Why do I become overly anxious about time?

Q: I feel very anxious about time. If I have to catch a train, I fear missing the train. I get panicky if I am getting late to catch the train. If I have to go for meeting I feel the need to reach in time. I will rather not go for meeting rather then reaching late. Basically, reaching in time disturbs me a lot. Yes, it is good to be punctual but I am not able to handle my emotions if I get late for some reason. Please help me to overcome this anxiety.

A:What you describe indicates substantial anxiety related those particular situations that you describe. It may be helpful to use cognitive techniques to help yourself in reducing this anxiety.

For this, first, you want to start thinking as to what goes in your mind when you are getting restless because you may get late - specifically what kind of thoughts may be going through your mind. If possible write these down in a journal with date, time and a one line description of scenario/situation. Possibly do this over a period of 3-4 weeks. When you do this you want to write down the thoughts in as detail as possible, especially the thoughts which are associated with restlessness/anxiety. In the beginning you may not able to realize all that you think during these scenarios but if you keep doing it on a regular basis you will start to notice several thoughts.

You may have thoughts like (for example) - If I miss the train/bus, I will not be able to go to this particular meeting/important event - if that happens others/boss/supervisor may think I am irresponsible/lazy, etc, - if that happens they may not keep me in job, etc. This is just an example - you may actually have very different thoughts. Write as many thoughts as possible over a period of time.

Once you collect your thoughts/thought diary during such scenarios, then carefully and objectively examine/read these thoughts and objectively rate each of the consequence (on a scale of 0-100, where 100 is highly possible and 0 is not possible) that you might have described as a result of you being late. It is likely that in your thinking you may be catastrophizing the consequence of being late - by that I mean you may be unknowingly thinking the worst possible consequence of being late, which is probably making you anxious.

Once you objectively examine these thoughts/your thinking about consequences you may find them to be not so bad which may decrease your anxiety.

What I described here is a brief overview of a type of therapy called as cognitive behavioural therapy. There are several selfhelp books which give you more details on how to use these techniques. I suggest that you read one such book also.