Generalized Anxiety Disorder 401
Evocative Phase
The cognitive model of GAD begins with the assertion that GAD worry does not occur
in a vacuum but rather reflects the life circumstances, goals, and personal concerns of the
individual. The cognitive perspective on personality has long recognized that individual
behavior is determined by an interaction between daily life experiences or situations,
schematic content, and personal goals (Cantor, 1990). These self- articulated goals are
the things that people work on and care about in their current lives (Cantor et al., 1991).
Cantor (1990) refers to them as life tasks, or personal projects that people work on and
devote energy toward in a specified time period in order to bring meaning to the basic
human pursuits of love, work, and power. For example, university students might share
normative life concerns about “academic success,” “making new friends,” or “romantic
commitment,” but they would differ in the actual activities and their evaluation rel-
evant to the pursuit of these life concerns. Klinger (1975) introduced the term current
concerns as being committed to the pursuit of particular goals (e.g., to avoid threats to
personal security or to disengage from loss), whereas Emmons (1986) refers to personal
strivings as “what individuals are characteristically aiming to accomplish through their
behavior or the purpose or purposes that a person is trying to carry out” (p. 1059). All
of these constructs refer to the influence of goal- directed strivings on human behavior
and cognition, especially during periods of life transition (Cantor, 1990).
In the current model we propose that the personal goals, values, or concerns of
individuals as well as the context of their daily experience will play an important role
in triggering worry. For example, an important life transition for young adults might
be accepting their first permanent employment after graduation. A personal goal might
be “recognized as achieving success and productivity” and the person might engage in
various activities in pursuit of this goal such as working overtime on projects, doing
more in order to produce a higher quality of work, getting feedback and reassurance
from work colleagues, and the like. In this context a vulnerable individual might begin
to worry about the quality of her work, how she is perceived by others, and whether
she is succeeding in her new job. Likewise, a person who has just retired and for whom
the generation of wealth has been an important life task might be vulnerable to worry
about financial loss and insecurity. In this way our life tasks, current concerns, or per-
sonal strivings can be an important catalyst for worry in the vulnerable individual. As
discussed previously, the individual with high NA or neuroticism would be particularly
prone to worry within the context of these important life goals. In addition we proposed
that enduring schemas of low self- confidence (i.e., helplessness) and threat would consti-
tute a predisposition for generalized anxiety and chronic worry.
The interaction of these prepotent schemas or personality vulnerability with par-
ticular current life tasks could trigger threat- relevant intrusive thoughts or images.
Intrusive thoughts are “any distinct, identifiable cognitive event that is unwanted, unin-
tended, and recurrent. It interrupts the flow of thought, interferes in task performance,
is associated with negative affect, and is difficult to control” (D. A. Clark & Rhyno,
2005, p. 4). In the present context, future- oriented intrusive thoughts involving some
uncertain threat about the attainment of one’s cherished goals or life tasks (i.e., auto-
matic anxious thoughts) can elicit anxiety and eventually trigger a worry process. Intol-
erance of uncertainty is readily apparent in GAD (Koerner & Dugas, 2006), and so we
would expect uncertainty to be reflected in the automatic anxious intrusive thoughts of