Anxiety lies. Here's how to catch it.

Anxiety has one job: keep you alive. The problem is it can't tell the difference between a tiger and a text that says "can we talk?" So it lies. Constantly. With total confidence.

The lies have patterns, and once you know them, you can catch them mid-sentence:

Catastrophising. One thing goes wrong, and anxiety writes the whole disaster movie. Late for work → fired → homeless. Catch it: "That's the movie, what are the facts?"

Mind reading. "They didn't reply, they hate me." No — they didn't reply. Everything after that is fiction you wrote yourself.

Fortune telling. "It will definitely go badly." Anxiety talks about the future like it's been there. It hasn't.

Auntie truth: you don't have to argue with every anxious thought. You just have to stop treating it as breaking news. Name the lie — "ah, catastrophising, there you are" — and let it pass through without signing for it.