Status Updates From Overcoming Unwanted Intrusi...

Anticipatory anxiety is the what-if before the what-if. It causes you to project into the future in an attempt to prepare yourself for the next unwanted thought. You hope they do not come, and you are upset when they do. The result is that you keep oriented toward the future, pay very little attention to the present, and keep your body and mind sensitized.

When you deliberately invite these thoughts, you do not give them the power to waylay your life.

5A's:
1. attitude of acceptance
2. Assign accurate assessment
3. Active allowance of awareness and affect
4. Avoid avoidances - always attempt approach
5. Action: advance activities anyways

Fearful feelings go from "they are so uncomfortable that I find them intolerable" to "they are uncomfortable but tolerable." The goal is to feel that you can tolerate the anxiety better as opposed to eliminating it completely. It is your inability to tolerate unwanted intrusive thoughts that keeps them going. Getting over your fears is allowing yourself to experience them.