Let me start by saying that any tips you read on the internet are not a replacement for therapy.

That’s not because they’re useless, or unhelpful. They can be incredibly helpful.

It’s just that any mental health related tips you read aren’t going to be tailored to you, they’re easier to ignore than someone who you have to chat to every week, and they don’t offer the same kind of support as an actual real-life person can in a one-to-one session.

Study says a short ‘awe-inspiring’ walk once a week can dramatically improve mood

But waiting lists for therapy are long. Medication doesn’t fix everything.


I’m incredibly lucky that after months of waiting, I’m now midway through my prescribed CBT sessions.



The help I’ve received so far has been brilliant, and I’d really like to share it with other people – people who aren’t ready to ask for help yet, are waiting for therapy and need support in the meantime, or who are considering CBT and aren’t really sure what to expect.

So, again, these tips aren’t a replacement for therapy. But they’re what I’ve been recommended as part of CBT, I’ve found them helpful, and hopefully they’ll be helpful for anyone else who’s struggling and needs techniques to deal with anxiety while they’re waiting to get professional help.

1. Record your anxiety

When you’re feeling anxious, when you have a panic attack, when you’re feeling low, take a moment to write down what’s going on.

I was told to draw four columns, titled: situation, feelings, thoughts, behaviour.

Situation is as simple as what’s going on around you. You don’t need to analyse what’s triggered your feelings at this point. Just write down the situation you’re in so you can look at it later.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Feelings can be physical or emotional. Maybe your heart’s racing, maybe you’re feeling panicky. Write it down.

For thoughts, is best to be specific. If you’re feeling panicky, what’s your brain telling you? Worried? What about? Be as specific as you can.

In the behaviour column write down how you’ve dealt with the negative feelings and thoughts. Have you tried to ignore them? Did you escape the situation? Did you lash out? Did you shut down?

Writing all of this down is helpful for a bunch of reasons. It helps you to calm down and process things (writing things out is always cathartic), and it makes you question exactly what’s going on in your brain and body – beyond the standard ‘I feel anxious’ response.

But also, once you’ve done this for a week or so, you’ll be able to recognise patterns in both triggers and behaviours.

And once you’ve learned your patterns, you can work on fixing them.

2. Look at the facts

One of the worksheets I’ve been given (there are a LOT of worksheets in CBT. Be prepared. Get some nice pens), the negative thoughts and feelings chart has a different setup, that works on changing your emotions instead of just recording them.



This one has: situation/trigger, feelings (both physical and emotional), unhelpful thoughts/images, facts that support this unhelpful thought, facts that provide evidence against this unhelpful thought, more balanced and realistic alternative perspective, and outcome/re-rated emotion.

Essentially, this means that after recording what you’re going through, you have to look at the facts.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

So let’s say, like me, you worry a lot about getting fired, and you’re in an anxiety spiral. You’re obsessing over a little mistake you made and are convinced you’re getting the sack.

The facts that support this would be that you’ve made a mistake. But there are probably more facts that don’t support this – you’re good at your job, other people have made similar mistakes and people have understood, you dealt with the mistake quickly.

Once you’ve looked at the facts rationally, you’ll have a more balanced perspective, and you’ll likely feel a little less panicked as a result. Hooray.

Here’s a copy of that worksheet, if you fancy trying it.

3. Ask yourself how you’d talk to a friend in the same situation

Anxious people tend to be hard on themselves.

We tell ourselves we’re sh*t, we catastrophise, and we never give ourselves the same level on understanding we’d give a friend.

When you’re facing a problem or your brain’s telling you nasty stuff, ask yourself how you’d respond if a friend was saying what your mind is telling you.

You’d probably be a lot more reassuring. You’d tell them what’s happening isn’t the end of the world. You’d be a little kinder.


Be your own friend. You don’t deserve to be spoken to like crap, even when it’s coming from your own brain.

4. Accept that anxiety will happen

Chatting to my therapist, I realised that a lot of my anxiety is about being anxious.

I’m so scared of obsessive thoughts and having panic attacks that I panic more, working myself up and trying to escape the situation before I actually feel uncomfortable.

My therapist advised me to work on realising that a panic attack or a bout of obsessive thoughts isn’t the end of the world. If it happens, it happens, and it’ll pass.

Don’t work yourself up about your own anxiety. Try to be in the moment and let any panic wash over you and pass, rather than worrying about what it means and what everyone else thinks.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

5. View your anxiety as an outside observer

This goes along with tip four.

View your patterns of anxiety as though you’re a scientist analysing a subject. Any negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are all evidence you can analyse, so you can work on doing things differently.

This way of viewing things gives you a little distance and makes negative emotions less terrifying.

If you end up having a panic attack, it’s not a bad thing – it’s evidence you’re gathering for further analysis.

6. Schedule your downtime

One of my patterns is that when I’m busy at work, anxiety, obsessive worries, and depressive thoughts rarely come on to my radar because I’m focused on other things. I’m distracted from my own brain and I feel like I have a purpose – there’s no room in there for my brain to tell my I’m rubbish or that I left my door unlocked.


It’s when I get home and haven’t got rigid plans that my brain takes over.

I’ll spend hours in bed sobbing, telling myself horrible, awful things, or obsessing over home invasion and house-fires. I’ll worry that I’m wasting my time, I’ll panic over the fact that I can’t sleep, and I generally descend into a pit of stress, depression, and anxiety. It’s not great.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Before CBT, my method for dealing with this was to try to stay as busy as possible so I’d avoid having to go home and be alone with my brain. I’d stay late at work. I’d make plans even when I really should sleep.

My therapist advised me that instead, I just need to create some structure to my downtime, to make sure I know what I’m doing, and I can’t spend hours doing nothing but hating myself.

So I’ve scheduled my evenings hour by hour in my planner.

Now I know that when I come home, I’ll do household stuff like tidying, cooking dinner, and doing laundry. For thirty minutes I’ll have ‘worry time’ (I’ll get into that in a bit). I’ll have forty minutes of admin and work stuff. Then I have an hour to relax, read a book, or watch TV before getting ready for bed and preparing for the day ahead.

Just having that schedule makes me feel busy even when I’m not. It means I can’t spend hours in bed, because I have set things to do. It sounds silly, but it’s hugely helpful, and being able to tick off simple things like tidying up and washing mugs makes me feel accomplished when I’d usually be beating myself up for lying in bed doing nothing.

7. Make times you know will be stressful as easy for yourself as you possibly can

I know that my mornings tend to be stressful.

I oversleep, I panic about what to wear, and I’ll rush out of the door without taking in the knowledge that yes, I’ve turned off all the switches in my house and no, I didn’t not leave the door unlocked.

I can help myself out by making sure I get enough sleep, choosing an outfit the night before, and giving myself a little bit more time to get ready in the morning. Easy.

I know that social events can be difficult.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for metro.co.uk)

So I can tell a friend that I’m feeling anxious, work out a plan of action if I feel panicky (usually that’ll just be giving myself permission to leave the area, be alone for a bit, and come back), and establish security so I’ll feel more comfortable (like making sure trains are running, having enough money on me, having a snack in case my blood sugar drops).

It’s about knowing when situations are triggering, working out what would be helpful, and putting these little things into place.

8. Set up worry time

Okay, so this one might sound counterintuitive, but bear with me.

If you’re a worrier, set a time in your planner that you have dedicated to worrying. Try to make sure it’s not right before you go to bed, as you’ll end up staying awake all night obsessing.

Then, throughout the day, when you feel a worry pop into your head, write it down.

You’re not allowed to worry about it throughout the day. You’ve written it down, and now you can worry about it later, in designated worry time.

This means you’re not dismissing your worries. You’re accepting them, acknowledging them, but refusing to allow them to disrupt your day – they’re only allowed to be thought about during worry time.

By the time worry time comes around, the day’s worries often don’t feel like a big deal.

But even if they still do, that’s fine. You’ve got permission to worry, and obsess, and ponder. But once the time is up, you’re done worrying and have to get on with other things.

No, this probably won’t completely stop you from anxious thoughts throughout the day, but it’ll help to stop you spiralling. Always handy.

This article is part of Getting Better, a weekly series about my journey through getting help with my mental health. You can read all previous Getting Better posts here, and check back next Monday for an update on how everything’s going.

Chat with me on Facebook about all things mental health if you fancy, but, obviously, I am not a therapist or expert of any sort – just someone going through not-so-great stuff, mentally. Let’s get better together.

MORE: Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: What is it? And what’s it like to have CBT?

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