How To Worry Well: Four Tried and Tested Ways To Stop Your Anxiety Taking Over
In a recent post, I wrote about why worry isn’t the enemy but a normal human emotion. This time, I want to share four things that helped me to stop it from overwhelming me.
When my daughter was in hospital, worry was always in the background. I knew I couldn’t stop it, but neither did I want it dominating my life. To try and stay as calm as was possible in the circumstances, I turned to two familiar worry-management strategies and also experimented with two new ones. You’ll be glad to know all four helped and they’ve now earned a place in my mental toolkit.
1. “What If” to “What Is”
This is an exercise that comes pretty easily to me, since I’m pretty good at rationalising things and looking at actual facts i.e. what doctors have actually said and not what they might mean. Having said that, being human, it took my wonderful counsellor, Sue, to point out that sometimes I still disappear down what-if rabbit holes with my thoughts. So, “concentrate on what you know, not on possibilities that even the doctors may not have considered”, was my message to myself.
Of course, it’s all easier said than done but it is a principle central to cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT): shifting from hypothetical worries (“what if”) to concrete, present-focused thoughts (“what is”) can help reduce rumination and anxiety.1 And crucially, it’s good to remind ourselves, that as much as we all think we can predict the future, often in a negative way, we can’t. We weren’t born holding a crystal ball.
I found writing my thoughts down made the process work better and afterwards, when I saw facts staring back at me from the page, I realised with some relief I had less to worry about than I thought. A very pleasant way to go to bed that particular evening.
2. Movement and Rest
We’re probably all familiar with the science on this one but it bears repeating and it’s very clear: regular physical activity, sleep and rest reduce anxiety and worry. Exercise lowers stress hormones (like cortisol) and increases endorphins, the feel-good hormones that often give you a buzz afterwards,2 while sleep and rest help the brain process emotions, improve concentration and decision making, which in turn help to think your way through anxious situations.
In my case, all the way through the four weeks that J (my daughter) was in hospital, I was responsible for walking her dog so I made sure that I got my steps in (an average of 7,000 per day). Rest was more problematic since I was sleeping badly but since so many other things were put on hold it meant that when I came back from visiting her, I could rest for an hour or two to feel more refreshed for the evening.
3. Naming Your Emotion
I’d known for some time that studies show an emotion loses its power when named. I’d never tried this technique before but now I felt like I needed all the help I could get, so decided to try it out.3
On a quiet Friday evening when I had some alone time, I sat down and actually said out loud, “I’m worried about J.”
Admitting that to myself actually made me feel better and I remembered the words of my counsellor, Sue, from a long time ago, “Of course you’re going to worry. It’s your daughter!” I felt these words validated my feelings, in contrast to the “Don’t-be-so-silly!” messages I was used to giving myself if I caught myself worrying.
4. Scheduling Worry Time
This validation and the power of having said the feeling out loud encouraged me to allow myself some “worry time”. This strategy, known as “stimulus control” or “worry postponement,” is a CBT-based technique that helps people contain their worries to a specific time of day and so reduces the overall amount of rumination and intrusive thoughts. The idea is that when you catch yourself worrying, you say to yourself, “I’ll worry about that later.”
I liked this technique particularly because after trying hard to rationalise things for so long, I now gave my brain permission to download its worries. And worry, as we saw in the first article can be a positive thing: a genuine human emotion which is part of our evolution and not something to be overcome or eliminated.
Since I was still sitting at my desk, I wrote down all my thoughts and afterwards felt a palpable sense of relief that I was able to be that honest with myself. (I even thought that what I’d written could be helpful to someone else and that became the basis of the first article I wrote about worry. A win-win all round.)
Worry is a fact of life. We can’t stop it knocking, but we can decide how long it stays. While it’s under your roof, give it a seat, listen to it, but then take it to the door and wave good-bye.
Afterwards, through movement, rest and concentrating on facts, you can decide to use your emotional bandwidth for something else.
Four ways then, to worry well. They certainly helped me to cope and get through a tough time. Maybe they can do the same for you.
Pete
Wilson, Rob and Branch, Rhena; Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies; John Wiley and Sons 2006
Smith, P. J. et al. (2018). The effects of physical activity on anxiety: A meta-analysis. Depression and Anxiety, 35(9), 846–857
Lieberman, M. D. et al. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.
There are so many excellent strategies in this post, Peter! Boy do I struggle with "What if". I tend to catastrophize and blow things out of proportion. As you said, it's important to stick to the facts of what we know.
I also like #4 - scheduling time to worry. I need to do this!