How to Manage Your Worries in Two Easy Steps

It is no secret that there is much these days to worry about. We are, at this writing, half a year into a global pandemic that continues to affect our health, economy, and our children and families. We are also experiencing social unrest and frightening news stories every day about the future of our world. Pile that on top of our everyday stressors and it is no wonder that most of my clients today talk to me about increased worry and stress in their lives.

I believe that talking with a professional counselor can result in significant feelings of relief. I also believe that to extend that feeling between sessions and to effect real change, we must practice certain skills outside of the counseling office. For those clients who are spending their days and nights with the ever-present loop of worry running in their heads, I have been suggesting a combination of two quite simple cognitive behavioral strategies; thought stopping and scheduling worry time. Now, I don’t want to “give away the farm”, or to give the impression that these two strategies will solve all of your problems, but in these troubling times I do want to help as many people as possible. Today I would like to pass along these two strategies in the hopes that they will provide some much-needed relief from worry.

First some history: Do you remember Pavlov’s dogs, who were conditioned to respond to the ringing of a bell in the same way that they did to the sight of their food? That classical conditioning is a result of a neural pathway being formed. Neural pathways are easily created and while we know we are a higher order animal than dogs, we are nonetheless animals and can easily be “conditioned.” It goes like this; we have a thought (ie; “how will I pay the bills?”,” is it safe to go to that gathering?”, “are my children going to be negatively affected by all this?”, “what is going to happen to our world?”) Then we start to worry and over time, the brain learns that when I have a negative thought, I worry. Negative thoughts and worry become a paired response, and before we know it, worry is taking up too much of our days and nights. The good news is, these pathways can be interrupted, and if you are persistent and practice continued interruption of the pathway, they can become “extinct” (aka go away)!

Enter thought stopping. Our brain is a pretty awe-inspiring organ, but we can play tricks on it to get us out of the trouble zone. Thought stopping is just as it sounds. When you notice you are, again having that worrisome thought, imagine something that means “stop” to you (you might need to close your eyes for this to work, so please don’t practice this one while driving…). I like to use a big, red, stop sign. Some people imagine a hand, held up as if stopping traffic, or a circle with a line drawn through it. Others conjure up the image of NO! Any of these will work, but we’ll use the stop sign for this explanation. Bring the image of a stop sign to your mind and trace the letters S-T-O-P, the white border of the hexagon (and one client told me they had to go so far as the rusty pole with the bolts in it). Take your time. The goal is to keep that STOP image in your mind until the worrisome thought is interrupted.

And then when you have finished, you will likely notice the thought comes back, and you must do it again. This exercise will probably have to be repeated multiple times over a matter of days. It can become frustrating, but if you keep at it, I can guarantee it will work. At least, I have not yet had a client tell me it did not work!

The second strategy is scheduling worry time, which is also just as it sounds. What time of day do you want to worry? Let’s pick 5 P.M. How long do you want to worry? Fifteen minutes? Whatever you decide on, schedule a reminder on your phone for an alarm to go off at your designated worry time (please don’t make it too close to bedtime) and then set the timer for your allotted time period and worry away! Worry about everything you can possibly think of and do not stop worrying until the timer goes off. Get it all out!

The combination of these two strategies seems to currently be particularly helpful for many of my clients. During the day (or night) whenever you notice you are having worrisome thoughts, imagine your thought stopping image, and then say to yourself “It’s not my worry time. My worry time is at 5 P.M. until then, I am going to get back to the task at hand and at 5 P.M., I will worry.

It works! It really does-if your brain knows it can worry later, it seems to give us a break for a while. Over time, those breaks can get longer and longer, until one day we realize our worry has significantly reduced.

Best of luck to you with this, I hope you try it. And if you are interested in learning more strategies to manage your problems, please reach out to me today!

Laura Richards, LPCC

502-513-6246