the unreal In this virtual world we feel as anxious and frightened as we would if our fear was based on something really happening However in reality nothing terrible is going on and there may be little if any chance our feared scenarios will ever happen There are a number of biases all prone to that intensify anxiety Familiarizing yourself with these in will help you catch exaggerated or inaccurate thought patterns Here are a few of the more common Things are all good or all you are perfect or a failure If something negative happens in one situation it means it will happen in all future similar situations You look to the future with sweeping negativity and forecast disaster instead of more realistic possibilities Applying a fixed global label on yourself or others without including any context a loser bad inadequate a burden and You have rigid expectations for how you should or must act and when these unreasonable expectations met you forecast horrendous consequences Each time you successfully identify an error in thinking your anxiety willdecrease because able to see the situation at hand more realistically or at least entertain other possibilities DOWNWARD ARROW TECHNIQUE The downward arrow