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Anxiety Canada's mission is to provide accessible, science-based anxiety relief. Learn about our community and who we are.

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Worry Diary

Generalized Anxiety Disorder Adult Children Youth PDF Balanced Thinking
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Anxious thoughts are usually extreme, unbalanced, and overly negative, but they can feel true, especially if it feels familiar to you (maybe because you have told it to yourself thousands of times).

To challenge these thoughts, let your anxious thoughts come and go, then challenge your thoughts and come up with more helpful self-talk. Ignoring or dismissing your anxious thoughts may feel helpful in the moment, but in reality, this method of approaching anxiety can make you feel worse. Sure, you can postpone them for a bit, but the thoughts tend to come back and present even more persistent.

To challenge thoughts and take the first step in your anxiety management journey, start to pay attention to what you say to yourself. This can be difficult because thoughts can be so fleeting and automatic. Lots of people find it helpful to practice writing down their thoughts in a Worry Diary.

Worry Diary exercise: For two weeks, write down your worries as they pop up. By writing them down, you don’t have to “keep track” of your worries in your head anymore. You may find that a lot of worries don’t seem so powerful a few hours later, and especially after a good night’s sleep.

WorryDiary
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Related PDF Resources

  • Sleep Diary
  • Building Distress Tolerance
  • Realistic Thinking
  • Realistic Thinking for Teens
  • Thinking Traps
  • Realistic Thinking Form
  • Challenging Negative Thinking

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As of April 30, 2025, AnxietyCanada.com will no longer be updated, refreshed, or monitored. This includes French translations, which may be incomplete or imperfect. The website will remain live and accessible until March 2026.

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À compter du 30 avril 2025, le site AnxietyCanada.com ne sera plus mis à jour, actualisé ni surveillé. Cela inclut les traductions en français, qui pourraient être incomplètes ou imparfaites. Le site restera accessible jusqu’en mars 2026.

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