Catherine has put her ten-year-old daughter on the school bus. It is only three miles to the school, but Catherine begins worrying that the bus will be in wreck and her precious Alice will be injured or killed. Is her thinking rational or irrational? It is possible that the bus will be in a wreck. It could, but is it mostly probable given the many buses that are driven in any given day. No, so this is irrational thinking. Catherine knows that it is irrational thinking but the worry does not stop. The force known as anxiety has taken over.
What is anxiety and from where does it come? It can be defined as a fear of something happening in the future. It could be considered just another emotion but in the context of Catherine’s irrational thought it is best understood as a force. From whence does it come? That appears to be a mystery. We are not born with it. Some people can tell the day and time they first experienced it. The important thing is to discover coping mechanisms to put the person in control of that anxiety.
Catherine has serious reasons to find coping measures. She works part-time as a cashier at the supermarket. Her preoccupation with this anxiety about her daughter causes her to make mistakes typing keys and often her pay is docked. She sometimes is so distracted that she forgets to pick up her older daughter from dance. On too many occasions she has overlooked social affairs where she was to serve. All these because of thoughts that are unfounded. She desperately needs coping skills to control these issues.
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