In this weekly diary vlog, hypnotherapist Caroline Cavanagh explains how anxiety is reinforced by repeated fear‑inducing behaviours and how creating new, positive patterns can break these cycles. She shares her personal commitment to a weekly "achievements diary"—recording a video each Friday of therapeutic successes—to model the habit she recommends to clients. Three client vignettes illustrate her approach: a man who avoids restaurants because he fears having to control conversation and entertain a partner; a woman with severe OCD who compulsively disinfects everything with Dettol, including herself; and a client with health anxiety who catastrophises minor bodily sensations based on past traumatic experiences. Cavanagh highlights how the mind can mislink unrelated fears, and how reframing these cognitive associations can lead to rapid change. She ends by wishing viewers a good weekend and promising a follow‑up next Friday.
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A lot of anxiety is built up through repeated behaviour. You do something, it was a bit fear-inducing, so the next time you come around to facing the same thing, the mind remembers it was scary last time, so it evokes that emotion in advance. And the more it happens, the more embedded it becomes, and patterns of behaviour arise. And so a lot of the work that I do with people is about creating new behaviours, new positive patterns. And to be honest, it takes a little bit of work. And one of the things that's really important to me in the work that I do as a therapist is to practice what I preach. And so I made a commitment to some clients recently to create a diary once a week. And that was linked— what was it linked to? It was all around focusing on what you've achieved. We all do to-do lists. but they can be quite negative because the more you cross off, the more you tend to put on. And so one of the things that I ask people to do is an achievements list. What have you done successfully? And so my new habit is every Friday to record a video on the things that I've achieved as a therapist. And it's 10 to 6 on a Friday evening. I would much rather be actually doing something else at the moment, but I wanna create a habit. So the more I do this, the easier it is going to become. And so reflecting on some of the successes I've had this week, one particular client was struggling with eating out in restaurants. And the mind isn't a powerful thing because he could eat at home, he could eat out with friends, but if he was in a situation with a female, especially a girlfriend, it was a long-time girlfriend, he would really struggle to eat to the point that actually was avoiding going to restaurants. And what was amazing is how his mind had attached fear to restaurants. And actually, when we delved into his mind and what the link was, 2 and 2 had added up to 6. The fear was actually about having to control the conversation and being entertaining. It was nothing to do with the food. And when we made 2 and 2 equal 4, his attitude towards going and eating out now has completely changed. So something that seemed really illogical suddenly became understandable when you under— when you recognize that the brain can easily get 2 things and add them together and make the wrong link. And that was similar with another new client that started with me this week that had really severe OCD, um, to the point that anything that had gone outside the house had to be Dettol'd, including herself. And you can imagine the state of her skin. She's ruined numerous phones by covering them in Dettol. So after a long period of counseling and not really achieving any results, we're optimistic that again, by looking at how is her mind working to perpetuate this belief that anything outside the house is germ-infested and is going to hurt her, leading to the OCD behavior. And the third one this week that's been sort of really memorable is something that a lot of people can relate to, and that's health anxiety— the fear that any little twinge could be something sinister. And that's often born from having something sinister in the past. Again, the mind files that away and goes, that feeling led to some really bad outcomes, therefore any feeling may also be an outcome. And that starts to create some programming. So, and this is why I love the work that I do. The mind never ceases to fascinate me in how it can create programs, create behaviors, create beliefs, but also how relatively easily they can be changed. So that's my diary for this week. Checking out now. I wish anyone that's watching this a wonderful weekend, and hopefully My intention is to be back and let you know how next week goes next Friday. Bye-bye for now.
