Is that what you’d tell a friend who’d failed an interview? These three areas – thoughts, sensations, behaviours – act together to make up an emotion. Indeed, in a way, your body does get bored. Examples of common Thinking Errors in anxiety are “Fortune Telling” (thinking that you know what is going to happen in the future) and “Catastrophising” (assuming the worst possible scenario will come to pass): “I will fail the interview and never get a good job” or “I will pass out and my colleagues will laugh”. It’s almost as if you get bored with being anxious! And less adrenalin means less anxious physical sensations. Many people even find them pleasurable – hence roller-coasters and bungee-jumping! Safety Behaviours prevent you from learning to cope with your anxious sensations, and Avoidance Behaviours prevent you from challenging your anxious thoughts. All of us feel anxious from time to time and in certain situations. Does everyone who fails an interview end up on the scrap heap? In my experience, it is helpful to focus more on anxious thoughts when the anxiety is a result of thinking about a future event such as exams or an interview. How do you know that you will fail the interview? What if you do happen to fail the interview? Anxious behaviours are the behaviours that we consciously choose to do (or not to do!) as a result of our anxiety – they are NOT the physical sensations of anxiety (these aren’t under our immediate control). You’ll get the whole lot – feeling sick, feeling faint, feeling that your chest will explode, your mind is mind racing, ” I’ve got to get out of here!”, your legs seeming about to take you away anyway etc. But if you just stick with it – not fighting it but just “experiencing it” – you’ll find things start to change. There are so-called “Safety Behaviours”, such as sitting down or grabbing hold of something when you feel anxious and dizzy. People who experience severe and frequent bouts of anxiety often exhibit what CBT therapists call “Thinking Errors”. What will happen? And we can, to an even greater extent, control or decide how to behave. This means that if our physical sensations of anxiety increase, then typically we will experience more frequent and pressing anxious thoughts, and the desire (indeed desperation) to engage in anxious behaviours will increase. These behaviours seem to work in the short term – you’re fear of passing out diminishes, and you completely avoid the anxiety of the works do. Will your colleagues really laugh?