Worrying Well – Learning to Avoid Chronic Worrying

By: Lee Kotsalis-Thulin | August 24, 2009

Since we’re living in worrisome times – if you don’t believe me, tune in to CNN – it seems that learning how to worry well would be a useful skill to master.

How do you worry? Are you someone who replays past conversations or events over and over again, going through in detail what you said/should have said, did/should have done? Or is your worry more focused on the future, anticipating how something will unfold, what you’ll say next time your mother gives you that look, or the cute guy or girl has the spot next to you at the yoga class?

Worry is essentially our brain’s tendency to rehash and rehearse – it replays the past hoping we will learn from our mistakes and therefore not repeat them, or anticipates the future, giving us a chance to run our lines and prepare our scripts.

But while these are no doubt helpful and necessary processes, worry can also become chronic, keeping us so caught up in the past or the future that we fail to be fully present to the present.

If you find that worry sometimes has its way with you, here are a couple of things to try:

• Take a worry inventory: using post-in notes or some scrap paper, take a walk through your mind and identify the things that are currently asking for your worried attention.  As you find these – for example, “there’s the thing with Mark, remembering to book my flight for next month, talking to my boss about the project”… – write each one on a separate piece of paper. If there are any items that you need to deal with right away, pull them aside and organize them in the order you will address them. If none of them are pressing right at this minute (Hint: if it’s 2:00am and “get out of my burning home” is not one of the items, NONE of them are pressing!), put them in a box or jar and lay them aside until you are able and willing to address them. You will likely find that just the act of acknowledging the things that are preoccupying you and giving yourself the message that you WILL deal with them is itself freeing.
• Try the ‘worry well but only once’ technique. Set aside a time in your schedule (20-30 minutes) and make that your worry time. Then actively worry – rehash and rehearse to your heart’s (and mind’s) content, make the lists you need to make, plan the strategies you need to plan, review the foibles, humiliations and disappointments you need to review… Then when your time is up, put worry away. If it calls your name later on, remind yourself that you already worried today and you’re going to worry again tomorrow, so save it for your worry time.  You may find that condensing worry into an acute 20-30 minute slot is much preferable to the 24/7 chronic low-grade variety of worrying.

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About the Author:

Lee Kotsalis-Thulin - With a Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology from UBC, Lee is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and has been working in the field since 1995. In 2003, she founded ModoSano Counselling, a private counselling practice serving individuals, couples, and families facing a variety of concerns. Lee is...
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