COGNITIVE MODEL: GENERALISED ANXIETY DISORDER1
Introduction
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a mental health disorder comprising of
uncontrollable, excessive and continuous worrying in an individual, the moment he or she
perceives a situation to be threatening, challenging or harmful (Carpenter et al., 2018). The
following paper will expound upon the progression of GAD like symptoms in Piglet, an iconic
character in the children’s series, ‘Winnie the Pooh’.
Discussion
Cognitive Model: Piglet’s Symptoms
According to the cognitive model, as evidenced by Beck and Beck (1995), one of the
primary reasons underlying the emergence of emotional symptoms of anxiety is an individual’s
engagement in automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts, as demonstrated by Beck and Beck
(1995), are a collective set of distorted ideas or thinking an individual engages in unintentionally
and unconsciously, the moment he or she perceives a situation or a circumstance as a threat. A
key example of such automatic thoughts can be observed in the character Piglet, in Winnie the
Pooh. Upon close examination of the given clip, it can be observed that the key situation which
Piglet perceives to be threatening is the night of Halloween (in Piglet’s terms, the ‘spookiest
night ever’), which in turn, triggers an automatic thought concerning how he may never be
‘brave’ like the rest, and will always feel fearful of the slightest uncanny happening in his
surroundings (as observed in the video, in the form of unidentified shadows or a gust of wind
blowing curtains).
Further, as a result of distorted thinking in the form of automatic thoughts, individuals
with GAD encounter and demonstrate a range of distorted emotional, behavioral and

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