Mental Health Guides

Before we get into it, I want to walk you through what anxiety actually looks like, how it shows up in your day to day, why it doesn’t just go away, and what real progress can look like if you address it. If your mind never shuts off, you’re constantly overthinking everything, and you’re exhausted from trying to keep it all together, you’re not alone. A lot of people experiencing anxiety don’t realize that’s what it is. They think it’s just their personality. They think they

When anxiety feels overwhelming, it can be hard to understand what is actually happening or where to start. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) offers a simple, practical framework for understanding anxiety and changing how it impacts daily life. One of the most helpful tools used in CBT is a basic diagram  that works for both adults and children. It is simple, but very powerful. Here is how it works and why it helps. Every Emotion Has Three Parts CBT begins with a core idea:

Exposure and Response Prevention, often called ERP, does more than help anxiety improve over time. It changes how the brain responds to fear. To understand this, it helps to look at the anxiety cycle and how ERP interrupts it. The Old Anxiety Pattern Let’s use contamination OCD as an example. Imagine touching a doorknob. Anxiety rises immediately because the brain has learned, inaccurately, that touching a doorknob is dangerous. Once anxiety appears, the brain pushes for reli