Have you ever caught yourself saying, "Where has the year gone?" I feel this way at the end of every year. I don't know what happened to 2014. A full year gone. What have I done in that time? What do I wish I had done? This can be a pretty reflective time of year--the passing of one year, and the beginning of the next.

One of the common traits of anxious people is that they tend to catastrophize events in their lives. For example, I might be worried that something I said to a co-worker might be construed as unprofessional and that might lead to me having a bad reputation on the job which might lead to me not being promoted, or even fired. I don't necessarily have any evidence to back this up, but I just feel like it is true. That is catastrophizing.

Most of the people I work with in my practice have come in at some point with high levels of stress. They are experiencing the kind of stress that makes it hard to sleep at night, that causes them to have trouble focusing, or to feel agitated and short tempered with people they love. It is the kind of stress that makes them question what is wrong with their lives, but then feel too exhausted to do anything about it.

Life can be a very sticky affair. It's easy to get stuck in a rut and feel ambivalent about changing. Take, for example, something as simple as exercising. How many times have you told yourself that you are going to start working out, and then proceeded to do a hundred other activities, but not a single one of them involved exercise?

I was reading a beautifully crafted essay written by one of my friends and felt simultaneously thrilled by the brilliant analysis and beautiful prose, but I also felt a little pang of jealously at the ease with which he could produce such incredible work. Even if I painstakingly edited 100 drafts of my writing, I would never come close to his talent.