Nobody likes to worry but we do it all the time. We worry about health, bills to pay, our children, job, future of the economy, and many worry about the state of our marriage/relationship.
Worry does not make us feel good. In all my years of being a psychologist, I never heard anybody complain because they had nothing to worry about. For many, worry creates counterproductive behavior, such as over eating, drinking, smoking, or just being a pain in the neck to others. I never heard a husband say, "My wife's best attribute is that she worries all the time." However, I hear people frequently say to their loved ones in both life and film, "You worry too much."
If worry does not make us feel good and often creates stressful patterns of living, why do we do it? The answer, according to evolutionary sciences, is that you are hard wired or born to worry!
Your ancestors who "worried" about the factors that influenced thier survival-food sources, defending against predators-would be favored by Natural Selection, as their "worry" provided them the time to think about how best to master survival challenges. Thus, the evolutionary function of worry is to remind you that you are at risk, and you best take the time to think about how best to respond.
Since your hardwired to worry, you might as well use it as intended: a tool that helps you spend time to figure out how best to respond to problems that are threatening.
There are three steps.
1. Befriend Worry. This means that every time you are worrying, you use it as a cue to ask yourself, "what is going on in my life that I find threatening? " Is it your finances, marriage, health, children? Befriending worry is easier said than done because to do so, you have to feel comfortable in addressing your vulnerabilities.
Many a physician will testify that many patients do not want to address their vulnerabilities and as a result, suffer dire consequences. Many spouses will tell you their partner gets anxious when their health is discussed and shorten the discussion as a result. Why? Because acknowledging vulnerability is uncomfortable so we like to act like we are invulnerable but in so doing, we remain at risk.
Thus, to befriend worry so that you can spend time in a worry state productively, you have to feel comfortable in feeling vulnerable. Self help tips here would be: keep a feeling journal; play games and take big risks that make you vulnerable-it is only a game; take small risks, like going to a new restaurant. The point is that to use worry effectively, you have to spend time thinking about a particular issue and you do this best by being comfortable thinking about it and talking about i
2. Realitize Worry Perspective. Here the goal is to keep you from making a "cognitive maladaption." Tune into your thoughts and you will probably see that you are making catastrophic self statements: The gas bill is high, but to internally say, "Gas prices are killing me," is an exaggeration that spikes your worry intensity and only perpetuates needless worry-worry that does not help the situation; you need less of it.
If you tune in to how yourself statements, you can clarify them so you can put your worry in perspective. Just because you are going to be five minutes late to your meeting is not a threat to your survival whereas five minutes late to a hunting post might of cost your entire village the meal it needs to survive. There is an abundance of research that shows these cognitive maladaptations are hazardous to both physical and mental health. One way they are harmful is they create physiological disturbances for prolonged periods of time, and these disturbances operate as wear and tear on the body.
It is also helpful to learn to use worry arousal as a signal that it is time to clarify your thinking -- this allows you to quickly catch cognitive maladaptations before they intensify your worry intensity to a level that makes you ineffective.
3. Become Action Oriented: what do you need to do to make the worry go away? What do you need to do to minimize the threat? Are you worried about the gas bill? What's the best thing to do -- keep worrying about it or find a car pool or a cheaper gas station? You are worried about the economy? What is the best thing to do? Keep telling yourself you will help to sell your house or concentrate on doing your best at work and actively pursuing other opportunities.
The self help logic here is to use your thoughts -- the cognitive component of your emotions -- to help you convert physical worry arousal into the positive energy that is required for the actions that will take your worries away. Again, it is easy to see how natural selection favored those that used worry to help them problem solve. Is it any wonder that research shows that star performers, effective leaders, and healthier people are better problem solvers than their counterparts?
When you follow these steps, it allows you to use worry as Mother Nature intended, as a catalyst to get you to pay attention and come up to solutions to problems that currently threaten you and by responding effectively, you enhance your life.
Let me know your "strategies" for thriving on worry!
www.drhendrieweisinger.com
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