Cut down on worrying

 

 

 

“Most things I worry about never happen anyway.”  Tom Petty

Even if you know that worry is a waste of time, it does not stop you from doing it. It does help though if you take stock of what is going on and work to deal with it.

Worrying is the thought component of anxiety symptoms. The four components of anxiety:

  1. Emotional
  2. Physical/Physiological
  3. Behavioural
  4. Thought/Cognitive

Imagine you have a presentation coming up at work.

  1. You may have feelings of fear and dread, these are 2 examples of the emotional component.
  2. You may also notice bodily sensations, such as heart palpitations, sweating, or a tightness in your stomach, this is the physiological component.
  3. You might snap or become rude to a colleague or a loved one because of how you feel – this is behavioural.
  4. Finally, you might be thinking, “I’m going to mess it up, and then I’m going to get fired.”

Number 4 is what we refer to as worry, these thoughts are rigid, negative and repetitive (2). The kind of fortune telling we engage in when we are excessively worried, is unrealistic and not helpful. That is because we are in fight, freeze or flight mode (3) and the creative, problem solving part of our brain – the part that we actually need is shut off (4). Known as an amygdala hijack (5), we are operating using limited resources.

When we are stuck like this, it is best if we get out of it, and the sooner the better (6). That is because our emotions and thoughts are only going to become more extreme and intense the longer we are like this. 

 What Not to Do

 

 

 

Don’t beat yourself up about worrying or try to fight it by wishing it away. Likewise, don’t tell a worried person not to worry. It just adds to the pressure.

 

What to Do

 

 

For the most part, there are 2 kinds of people, those who have techniques for dealing with worry and stress and those who don’t. It is a sad failure of our education system that all of us never learnt skills to deal with the suffering that life brings, because not only are these skills essential to living a contented life, they are quite easy to learn and develop.

Learn to manage your worrying, you do not have to put up with the unpleasantness of constant fear and a racing mind that comes with the inevitable planning and problem solving that comes with life.

 

 

 

If you learn with us, we will teach and develop these skills with you. To get an insight into what we will cover, you can try the following out in our introduction page. During our online one to one classes, we have specific exercises that you can do every time that you feel trapped by worry.

We will also work with you to calm, quieten and balance what you think and feel during times of rest, because sometimes worry creeps up on us. We can then cut it out before it wastes our day or night.

References

 

 

1.Science Daily Anxiety

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/anxiety.htm

2.Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman

3.Jansen, A; Nguyen, X; Karpitsky, V; Mettenleiter, M (27 October 1995). “Central Command Neurons of the Sympathetic Nervous System: Basis of the Fight-or-Flight Response”. Science Magazine. 5236 (270).

4.http://www.sportnz.org.nz/assets/Uploads/attachments/managing-sport/officials-and-volunteers/Conflict-and-your-brain.pdf

5.Nadler, Relly. “What Was I Thinking? Handling the Hijack” (PDF). Retrieved 2019-04-15.

6. Chapter 2 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE : AN OVERVIEW” (PDF). INFLIBNET Centre. Retrieved 3 February 2019.