"As anyone who has experienced that sinking feeling related to the approaching work week, the back-to-school blues, a case of pre-exam nerves, or mounting stress over a deadline, exam, or performance review will tell you, dread can be distressing, overwhelming, fear-inducing, and impossible to control. What's more, dread triggers physical symptoms and negative forecasting, and can leave us feeling hopeless, stressed, and alone."
"Alone with our dread, we often spin minor worries into imagined worst-case scenarios. We overestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes, doubt our capacity to handle stress, and start vividly picturing failure. This cycle can lead to dreading the imagined consequences of an anticipated poor performance or worst-case-scenario outcome. What dread is Dread is, at its core, a form of anxiety -more specifically, anticipatory anxiety, a pervasive sense of concern, distress, fear, uncertainty, and worry over a future event or situation or life transition."
Dread is anticipatory anxiety characterized by persistent worry, fear, and uncertainty about a future event or transition. Dread can begin in early childhood and affects many adults, with roughly half of employees reporting weekly occurrences and persistence into older adulthood. Anticipatory anxiety produces physical symptoms such as insomnia, headaches, and nausea, and impairs concentration. Cognitive distortions include racing thoughts, rumination, catastrophizing, and imagining worst-case scenarios, which increase perceived likelihood of negative outcomes and reduce confidence in coping. Repetitive negative forecasting and avoidance behaviors can intensify isolation and hopelessness. Practical, evidence-based coping strategies can reduce dread and its physiological and cognitive impacts.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]