practice of tensing muscle groups, one at a time, and releasing them. Tension that was already stored in those muscles also gets released.
Breath Work: Breathing exercises can also help reduce the tension caused by anxiety. When you feel anxious, your breathing becomes quicker and shallower. By focusing on taking slow, deep breaths, you can regulate your body’s stress response. It is a technique that can be used at any time to find some relief in the moment.
Mindfulness: Anxious thoughts take you out of the present moment. They may be situated in the past, such as a circumstance in which you fear you may have made a mistake. Or they can be about the future, such as what might go wrong. Mindfulness is a philosophy that brings you back to the present, teaching you how to live in the moment even when it is difficult. Through grounding exercises and meditation, it helps bring you out of the grip of anxious thoughts.
Journaling: With CBT, you work to gradually change the way you think. Journaling helps you keep track of your progress, reminding you of which thoughts and beliefs commonly cause you anxiety, as well as providing clarity on how you can proceed next. It may also become a source of encouragement as you reflect on how far you have come over the course of therapy.
Exposure Therapy: Most known for its usefulness in treating PTSD and phobias, exposure therapy is the practice of gradually exposing yourself to feared situations or stimuli. This is done in a safe space with the support of the therapist, who can help calm the person if they start to feel overwhelmed. Exposure therapy often begins with visualizing the scenario before progressing to physical exposure to the trigger. Learn more about this popular treatment for anxiety disorders with our guide to exposure therapy.
Assertiveness Training: People who avoid confrontations due to anxiety may neglect their own needs, struggling to assert their boundaries. In assertiveness training, the person learns strategies to regulate anxiety during confrontations, how to communicate with confidence and tact, and what to do when experiencing pushback.
Manage Your Anxiety with Octave
If you have been struggling with anxiety, CBT can help. Through your therapy journey, you will learn practical and effective techniques to manage your anxiety.
Use Octave to connect with therapists who are experts in CBT. You are guaranteed a therapist who is fully licensed and has thousands of hours of experience. They have been vetted through background checks as well as interviews with a panel of experts.
What to Look for in a CBT Therapist for Anxiety
Every CBT therapist will be able to provide the tools necessary to reduce anxiety. They will work with you to set goals and map out the steps you will take to get there.
That being said, when choosing a CBT therapist for anxiety, it is still important to find someone who you feel you can connect with. Therapy is most effective when you build a trusting relationship with your therapist. It is in a healing and comforting space that you are best set to express yourself with authenticity and vulnerability.
Anxiety disorders are extremely common, affecting almost one in five Americans. If you are struggling with anxiety, CBT is a practical therapy modality that can effectively reduce anxiety within a fixed time. It provides a toolbox of techniques that you will learn to use on a daily basis, changing the way you think and improving your quality of life.
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