Behavioral activation is a useful and often used tool in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy because it deals with both the cognitive and behavioral aspects.It helps a person to understand his/her situation and come to terms with their daily activities which may be impeding them from leading a good and normal life.In this method, individuals are taught how to solve their issues, cope with the different problems they are faced with and try to regain better control over their lives.It causes patients to immediately face their problems with the use of cognitive and behavioral interventions.This method teaches individuals how to have an active role when extremely difficult decisions.As a result of repeated disappointments or chronic mood problems, some individuals may prefer to take the back seat and become passive during tough times.Likewise, just because you spend a month or more working on your feelings of anxiety, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t still going to get a little anxious every now and again.Rather, it is important to take the new anxiety in your stride and see how severe it ends up being before you get too stressed out about it, possibly causing yourself far more mental strife than you would have had you just taken the small amount of anxiety in your stride in the first place.You may also find it helpful to verbally acknowledge how you are feeling in the moment and how you expect those feelings to change once the anxiety has passed.For example, you might say, Currently I feeling a little anxious, which is natural given the situation.Not only will focusing on the anxiety being over actually make the end come on sooner, it will also stop you from reacting poorly to the anxiety at the moment.Feelings always shift, and keeping this fact in mind may be enough to push things in the right direction.While Generalized Anxiety Disorder is considered a mental illness, anxiety itself is a useful survival tool when doled out in moderation.The truth of the matter is that your anxiety response only kicks in because your body is responding to the current situation as if there was a threat.Regardless of whether or not the threat is real, a perceived threat is enough to set off the response.As such, one way to train your anxiety to be selective effectively is to give it the type of feedback it understands so that it knows it is not currently needed.Anxiety takes its cues from what you do along with a basic type of emotional pattern matching, which means that if you act as though everything is currently normal, then the anxiety will back off and calm down.As such, you are going to want to do things such as maintain an open body posture, breathe regularly, salivate, smile, and maintain a calm and measured tone of voice.If you can successfully adopt just one of these behaviors when you are feeling stressed, then you can successfully alter your feedback enough that your fear response, directly from the sympathetic nervous system, receives a message that says everything is fine.In fact, one of the most common ways of mitigating an oncoming feeling of anxiety is to chew gum.If you don’t have any gum handy, simply miming the act of doing so is going to be enough to make you salivate, convincing your body that nothing interesting is going on.The reason that this is so effective is that you would never have the luxury of eating a delicious meal during times of serious crisis, which makes your body naturally assume that nothing that taking place is a legitimate threat.This, in turn, changes the feedback loop the body was expecting and causes the anxiety to retreat into the background.Just knowing that you have this quick trick in your back pocket can give you a boost of confidence that takes you past the point where your anxiety would trigger in the first place.Remember, anxiety functions are based on the expectation of something catastrophic happening in the near future.All you need to do is prove that this is not the case, and you will be fine.As a general rule, if you feel anxious about a specific situation, then this is because you are afraid of some potential consequences that may come about as a result of whatever it is that is taking place.However, if you trace those fears back to their roots, you will often find that they aren’t nearly as bad as you may have assumed they would be when they were just a nebulous feeling of anxiety.If you are anxious about attending a party, then looking inside to determine the consequence that you are afraid of might reveal an internalized fear of meeting new people.Tracing that fear back, you might discover that it is based around the consequence of other people not liking you, which you are determined to avoid due to issues in your past.However, if you trace the consequence of people not liking you, then you may find that it makes you upset because it reinforces existing feelings regarding your general likeability.Once you get to the ultimate consequence that is causing you anxiety, you can look at the problem critically and determine what you can do to solve the issue that you are avoiding.In this instance, reminding yourself of people who do like you is a valid way to avoid the issues you are afraid of.In the process, they will come to understand that things will continue as normal after the relationship falls apart and that they will be able to move on if the relationship is not intact.Another useful technique in combating anxiety is known as progressive muscle relaxation.The reason for this is because it is impossible for the body to be both tense and relaxed at the same time.When do I find myself getting the angriest?