O'Sullivan Counseling Blog

On the surface, reassurance seeking seems harmless. In reality, it’s anxiety’s fuel. Getting reassurance that a fear won’t come true is like a drug: We need more of it to get the same level of calming effects as before. It’s important to remember, reassurance seeking is a form of avoidance and reinforces the anxiety cycle. Anxiety will lie and tell … Read More

When automatic worry thoughts appear, it can be helpful to challenge them. Most of the time the thoughts are distorting reality, working off flawed assumptions the brain is making, and overestimating threats. Bringing some logic into the equation can be helpful. However, when our goal is to become 100% certain about a worry thought (e.g., “I need to know for … Read More

When we have weird or scary thoughts or body sensations, it’s common to believe, “I’m out of control.” In a sense, “I’m out of control” is accurate, but not in the usual way we understand this phrase. It’s accurate in the sense that we don’t have control over our automatic thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. It’s nice to believe we … Read More

Anticipating likely future events is crucial for our survival. Without it our lives would be a mess. “What if” thinking helps us to avoid predictable, negative outcomes. “What if” thinking is a protector. However, “What if” thinking often goes far beyond what’s likely to occur and tries to figure out all possible negative events. Our mind quickly starts to mistake possible for likely and … Read More

Contrary to the depiction of therapy in movies and TV, gaining insight into our past doesn’t necessarily resolve our present challenges. Imagine seeing a small child run into the road. It’s not very helpful to first try to figure out where the child’s parents are and convince them to be more attentive. Instead, it’s best to quickly stop traffic and … Read More

It’s easy to feel trapped when anxious: “I know this isn’t dangerous, why do I keep feeling this way then?” It’s confusing. Shame is common. “My brain must be broken.” An Anxious brain doesn’t mean the brain is broken, just at some point it learned an unhelpful lesson. It simply needs to learn a more helpful lesson. It’s normal for … Read More

Short-term comfort is hard to resist. We’re naturally drawn toward it. Add anxiety screaming “danger!!” and it becomes even harder to resist. Feels reckless to resist. The more we seek comfort though, away from the “danger,” the more we reinforce anxiety’s false alarms. We inadvertently teach our brain to continue sending us alarm bells in similar situations. This is the … Read More

Anxiety loves to keep us distracted by keeping our focus on the external “threat.” It thrives here. It also thrives off staying vague. For example, the brain perceiving that getting up on stage in front of a large audience is a threat (maybe the most common fear). The vague fear might be: “I’ll get nervous!” It’s common to just stop … Read More

It’s tempting to pursue the goal of having no fear. “I’ll start giving presentations once I feel confident” “I’ll ask him out once I don’t feel afraid” It’s simply not obtainable though. Instead, we need to act, driven by our values, despite fear and anxiety screaming at us not to. Anxiety is a paradox. The harder we try to get … Read More

In many ways, we all have three brains: The Child Brain – highly reactive, automatic, not conscious, not logical, doesn’t learn through language. Only learns through experience. It’s the threat detection system. It’s perfect for keeping us safe and alive. However, it constantly overreacts. In fact, it’s wrong most of the time. At the same time, we’re lucky to have … Read More