148 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
be consistent and patient. Practice daily, and be forgiving
with yourself if you make a mistake!
One thing about attention is that it’s often directed
inward when you feel anxious. In other words, whenever you
feel anxious you are often paying attention to your thoughts,
feelings, and bodily sensations rather than paying attention
to what’s going on around you. Moreover, this internal focus
makes it very easy to become fixated on perceived threats,
which is why your attentional processes can become biased
over time. A technique called “attention training,” developed
by Adrian Wells (2011), can help with this problem by teach-
ing you how to cultivate greater control over your attention.
Exercise 6.1: Attention Training Before you begin, put your-
self in an environment in which there are multiple continuous
sounds. For example, try entering a room where you can hear an
air conditioner running and a clock ticking. The more sounds there
are, the more benefit you can gain from performing this exercise.
- Try to identif y a single sound— for example, the hum of
the air conditioner— and focus on it exclusively. If you
notice a sound from another source, direct your attention
back to the one you are focusing on. Really try to become
deeply immersed in this one sound. A fter you feel you have
been able to do this continuously for about one minute,
transition to another sound— for example, the ticking of
the clock. Focus your attention on it until you are aware of
only this particular sound. Again, continue this for about
one minute. A fter you have been able to focus on each
sound exclusively, alternate your attention between these
two sound sources. Whenever you focus on one, attend to
it at the exclusion of the other. Spend about five minutes
total on this step.