After several attempts to control my anxiety without any success I knew that something was wrong in my thinking. The more I tried to control my anxiety the more anxious I became.
It was after reading some passages of Dr. Joseph J. Luciani work that I understood what was happening with me. Dr. Joseph said (with his clinical experience) that controlling life is not the answer but the problem. The more we try to control our lives the more is the perception that we need to have more control ending in a vicious cycle and adding more frustrations to our lives. That was exactly what was happening with me.
Dr. Joseph said also (with is clinical experience) that everybody have insecurities and that worrying, looking for perfectionism, etc. are methods to try controlling and bring more security to our lives. The problem is that when we overdue the use of these methods leading to anxiety and depression.
In this way, and in most cases, anxiety and depression could be considered a bad habit of trying to have more control and to bring more security in our lives. Fortunately these bad habit could be unlearned which is good news for most of us.
With all that I have been learning I still think that CBT (along with medication for moderate to severe cases) is the most efficient method to unlearn the bad habits of depression and anxiety.
But CBT has a flaw which I find in most CBT programs: the overuse of too many and sometimes complicated worksheets which confuse people and discourage them to keep with the program. Here an experienced CBT therapist could be of great help.
I do not want with this to say that a self-help program is not useful. On the contrary, the CBT program of DC was very important for my recovery from depression. The problem was that I didn’t know when to stop and thought that there was always a worksheet or exercise for every problem in my life. This lead me to a substantial increase in my anxiety feeling overwhelmed for several times. I learned by myself when enough was enough and how having completely control is an illusion.
