What ways can I learn to calm my worrying and anxiety in everyday life?

Hi Seb-

I am glad you reached out and submitted your question. From a professional and personal perspective, I have seen how debilitating anxiety can be. To start my answer out on a positive note, I am pleased to see that you already have a certain level of insight and awareness to your experience - which is good! You mentioned that you jump to conclusions and catastrophize over the things that bring you dread. While this is easy to do, it rarely decreases our feelings of anxiety. A better option might be to analyze what other conclusions you can come to instead. One way you can practice this is by getting out a sheet of paper and a pen and dividing it into two columns. In the lefthand column, you can title it, "My automatic thought." This might be something like, "I just know so and so is going to hate me after what I said to them." Then, in the righthand column, see if you can write down a less extreme conclusion. This might sound something like, "I am not sure how so and so is going to take my message. But I stand by what I said. It is okay to be assertive and if so and so reacts negatively toward me, that is on them and not me." 

In terms of your communication struggles, you're right. Anxiety can be paralyzing and can keep us from communicating our true feelings, when needed. A good way to remedy this issue is to speak with 'I' statements. When we state our issues in the following way, "I feel .......... when x,y,z happens," this takes the accusation and pressure off of the listener and instead, invites both the speaker and listener into a space of analysis as opposed to defense. Please make note that this approach takes quite a bit of practice to get the hang of it. But I encourage you to give it multiple tries until you notice a shift in how you feel.

I hope that my response helped you out a bit, Seb. I wish you better communication and greater self-confidence in the future. Remember that you have everything inside of you to get past this.

Good luck!