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Mental Gymnastics refers to the act of doing a lot of thinking, often about complex and complicated topics.

Thinking about anxiety as Mental Gymnastics can help externalize it and make it easier to see the cycle.

Mindfulness is the antidote to anxiety; it takes trial and error to find what activities work best for you.

This post is about anxiety, which is something we all experience at some point in our lives to different degrees. Anxiety is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Much of my work with clients experiencing anxiety involves, on one hand, an examination of the possible outcomes of anticipated events, and on the other hand, the physical and emotional ways the inner turmoil that the anticipation of these events can cause.

Anxiety can be characterized by runaway thoughts. You just can’t stop thinking about anticipated events, and the idea that they could go badly causes this inner turmoil. In session, a client might list several different ways things could go bad at the big work event tomorrow. It’s my job as a therapist to avoid getting into a back-and-forth about these thoughts. Friends and loved ones might react to this kind of discussion with........

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