Laura L. Smith - Anxiety and Depression Workbook For Dummies

Add up your answers and reflect on your results in Worksheet 1-6. Think about other physical problems you may have that don’t appear on the list that may be related to your emotions and jot those down as well.

Worksheet 1-6My Reflections

Emotions erupt in response to what happens in the present, what happened in the past, and what might happen in the future. Emotional reactions involve physiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses. People across the world express six primary emotions:

Happiness

Sadness

Anger

Fear

Disgust

Surprise

From those basic emotions, more subtle expressions emerge. For example, from happiness springs joy, contentment, cheerfulness, or pleasure. From sadness, depression, gloom, despair, despondency, low self-esteem, or shame occur. Fear may bring anxiety, terror, worry, embarrassment, or panic. Disgust usually leads to distaste or feelings of grossness. Surprise is a brief emotion. What follows surprise varies depending on what brought forth the initial response. Surprise may turn into curiosity, amusement, disgust, relief, or fear.

Emotions guide behavior. Fear increases alertness and avoidance, anger produces aggression, and sadness involves withdrawal. Although most people have a variety of emotional experiences, those with anxiety or depression are likely to experience more sadness and fear, or possibly anger and disgust.

Which primary emotions do you experience the most frequently? Think about a typical day and reflect on what you’re feeling. Think about what happened just before your feeling. Were you thinking about the past or the future? Record your experience in Worksheet 1-7.

Worksheet 1-7My Reflections

When you’re feeling down or distressed for any length of time, odds are that your relationships with those around you will take a hit. Although you may think that your depression or anxiety affects only you, it affects your friends, family, lovers, coworkers, and acquaintances. Even the strangers you interact with, such as waiters, flight attendants, clerks, and bank tellers, can suffer from your emotional state.

Take the quiz in Worksheet 1-8to see if your emotions are causing trouble with your relationships. Check off any statements that apply to you.

Worksheet 1-8The Conflicted Connections Quiz

You guessed it; there’s no cutoff score here to tell you definitively whether or not you’re anxious or depressed. But the more items you check off, the more your relationships likely suffer from your anxiety, depression, or both. Odd-numbered items usually indicate problems with depression, and even-numbered items particularly accompany anxious feelings.

Many people are a little shy or introverted. You may feel anxious meeting new people and may be uncomfortable in the spotlight — these feelings aren’t necessarily anything to be concerned about. However, such issues become problematic when you find yourself avoiding social activities or meeting new people because of your shyness.

Reflect on your results and write about which relationships are most affected by your emotions in Worksheet 1-9.

Worksheet 1-9My Reflections

The Personal Problems Profile provides you with an overview of your problematic symptoms. (If you skipped the quizzes in the previous sections of this chapter, go back and take the time to complete them; your answers to those quizzes come into play in this exercise.) The profile exercise in this section helps you identify the ways in which anxiety and depression affect you. One good thing about this profile is that you can track how these symptoms change as you progress through the rest of this book.

Tyler,a middle-aged chemical engineer, doesn’t consider himself depressed or plagued with any emotional problems. But when he sees his primary care doctor, Tyler complains of fatigue, recent weight gain, and a noticeable loss in his sex drive. These feelings predated the pandemic but became more noticeable while he was quarantined. After ruling out physical causes, the doctor suggests that he may be depressed. He reluctantly agrees to meet with a social worker.

When Tyler fills out his Personal Problems Profile (see Worksheet 1-10), he lists the following top ten symptoms and notes whether they indicate anxiety or depression ( A or D ).

As you can see, Tyler suffers primarily from symptoms of depression. And most of these symptoms are physical in nature. Filling out his Personal Problems Profile helps Tyler see that he has a depression he wasn’t even consciously aware of. He reflects on his discovery (see Worksheet 1-11).

This is the Anxiety & Depression WorkbookFor Dummies. You can’t feel better without doing a little work. Don’t worry; the work isn’t that difficult. Of course, you can skip a few exercises, but the more of them you complete, the sooner you’ll start feeling better. Odd as it may seem, writing things down does a world of good. Writing helps you remember, clarifies your thinking, and increases focus and reflection.

Worksheet 1-10Tyler’s Personal Problems Profile

Worksheet 1-11Tyler’s Reflections