102 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
Combining these three elements gives us the name of
this response style: repetitive negative thinking. Can you iden-
tify any times during your own life when you used this
approach? Repetitive negative thinking can be detrimental
and is common in many forms of anxiety. In the next section,
we will further explore its relationship with anxiety.
Repetitive Negative Thinking
and A nxiety
Anxiety comes in many forms. In fact, the fifth edition of
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM- 5) recognizes several anxiety conditions, including
generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic
disorder, and specific phobias. Anxiety doesn’t fall neatly
into these categories, however. Many of the symptoms of
different anxiety conditions overlap, which can make diag-
nosis difficult. Another important fact about anxiety disor-
ders is that they have very high rates of comorbidity— that
is, they often co- occur (Kessler et al. 2005, using DSM-
IV criteria). Furthermore, these disorders aren’t set in stone.
For example, a person who has high levels of social anxiety
can eventually begin to predominantly experience symp-
toms of generalized anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders can
even morph into depressive disorders and other forms of
distress. As a result of the difficulties inherent in the diagno-
sis of anxiety disorders and their high levels of comorbidity,
researchers have invested a great deal of effort in coming up
with reasonable explanations of this phenomenon. The
search for transdiagnostic factors, or maladaptive processes
that are common to and underlie different types of anxiety,