Lisa Nguyen is the Office Manager at Anxiety Canada. She has been working at Anxiety Canada since 2019 and supports the team in various ways. As Anxiety Canada’s summer Community Engagement Contributor, I was lucky enough to sit down with Lisa and ask her why the work Anxiety Canada does is important to her.
Please summarize your role at Anxiety Canada.
Lisa Nguyen: I support the team at Anxiety Canada in administration and finance. What I do varies but includes things like assisting in setting up and supporting new employees, liaising with technical support, reconciling and entering some financial data, administering contracts, and the list goes on!
Before joining the team, was anxiety awareness something you discussed with people in your life?
LN: It wasn’t something I talked about all the time, but I had recommended and encouraged others to try counselling, based on my own experience of finding that to be helpful for myself.
What drew you to Anxiety Canada?
LN: I was quite impressed to see the resources that Anxiety Canada offered. I was pleased to be joining a charity offering much-needed, free, and affordable help to the public on an important mental health issue.
Why is raising awareness for anxiety important to you?
LN: I have seen the impact of anxiety in my life and that of loved ones. Many people struggle with anxiety, and when it becomes a problem, most don’t know what to do about it or how to get help. Since I started working at Anxiety Canada, I’ve been grateful to be able to share practical, evidence-based tools and strategies with friends and family for managing anxiety.
“Learning about the thinking trap of ‘mind-reading‘ was hugely illuminating for me. It showed me what was actually causing my anxiety and that I didn’t have to be overcome by it!.”
– Lisa Nguyen
Can you please share a bit about your experience with anxiety?
LN: I am a bit of a people-pleaser, which naturally lends itself to some heightened anxiety about others’ feelings.
Learning about the thinking trap of ‘mind-reading’ was hugely illuminating for me. It showed me what was actually causing my anxiety and that I didn’t have to be overcome by it!
LN continued: What I learned has been so helpful in various situations to remind myself that I cannot read other peoples’ minds—so it doesn’t make sense to behave as though I can by worrying about what I imagine others think.
Learn more about our Anxiety Resources
Lisa touched on a common ‘thinking trap,’ called ‘mind-reading.’
Mind-reading is when you believe you know what others are thinking and assume the thoughts are negative without any evidence. Fact: we cannot read minds, so we must stop trying.
You may fall into the trap of trying to read minds, or a different one, like catastrophizing (imagining the worst-case scenario, even when your predicted outcome is highly unlikely). Working on your personal anxious thinking starts with learning to recognize which traps you fall into.
Learn ways to identify and overcome your personal traps and challenge negative thinking:
- Download Anxiety Canada’s free, award-winning app, MindShift® CBT, to learn valuable coping tools.
- Check out Balance Your Thoughts, the anxiety-relief game that helps players escape thinking traps and transform worries into balanced thoughts in a fun way.
- Read Anxiety Canada’s blog to read about evaluating and challenging anxious thoughts with helpful ones.
- Browse self-help PDFs from our library of Free Downloadable Resources.
- Find more resources on our Get Help page.
Read the next blog post in the series on Maxine, our Sr. Manager of Development & Communications.