Dr Oz: Tackle Toxic Anxiety + Worrying Type Quiz & Easy Solutions

Dr Oz: Is Anxiety Taking Over Your Life?

If sweaty palms and a racing heart are all-too familiar for you, Dr Oz may have just the solution you’ve been looking for. It’s time for all of us to let go of our anxiety! Approximately 1/2 of all Americans, nearly 40 million people, will have an anxiety disorder at some point in their lifetime. It’s costing our country $42 billion a year, which is why Dr Mike Dow called it “an anxiety epidemic.” Gabrielle Bernstein blamed it on “social disconnection” and the lack of connecting with people in our communities off social media. Plus, we’re in information overload and experience a lot of pressure to be happy all the time, which is unrealistic.

If you experience a stomachache twice per week or more, have gained more than five pounds per month, are consistently losing sleep, and experience a lot of tension and headaches. There are three distinctive worrying types that could be fueling your anxiety, and Dr Oz developed a quiz to help you determine which type fits you best. Keep track of how many 1, 2 or 3 answers you have.

Dr Oz: What’s Your Toxic Worrying Type?

1. An unexpected bill comes in the mail and you don’t have the money to pay it so you have to ask a relative for a loan. What worries you most is:
   1. What will this relative will think of you?
   2. What’s going to happen when you can’t pay it back?
   3. How you’ve failed
2. Your aging mother has needed extra help lately and you’re unable to take her to a doctor’s appointment because of a work obligation. You:
   1. Worry that your mom will think you don’t care about her
   2. Obsess over the thought of your mom falling and getting hurt
   3. Think you are a bad daughter
3. You’ve recently gained some weight. You:
   1. Feel embarrassed, like all eyes are on you when you’re in public
   2. Think you should diet but realize there’s no point because you’ll probably just fall off it anyway
   3. Immediately label yourself as obese, clear your house of all snacks, and vow to stick to 700 calories per day

Dr Oz: How To Tackle Toxic Worrying

If you answered mostly number 1’s, you’re the “mind reader” worry type because you worry what other people are thinking about you. If you answered mostly number 2’s, you’re the “catastrophist type” and if you answered mostly number 3’s, you’re the “all or nothing type” and label yourself a failure or call yourself names.

If you’re a mind reader, you think you can read minds without someone else verbalizing. They are constantly worrying what others are thinking and you take bad moods personally. A great technique to tackle your anxiety is called role reversal. Think of yourself as someone else on the outside, looking at you, to realize that if we had the same compassion for ourselves as we do for other people, there would be nothing to worry about.

If you’re a catastrophist, you’re going from “zero to ten in a heartbeat.” You tend to worry about the future and imagine worst case scenarios. A great simple fix is to think of the opposite: what’s the best that can happen? As Dr Mike Dow stated, “don’t confuse the possible with the probable.” Chances are, things will work out a lot better than your worst case thought.

If you’re the “all or nothing” type your thinking is black or white, you focus on the negative and you tend to overgeneralize. A great idea would be to list the pros and cons of an experience and use it to battle your black and white thinking.