The Anxiety Maze Archives: Questions to Ask Yourself

When anxiety takes over, it’s easy to believe your thoughts are the truth.
But what if the way out of anxious thinking isn’t finding the right answer—it’s asking a better question? 

In this episode, Cynthia Coufal shares how both teens and parents can use intentional self-questioning to shift perception, process emotions, and plan their next best step through anxiety. 

We’ll explore:
 ✨ Why anxious thoughts often sound like questions (“What if I fail?” “Why can’t I stop worrying?”) and how to reframe them
 🧠 The neuroscience behind curiosity and calm — and why labeling emotions reduces stress in the brain
 💬 The difference between control questions and curious questions
🌱 Practical prompts you can use this week to help yourself or your teen pause, reflect, and respond with more peace 

Cynthia blends new research with compassionate insight to show that calm doesn’t come from silencing your thoughts — it comes from questioning them with intention. 

Because the quality of your questions determines the quality of your calm. 🌿  

Reflection Prompts from This Episode: 

• What question do I ask myself most when I’m anxious?
• Does that question make me feel smaller or stronger?
• What’s one new question I can practice this week?
• Which part of the Triangle Formula do I need to focus on — my perception, my process, or my plan?

 
🎧 Listen if you or your teen ever feel trapped in anxious overthinking, perfectionism, or self-doubt. This episode will help you turn curiosity into calm — one question at a time.
 

Find my podcast
Email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com
Text me: 785-380-2064
More information

Transcript

 In previous episodes, we talked about thought downloads. And remember that is when you set a timer for five minutes and you just start writing all the thoughts in your head. Everything. And remember, if you can't think of anything, you ask yourself.

What else? What else you should try this questioning. Anytime you have an action or result that you don't like, ask yourself, why did I choose to do it that way? Why did I decide to ignore my homework and play video games instead? Why did I choose to sleep through my alarm, even though I knew I was supposed to go to Wednesday?

Intervention help with my teachers. So often in our lives, we think it is out of our control. I just didn't hear my alarm. I didn't mean to play video games for eight hours instead of doing my homework. Those things are under your control. You [00:01:00] chose not to get up or you chose not to do your homework. I know it doesn't seem like that right now.

When we have every intention to get up and do our homework, we make sure that everything is in place for us to accomplish that. So we go to bed on time. We set different alarms to make sure we get up. Or we set a timer to remind us that an hour has gone by While we play video games, we have to stop telling ourselves that we don't have any control over what happens to us when most of the time we are in comp, complete control of it.

Ask yourself, what are you thinking when you are playing video games that causes you to ignore your homework? What are you thinking when you go to bed at night knowing you need to get up early the next day? What are you thinking the next day when you miss the appointment with your teachers or when you don't have your homework done?

I hope you [00:02:00] have already been doing thought down downloads since we've talked about 'em several times before. So hopefully you're in the practice of questioning your brain. But if you haven't been, you may be very surprised about the thoughts that you're going to find inside your brain. Just like we need to clean our room on a regular basis.

We need to clean out our brain on a regular basis. I am sure when you clean your room and it has been a while since it was clean, you are surprised about what you find. Sometimes you find some really gross stuff and sometimes you find your favorite shirt wadded up under your bed. Thought downloads are like that same process.

Most of the time, you're gonna find thoughts that have been causing you a lot of problems, but you may find some good ones in there too that you forgot about. Try to bring some of the positive ones out and wear them. Again. If you want to [00:03:00] change the results in your life to better situations, you must question your thoughts, see which ones are causing the results that you don't want, and then start changing those thoughts to new ones.

If you haven't listened to episodes 2, 3, 4, and five, those are the episodes that break this down into steps. What if you ask yourself, why can't I get my homework done? When you do a thought download, you might find a thought like, I don't understand it, and I hate school anyway. This thought makes you feel hopeless about school.

When you feel hopeless about school, your action is to do nothing or not to do your homework because it doesn't matter anyway. Then when you don't do your homework, your result is. You fail the assignment, you get in trouble with your parents or the teacher. You fail the class and then you can sit continue to feel [00:04:00] hopeless, and then do you see how this will just keep happening over and over again?

What if you asked yourself, what is one thing I can do today to complete my math homework? How can I manage my time today to get my homework done and have time to play video games? Then your brain can go to work helping you with a plan to get things done. Maybe you will set timers for yourself and remind you to stop and start different activities.

Maybe you will have to put your phone on airplane mode for an hour so that you can work on your homework undistracted so you can get more done in less time. Maybe you need to ask your teacher for more examples or help on the problems you don't understand. Start working towards a solution and don't just say, I can't or I don't know how.

These are excuses that your brain gives you, because remember, your brain wants to seek pleasure, [00:05:00] avoid pain, and use as little energy as possible. That is why we come up with, I don't know, or I can't, or I don't care. Ask yourself, why am I choosing to think? I don't know and I don't care. There is a reason.

You just have to be curious about why. I want to caution you that this is not an exercise to beat yourself up or bully yourself. Don't get mad at yourself for thinking these things. Talk to yourself about it like you would a good friend. If your friend said they felt hopeless about how they were doing in school, you wouldn't tell them how terrible they were for thinking that.

You might help them to see ways in which school did work for them. We all bring gifts and talents to the world. You might remind them of those gifts and talents and assure them that they would find a way to get help from a teacher, or maybe you would even go with them to do that. [00:06:00] You can try this questioning with anything that doesn't seem to be working in your life.

Situations with your family, problems you are having at work, friendship issues or fights you continue to have with your romantic partner. All of those situations you can ask yourself, why am I choosing to think poorly about my parents? Why am I choosing to be mad at my friends or my romantic partner?

Why am I choosing to think my boss is a jerk? Remember, circumstances do not cause us to feel good or bad. Our thoughts do so. If you hate your boss, it isn't your boss. It is your thoughts about your boss that are upsetting you. Why are you choosing those thoughts and what could you think instead? When you come up with some new thoughts, ask yourself how you [00:07:00] feel when you think those thoughts.

If you get a better feeling, that is the thought you're striving for. Each day, you will have to work on these thoughts to keep them going in the right direction. It's just like cleaning your room. You have to keep doing it, and I know I hate that too, here. Are some other questions you might ask yourself.

Do some journaling to see what you might discover about yourself. What is perfect about this? How do I want to feel? What are my parents thinking? What might they be thinking that causes them to act in that way? What is my boss thinking when he yells at us? What can I learn from this? How is this situation helping me?

What is the solution to this problem? What is the good news? [00:08:00] I know it's hard to change these things about yourself. I have struggled with it too. I continue to work on these things and find new things that I struggle with, but I wouldn't trade. Trade those struggles for anything. I am so glad I challenged my thoughts because that's everything.

It has changed everything about my life. I promise you, if you take action steps that we have lined out in the first few episodes of this podcast, you will see changes in yourself, in your relationships, in your work performance, in your grades, and how you get along with your parents. I want you to send me messages about how this work is changing your life for the better.

I know if you are practicing it, it is changing and I really wanna know what's happening. I wanna hear from you. If you have questions or you need [00:09:00] clarification, let me know. I want to answer your questions so that this podcast can be so beneficial to you. Thank you for listening today. Please share this podcast with your friends on many apps.

There is a way to share an episode in an instant message or some other message. Um, to your friends, please rate and review this podcast on whatever platform you are listening to, to so that other people can find us. Every day we get to choose what our thoughts are going to be. Choose wisely. Talk to you soon.