What do you focus on when you worry? That’s an important question when you want to learn how to stop worrying… and in a minute I will show you why. But first, let’s quickly learn how to locate your worry focus.
3 Steps to stop worrying unproductively
1. Know your worry focus
Broadly speaking there are a few categories or common thought patterns in which we think when feeling anxious or restless. Some of the common ones are –
- Overgeneralization – If what’s worrying you is on the lines of “I am never good with such things”. It means our focus is on how we think things generally are for us.
- Rumination – Things from past making us cringe or feel distressed over and over again with thoughts like “why did she say that to me”, or “why did he look at me like that?”
- Mind reading – When we focus on what we assume how the other person must be interpreting things, like “they must be thinking this about me”. And that opens up a whole bunch of uncomfortable possibilities.
- Minimization and negative attention – These are the times when we can’t stop worrying because we shortchange everything that’s going in our favor while focusing on all that could go wrong. Like, ”yeah, that’s all fine… but, what if this happens”
Why knowing your focus of worry is important is because it helps us see which technique would work best when… to stop worrying and start living, start taking action.
Like, if we are thinking in an overgeneralized pattern, then chunking down and cognitive restructuring can help…. getting down to specifics and then changing to a more productive way of looking at things.
2. How to stop worrying? Break the worry loop
For the worrying thoughts that have a more external focus, like “what if this doesn’t work” or “they must be thinking this about me”, stop and ask these 2 questions –
- “Is it the most likely or is it the worst thing that could happen?” – When we worry, we overestimate the probability of something happening and this is what puts us in the stress mode. This question helps us snap out of that mode and look at it from a more realistic point of view…. whether it is justified worry with very likely risks or are we simply overthinking things. Getting clear about what’s truly likely to happen can help us make better decisions, stop worrying and start living.
- “Is it really that bad?” – When we are worrying about something, we assume the worst, and the worst seems very likely to happen. And that’s enough to put us in the survival mode. That’s why we can’t sometimes just switch those thoughts off in our head. Here, we are looking for evidence to support how real we think any risk is.
Now, the question is, what do we do about the things that we now know are quite likely to happen… how to stop worrying about them?
3. Don't make it harder
The key is to stop making things more difficult than they need to be. We worry to avoid uncertainty. But, the things out of our control will happen regardless if we worry about them or not. No need to make things more difficult than they already are because then performance anxiety sets in and it becomes tough to stop worrying and start living… start taking action.
To know what to do instead… and a helpful tool to bring all this to more solid grounds than just thoughts in your head, watch the video up top.
I hope you found this helpful.
