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About This Resource

What It Does

This resource talks about:

Anxiety triggers
Negative thoughts
How these components lead to anxiety

How It Helps

This resource can help you:

Understand how thoughts feed into anxiety
Break the anxiety cycle

This resource talks about:

Anxiety triggers
Negative thoughts
How these components lead to anxiety

This resource can help you:

Understand how thoughts feed into anxiety
Break the anxiety cycle
I enjoyed that I could perform this program at my own pace, so if I couldn't do it at the same time each week there was no issue.
There’s a beginning to every journey
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Communities of support
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This resource was adapted from the Strongest Families’ ICAN (Conquer Anxiety and Nervousness) program.

If you are interested in finding more resources like this one, including self-guided courses, webinars, peer-to-peer support groups, live counselling, mindfulness meditations, and more, you can create an account for free. You’ll also be able to complete a wellness assessment and track your progress towards your wellness goals.


The Three Parts of Anxiety

The anxiety cycle starts with a trigger that causes anxiety signs. These signs then lead to avoidance. A trigger can be an object, thought, feeling, situation, event, or experience.

An anxiety trigger can cause negative thoughts and behaviour patterns. People with anxiety often think about the worst possible outcome. These negative thoughts lead to more unpleasant anxiety signs and feelings. These, in turn, can lead to avoidance.

Being aware of your anxiety triggers is one of the first steps to conquering anxiety. Once you understand your anxiety triggers and signs, you can use coping skills to start breaking the anxiety cycle.

Take some time to think about your anxiety cycle.

Video Transcript

Triggers for me are social situations, things where there is expectation of me to stay and follow through with something, like eating at a restaurant with friends, going to get groceries, flying on an airplane, things where I can’t leave easily. And I would start to have thoughts like “what if I feel sick when I’m there?”, “what if I get sick while I’m there?”, “what will people think if I start acting like this?”, “What will people think if I leave?” A lot of what if, what if, what if? And that would lead to physical signs, a big one for me is feeling sick, that sweaty clammy feeling you know with your hands, breathing- oh my gosh my breathing changes into that short, shallow, panicky breath and all of these physical signs would take over and I would end up acting by leaving a situation. Abandoning my cart in the grocery store and going, by avoiding-not flying anywhere, not going out to restaurants with friends. And so, I knew this cycle had to stop, I knew that leaving made me feel a little bit better but then I couldn’t do it the next time and it was really limiting my life. So, I started to use the relaxation skills from the program and pairing them with small steps like making an exposure plan, which is something that you will do. So think about your anxiety cycle and think about what you are going to do to break it.