Exploring Worry & Ways To Overcome It

A psychosocial educative piece inspired by Edmund Bourne's book "Anxiety and Phobia workbook," on worrying and strategies found to assist in decreasing the impact on one's mental and emotional wellbeing, including elements of CBT, ACT and mindfulness.

Transcript

This psychosocial segment on worry comes from various influences and methods,

But mostly inspired by the Anxiety and Phobia workbook by Edmund Byrne.

Worry can become a negative spiral that escalates.

When you're caught in a spiral of worry,

You tend to ruminate on every facet of a perceived danger until your worry eclipses all other thoughts,

Leading you to feel trapped.

Some indications that you are caught in a worry cycle include making negative predictions about the future,

Overestimating the odds of something threatening or dangerous happening,

Underestimating the odds of your being able to cope in the unlikely event that the source of your worry actually came true,

And trying to stop worrying by suppressing or distracting yourself in order to flee from it.

Physical symptoms of anxiety,

Such as sweating,

Shaking,

Tense muscles,

Rapid heartbeat,

Feeling lightheaded or dizzy among others,

Are your body's natural response to the experience of your mind spinning out of control.

Because escalating worry tends to dominate your attention,

It takes a deliberate act of will to move away from it.

This involves not so much an attempt to escape it by distraction,

But a deliberate effort at disrupting the cycle of worried thoughts.

Although it feels difficult at first,

With practice it gets easier.

Let's take a little look at what can increase your worrying.

Repeatedly attempting to talk yourself out of the worry,

Overthinking your worry and arguing with yourself about why you shouldn't be worrying,

Trying to suppress the worry.

What you resist,

Persists,

Applies in terms of worry.

Trying to obtain complete certainty in a situation that is inherently uncertain or ambiguous.

For example,

You worry you might panic when you take a flight or go to the dentist's office for a procedure.

There is simply no way to completely ensure that you won't have an anxiety surge during one of these experiences.

A process referred to as anticipatory anxiety.

What is more helpful is to put together a repertoire of coping strategies,

Such as abdominal breathing,

Utilizing coping statements or positive self-talk.

Leaning on a support person to assist with better negotiating the situation.

Sometimes the act of worrying clouds your view of different perspectives.

Thus seeking an alternative perspective can be very helpful.

Many people have underlying hidden beliefs,

Metacognitive beliefs about the nature of worry itself that can further aggravate the issues with excess worrying.

These include your thoughts should be completely under your control.

In truth it is impossible to control the stream of thoughts that come into your mind all the time.

Worrying enough about something will make it less likely to come true.

In truth there is an optimal amount of worry for any particular situation.

It's good to be prepared.

However over worrying about things mostly results in anxiety which can interfere with you making your best performance.

Another meta belief might be that worrying about something too much might actually cause it to happen.

Thus exacerbating the primary worry.

This is a common but irrational belief.

For example you can worry quite a bit about the threat of an earthquake or tornado but it will not change the outcome.

If a thought keeps repeating itself in your mind it must be important.

In truth having a repeating thought in your mind is not much different from having a repeating song going through your mind.

The frequency with which a given thought or song recurs has nothing to do with its importance or significance.

Studies have actually found that thoughts that trigger the fear instinct are much more likely to rebound.

This could largely be because of our negativity bias based on our primal brain.

As mentioned before it takes a deliberate act of will to disrupt a repetitive worry cycle.

Getting out of your head and into your life by doing or focusing on something outside of yourself is an excellent way to disrupt the worry cycle.

You need to redirect your focus away from the cerebral toward the practical.

This is not a knee jerk,

Reflexive distraction or escape from worry that may only tend to increase it.

Instead you need to become engaged in a project or an activity so that your concentration shifts away from your worries about a possible future danger and into the present.

This might involve engaging in a practical activity that is inherently enjoyable or a practical strategy for completing some immediate task at hand.

You're aiming for a stance of acceptance in the face of worry.

You might respond to the recurrence of worry with a statement of acceptance like,

Okay there's the worry.

It can just be here and run its course while I get on with my business.

You're not adding fuel to the fire so to speak.

Your focus is directed toward the practical activity rather than wrestling with whatever worry might be coming up.

Some different strategies include doing physical exercise,

Talking to someone,

Doing 20 minutes of deep relaxation.

This could be abdominal breathing,

Progressive muscle relaxation,

A guided visualization or meditation.

Some people find self-hypnosis helpful,

Listening to evocative or moving music,

Find a song or a whole CD that unlocks emotions for you.

You might like to develop a playlist that allows you to feel the sad feelings and move them toward feelings of hope and optimism for the future.

Experience something immediately pleasurable.

You cannot be worried and feel comfortable and pleasant at the same time.

Fear and pleasure are incompatible experiences.

It might be a good meal,

A warm bath,

A funny movie,

A back rub,

Cuddling,

Sexual activity or simply walking in a beautiful setting.

Use visual distractions,

Something that completely absorbs your attention.

Non-screen activities could include arts and crafts,

Reading or maybe some mindful coloring or painting.

Expressing your creativity,

Playing an instrument,

Gardening,

Rearranging your living room,

Making jewelry,

Watercolor painting.

It's also an opportunity for you to express the feeling of worry through art,

Through creative means.

If you have some paints in front of you and a canvas,

Paint out your worry.

What media would you use to try and express the intensity of the worry?

What colors,

What textures?

They say expression is the antidote to depression and I do believe wholeheartedly that creativity is a wonderful healing modality.

Repeating affirmations can help.

Moving away from worry into a more positive space,

Repeating affirmations slowly and deliberately.

This can become a kind of mantra when worry gets the best of you.

Vibrations include let it go,

Let it go.

These are just thoughts.

Like clouds across the sky,

They come and they go.

All is well in my world.

All is well in my world.

Diffusion is a series of techniques derived from a form of therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy.

These techniques offer a method for disentangling yourself from the ongoing stream of your thoughts.

Diffusion techniques aim to distance or provide space between automatic thoughts and your awareness of those thoughts.

They increase your capacity to observe rather than be enmeshed in the thoughts.

I agree that these techniques are especially helpful for dealing with worry.

When we are fused with our thoughts,

We tend to believe them as the absolute truth.

But as we rationally realize,

Just because we think it does not mean that it is true.

Diffusion strategies include noticing what your mind tells you,

Almost holding your mind at arm's length and saying,

Aha,

So you're telling me this or hello,

There is that worried thought.

What does it have to say for itself today?

The question,

Can I just notice what my mind is saying in this moment?

Or what thoughts are going through my mind right now?

Can assist in giving you the necessary space from automatic and unhelpful thinking.

The whole point of diffusion is to hold painful,

Critical or fearful thoughts less tightly so that they are less likely to run your life.

A very simple technique is to after becoming aware that you have had a thought and that's an unhelpful one.

You preface it with the phrase,

I'm having the thought that I'm having the thought that this is you stepping back from the thought being a given,

Being valid.

That this is a thought.

That's all it is.

It's a thought.

Another good mindfulness practice is leaves on a stream where you imagine that you're sitting on the bank of a gentle stream and you practice just being still in this peaceful setting.

In every thought that pops into your head,

You place it on a leaf,

Place it on the stream and gently watch it flow on by.

Come back to your breath.

Come back to this present moment and with the next thought that might be,

This is boring or I can't do this properly.

You put that thought on a leaf and onto the stream and watch as it gently floats away.

I found that the more you practice mindfulness,

The more space you have in between thoughts,

The less intense your thinking appears to be.

An important question of CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy is asking the very important question after having an unhelpful thought.

Where is the evidence that that thought is completely true?

It seems to me a lot of the time we're having thoughts that aren't based on fact but are based on fear or fiction.

So asking yourself where is the evidence that that thought is actually true brings you to a place of recognition that though you're triggered,

That though this thought may sting,

It doesn't need to be gripped tightly.

It needs to be held loosely and looked at scientifically.

And if my friend there is no evidence that that thought is true,

It gives you more scope to let it go.

Other diffusion strategies that I have found helpful is seeing the words of your worry in a sentence and putting that sentence on a flag that's attached to a little plane in your mind.

For example,

If you are worried that someone doesn't like you,

Quite a common worry for people,

You can see this little plane in your mind's eye and behind it it's dragging a flag that says so and so doesn't like you and you watch that plane as it takes off and it takes that sentence with it and you see that sentence getting smaller and smaller and smaller until you can't see that little plane or that little sentence anymore.

That same thought might come back and if that visualization works for you,

You just put that same thought on that same little plane and you have it fly off into the sky and get smaller and smaller again.

Because it appears the more we push back on thoughts in this sort of a way,

In this accepting sort of a way,

The less frequently and less intensely they return.

I think it's important now to note that thoughts do just appear completely out of the blue sometimes and it has been said that we have 60,

000 thoughts a day and 90% from the day before.

It would be very interesting to know what the percentage is of those that are factual.

I would say it's quite a small amount.

If you are finding it hard to fall asleep at night because you are worrying,

I do believe it's a good idea to write all your worries down,

Whatever they may be.

Take your list of worries and write a second list that ranks them in order of severity from the least severe to the most severe.

Make the worry you wish to work on first and make it into a worst case scenario of that worry.

Write a script that really details this worry,

A detailed scenario of what happens and how it makes you feel.

Then read through your script slowly visualising the scene for about 5 to 10 minutes after you do so.

If you feel anxiety in response to visualising this scenario you have done a good job of writing it up.

Repeat your exposure to the scenario several times until it becomes so routine that it no longer has any power to evoke anxiety.

Be willing to make that kind of time commitment to a worry that keeps returning,

Something that's really impacting you.

It's a good idea to rate the level of anxiety regarding that worry before doing the exposure and after.

The idea that you let yourself go to the worst case scenario is a good one because it allows you to see that even if the worst thing could happen you would still be okay.

Majority of the time you would get through,

You would live to tell the tale.

This is pushing back on fear.

This is finding your boldness at a time when you're feeling weak,

Reminding yourself of your own ability to cope.

Another idea is to postpone your worry.

Again pushing back on it,

Allocating a particular time during the day or perhaps the week that you designate to worrying your worry time if you like.

It's important that you can show your worry that you're in control,

That it's up to you when you think things through.

It gives you a good sense of empowerment and self-control that you are the one that says when worries can have their way with you.

You can also keep postponing worry for as long as you can.

The more you postpone it,

The more worry just loses its strength.

It's not about pushing the worry away.

It's about accepting the worry without trying to fight with it.

But telling yourself you'll postpone thinking about it for five minutes and then after five minutes tell yourself that you're going to postpone thinking about it for another five minutes and showing yourself who's in control.

As you get better at this,

You can postpone for longer and longer periods.

Another important strategy is of course to plan effective action to deal with your worries,

To look at what is within the locus of control.

Is anything in fact within your control to change the outcome?

Are there areas that you could be moving forward on that you're not?

Developing a plan of action to deal with a worry can really be empowering.

The simple process of developing such a plan will help to redirect your mind away from the worry and leave you feeling more optimistic and hopeful.

Make a list of possible things you can do to deal with the worry even if it seems overwhelming or impossible to you right now.

Ask others for help on this.

Consider each idea which ones are not possible,

Which ones are doable but difficult to implement.

Make a contract with yourself to do all the things that's within your power to counteract the worry.

Set specific dates by which you will complete them.

Once you've fulfilled all of your contracts,

Ask yourself how the situation has changed.

Has your worry been satisfactorily resolved?

If the situation has not been resolved,

Go through the process again.

I hope you found this useful.

Please feel free to give feedback and remember you are so much more than your thoughts.

Go well my friend.

Reviews

A fantastic listen, very informative and helpful. Now I just have to put it in practice :)

I think this will be very useful! Thank you!