A Worry Strategy

Each of us struggle from time to time with persistent, unwanted thoughts which we sometime label as “worry”. For the sake of this discussion, the use of the term “worry” doesn’t include anxiety which is not attached to any feature of consensual reality (if your best friend would agree that you need to deal with your credit card debt, we’ll consider it “real”)! Our instinct is to reject these thoughts because they intrude into our conscious awareness and interfere with what we think we’re “supposed” to be doing: working, relaxing, sleeping, having sex, making dinner, etc. While we may be determined to say “NO!” to Worry, the discipline of “not thinking about something” seems doomed by definition.

For many folks Worry affects them in much the same way as a ringing phone. Most of us have been conditioned with “when the phone rings, pick it up” and find it hard not to, even at moments like sitting down to a family meal. We feel a little uncomfortable, rude, or inconsiderate perhaps, until, hopefully, we conclude that it’s OK to respect our own needs. Well, we seem to treat Worry in much the same way – once ambushed by Worry, we may throw up our hands in despair believing we have no way to resist. This reveals something useful: often Worry has a legitimate concern at its core, and we know we ought to pay attention to it. So, instead of saying “no”, why not say “yes”, but keep better control of our time and energy?

“How can I do that?” you may well ask. Perhaps if we follow the ringing phone metaphor a little further, a strategy will emerge. Demands upon our time and energy which come via the phone can often be fit into our daily schedule in ways that meet our needs as well. If we were to treat Worry like anyone else “ringing us up”, we would say something like this: “yes, I realize I have to deal with this – let’s get together tomorrow morning.” This shift from saying “no” to saying “yes” is a powerful first step in taking control of Worry.

Tomorrow morning (and every subsequent morning) set aside the amount of time you estimate you will need to deal with Worry. Start your day that number of minutes earlier and do the following:

1. Write an exhaustive list of everything about which you should worry on a piece of paper, one worry per line.
2. Review that list and choose three worries – most time-pressured, most emergent, most serious, most “stuck”, longest standing – whatever criteria makes sense to you.
3. On a new sheet of paper, draw a line vertically, dividing the page in two. Write the first of those three worries at the top of the left column and break it down into tasks or component parts in a list written into the right hand column. Repeat this for worry two and worry three.
4. As you go about your business that day, carry this second piece of paper with you and check off the do-able tasks as you deal with them.
5. Before you get on with your day, destroy the first piece of paper (on which you wrote the exhaustive list of worries) in the most soul-satisfying way you can think of – tear it to confetti, burn it, garburate it, etc. - just be sure it no longer exists to be obsessed over.
6. If during the day, at any time when you do not wish it, Worry “rings you up”, say “yes, we’ll deal with this tomorrow at 7 (or whenever you’ve planned for this to happen)”. Of course, some problems demand an immediate response, but you’ll know the difference.
7. At the end of your day, review the two-columned list to see what progress you’ve made and, if necessary, write a “tickler” list for tomorrow, then destroy that two-columned sheet of paper.
8. Next morning repeat these steps. Do this faithfully every day until you know you don’t have to or no longer wish to.

These simple steps can change our relationship to Worry in meaningful and rewarding ways when consistently applied. The biggest change is released when we decide to no longer expend our energy in a doomed attempt to say “no”, but instead choose to say “yes” to Worry and thereafter apply that conserved energy to resolving our issues, in our own time and in our own way.