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Anxiety

57 techniques · 19 approaches
ACT
Expansion / Opening Up
Expansion / Opening Up
A core ACT acceptance technique. The client learns to create space around an unpleasant bodily sensation: noticing it, allowing it to be the…
ACT
Exposure + Values
Exposure + Values
The ACT version of exposure: not simply entering the feared situation, but entering while holding the value at the center. Values become the…
ACT
I Notice I'm Having the Thought
I Notice I'm Having the Thought
A core cognitive defusion technique in ACT. Adding the phrase "I notice I'm having the thought that.." creates distance between the thought…
ACT
Thanking Your Mind
Thanking Your Mind
A reframe of thinking as an attempt to help. Even intrusive or badly timed thoughts are framed as the mind trying to protect. The client lea…
ACT
Willingness Scale
Willingness Scale
A simple tool for assessing the client's willingness to experience uncomfortable sensations, thoughts or feelings in the service of values. …
Adlerian
Paradoxical Intention
Paradoxical Intention
The client is invited to deliberately intensify or bring on the symptom. When a person tries to do on purpose what they fear, fear loses its…
BRIEF
Exception Finding
Exception Finding
A technique for finding moments when the problem was absent or less intense. De Shazer assumed that a problem is never completely constant; …
CBT
Cognitive Distortions (Burns)
Cognitive Distortions (Burns)
Teaching clients to recognize common thinking errors such as all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, mind reading and discounting the posi…
CBT
Cognitive Rehearsal
Cognitive Rehearsal
Mental rehearsal of a difficult situation before it occurs. The client imagines the situation, practices coping thoughts and planned behavio…
CBT
Cognitive Restructuring
Cognitive Restructuring
A core CBT technique and the center of cognitive work. The therapist helps the client catch an automatic negative thought, examine its logic…
CBT
Decatastrophizing
Decatastrophizing
Work with catastrophizing by following the feared scenario through to the end. The therapist does not deny that something bad could happen; …
CBT
Downward Arrow Technique
Downward Arrow Technique
A technique for uncovering core beliefs by repeatedly asking, "If that were true, what would it mean to you?" Starting from a surface automa…
CBT
Relaxation Training
Relaxation Training
Systematic training in reducing physiological tension. Main methods include progressive muscle relaxation, diaphragmatic breathing and autog…
CBT
Systematic Desensitization
Systematic Desensitization
A gentler exposure method combining relaxation with gradual imagined contact with feared situations. The client first learns relaxation, the…
CBT
Thought Distancing / Defusion
Thought Distancing / Defusion
Creating distance between the person and their thoughts. A thought is not a fact; it is an event in the mind. The client moves from "I am a …
CBT
Thought Record
Thought Record
A written tool for structured analysis of automatic thoughts. It moves cognitive restructuring into homework. It can be used as a simple thr…
CFT
Calm/Safe Place Imagery
Calm/Safe Place Imagery
A CFT imagery technique for building an inner "anchor" of safety and calm. Unlike the EMDR version, it includes multisensory filling (sounds…
CFT
Compassionate Attention Training
Compassionate Attention Training
A specific form of attention training in CFT: the threat system automatically draws attention to the dangerous and the negative. Compassiona…
CFT
Compassionate Exposure
Compassionate Exposure
An adaptation of classical exposure in CFT: the client meets avoided situations, emotions, or memories from the position of the compassionat…
CFT
Soothing Rhythm Breathing (SRB)
Soothing Rhythm Breathing (SRB)
The basic bodily practice of CFT, aimed at activating the parasympathetic nervous system and the soothing/affiliative system. Slow diaphragm…
CFT
Tricky Brain Psychoeducation (Old Brain / New Brain)
Tricky Brain Psychoeducation (Old Brain / New Brain)
A key psychoeducational intervention of CFT. Gilbert uses the metaphor of the "old brain" (the limbic system — emotions, basic motives, thre…
DBT
ABC PLEASE
ABC PLEASE
A combined skill: ABC accumulates positive experience and resources; PLEASE looks after the physiological base. Together they lower overall …
DBT
Check the Facts
Check the Facts
A technique for distinguishing whether the intensity and the kind of an emotion fit the actual situation. If they do not — Opposite Action i…
DBT
Observe
Observe
Building the capacity to notice phenomena — thoughts, emotions, sensations, events — without trying to change them, stop them, or grab onto …
DBT
Opposite Action
Opposite Action
When the emotion does not fit the facts of the situation — do the action opposite to the urge that the emotion produces. Fear says "flee" — …
Deurzen
Anxiety as Existential Signal
Anxiety as Existential Signal
Van Deurzen sees anxiety not as a symptom to be removed but as a signal pointing to an important life choice or the need for change. Anxiety…
Deurzen
Temporal Orientation Exploration
Temporal Orientation Exploration
Van Deurzen uses Heidegger's concept of temporality: the human being exists at the same time in three temporal horizons (past–present–future…
EMDR
Butterfly Hug
Butterfly Hug
The client crosses their arms on their chest, the tips of the middle fingers placed under the collarbones, fingers pointing up toward the ne…
EMDR
Safe/Calm Place
Safe/Calm Place
The client builds a mental image of a place of complete safety — real, imagined, or a mix. The image is filled in with sensory detail: color…
Frankl
Self-Distancing through Humour
Self-Distancing through Humour
Humor is one of the modes of self-distancing — the human capacity to look at oneself from the outside. When the client can laugh at their sy…
Gestalt
Awareness Continuum
Awareness Continuum
For several minutes the client keeps answering the question "What are you noticing now?" — without interpretation, without "should be", only…
Gestalt
Here and Now
Here and Now
The main principle of Gestalt Therapy: bringing the past and the future into the present moment. Not "when I was a child, my mother.." but …
Gestalt
Paradoxical Theory of Change
Paradoxical Theory of Change
Arnold Beisser's theory: change happens not through the fight with the problem, but through full acceptance of what is. "Change happens when…
Gestalt
Rehearsal Technique
Rehearsal Technique
In session, the client plays through an upcoming event — a difficult conversation, negotiations, a conflict meeting. The therapist becomes t…
IFS
Working with a Manager Part
Working with a Manager Part
Managers are proactive Protectors who try to prevent an exile's pain from arising. They work constantly: they criticize, control, plan, plea…
ISTDP
Defense Restructuring
Defense Restructuring
A sequence for making defenses conscious, showing their cost, and helping the client replace automatic avoidance with emotional awareness.
ISTDP
Trial Therapy
Trial Therapy
The extended diagnostic-treatment session in which the therapist tests the client's response to pressure, anxiety regulation, and defense wo…
ISTDP
Triangle of Conflict
Triangle of Conflict
The core map of ISTDP: feeling activates anxiety; anxiety activates defense; defense blocks feeling and maintains symptoms.
ISTDP
Working with Somatization
Working with Somatization
Tracking physical symptoms back to anxiety, defense, and avoided feeling while maintaining medical caution and anxiety regulation.
Längle
Working with Coping Reactions
Working with Coping Reactions
Each of the four fundamental motivations, when blocked, generates predictable defensive reactions. The therapist recognizes the type of reac…
Längle
Working with FM1: Being in the World / Support and Acceptance
Working with FM1: Being in the World / Support and Acceptance
The first fundamental motivation is responsible for the basic feeling "I can be" — the presence of space, support, the acceptance of reality…
MBSR
Mindful Yoga 2 — Standing Postures
Mindful Yoga 2 — Standing Postures
Standing hatha yoga postures, performed in MBSR in the second half of the course. Includes Tadasana (mountain pose), bends, twists — all wit…
MBSR
Mountain Meditation
Mountain Meditation
A guided meditation: the participant pictures themselves as a mountain — mighty, rooted, still — while around them seasons, weather, day and…
MBSR
Sitting Meditation — Breath Awareness
Sitting Meditation — Breath Awareness
Sitting meditation with focus on the breath — the foundation of formal practice in MBSR. The participant sits in a posture of dignity, direc…
Morita
Vicious Cycle Analysis
Vicious Cycle Analysis
Helping the client see the mechanism of toraware: how fixation on a symptom strengthens the symptom, creating a self-sustaining cycle of suf…
REBT
Anti-Awfulizing / De-Catastrophizing
Anti-Awfulizing / De-Catastrophizing
A specialized form of disputing aimed at the belief "this is awful" (awfulizing). Ellis argued that "awful" logically means "worse than 100%…
REBT
Rational Emotive Imagery (REI)
Rational Emotive Imagery (REI)
An emotive technique developed by Maxie Maultsby and adapted by Ellis. The client vividly imagines the distressing situation, lets themselve…
REBT
Risk-Taking / In Vivo Desensitization
Risk-Taking / In Vivo Desensitization
A behavioral technique: the client performs an action they have been avoiding because of fear of failure, judgment, or discomfort. Ellis pre…
STPP
Anxiety-Provoking Technique (STAPP)
Anxiety-Provoking Technique (STAPP)
Sifneos's active use of anxiety as a motivator for insight and change in carefully selected clients.
STPP
Anxiety-Regulating Interventions
Anxiety-Regulating Interventions
Supportive and clarifying interventions that keep anxiety within a workable range so expressive psychodynamic work can continue.
STPP
Triangle of Conflict
Triangle of Conflict
Malan's map of internal conflict: wish or feeling activates anxiety, anxiety activates defense, and defense blocks the feeling while maintai…
Sandplay
Safe Space Building
Safe Space Building
The client creates a safe place in the sandbox — a resource image they can return to. Especially valuable in trauma and anxiety work.
Yalom
Death Awareness
Death Awareness
A conscious meeting with the fact of one's own finitude as a resource for reorientation: small grievances lose weight; what really matters b…
Yalom
Dereflection
Dereflection
The opposite of paradoxical intention: instead of amplifying attention on the symptom — a redirection of attention away, onto objects, peopl…
Yalom
Distinguishing Anxiety Types (May / Yalom)
Distinguishing Anxiety Types (May / Yalom)
Distinguishing neurotic anxiety (a signal of a concrete threat — real or imagined, requiring action) from existential anxiety (about the ver…
Yalom
Existential Isolation
Existential Isolation
Distinguishing existential isolation (I am fundamentally alone — no one will live my death for me, no one will be inside me) from interperso…
Yalom
Paradoxical Intention
Paradoxical Intention
The client deliberately intensifies the feared symptom instead of avoiding it: in panic — "I'll try to feel the maximum fear"; in insomnia —…
Materials are informational and educational and summarize publicly available scientific sources. They are not medical or psychological advice, are not intended for self-diagnosis or self-treatment, and do not replace consultation with a qualified professional.