Be Coached on Health & Wellbeing Today! 

WORRIED?  ANXIOUS?

LET WORRY AND ANXIETY G0, EASILY AND EFFORTLESSLY NOW

You know, don’t you, that worrying is a pointless exercise? Thoughts going round and round, you’re like a dog with a bone and won’t let it go – even though the goodness has gone. 

Worrying is one of those fruitless, thankless mind practices that cause stress and anxiety – and stress can cause a litany of health problems:

Indigestion, constipation, diarrhoea, skin rashes, asthma, muscular aches and pains, high blood pressure, and over time, severe mental strain, so that the cycle just continues on and on. Then of course, you have something new to worry about and that’s all those ailments that have been induced by stress in the first place.

You can take action and help yourself, so here’s the Worry Space exercise. After all, if you are going to worry, you might as well do it properly.

WORRY SPACE

Allot yourself a worry space or a space in which to be anxious.  That means you are only allowed to think about the situation in the time allocated to your worry space, say 7.45 to 8 am every day. The funny thing is, when you sit down to worry and be anxious about it, your mind will buck and want to think about other things! 

Whenever you find yourself (during the day or any time outside the worry space) thinking about the situation, just tell yourself the following: 

"NO, I focus on what I want to think about, so I'm letting that thought go until 7.45am. Now, what was I doing right now?" 

and bring your attention back to the here and now, reminding yourself what you are thinking about, what you are seeing around you, what smells you can smell, what things you are touching, even what you are tasting if you are eating or drinking.

By doing this regularly, you will gain control of your mind and you will only worry when you are supposed to. You might even need to remind yourself what it is you are worrying about during the worry space! "Now is the time to worry about 'John's situation," then write down the problem.


PROBLEM EXAMPLE

I dislike John being angry.

Then write down possible solutions to the problem, according to your situation:

SOLUTIONS

1. Tell John his anger is a waste of time, if he'd been more supportive and done the right thing I wouldn't be leaving.
   

2. Get a punching pillow and punch the daylights out of it whenever I am angry, with the purposeful intention of letting go and releasing the anger and moving on.
   

3. Talk to a counsellor or psychologist.
   

4. Stay away from John.
   

5. Spend as little time with John as possible.
   

6. I’ll apologise to John and won’t use the word ‘but’ in the apology! (Saying but after you’ve apologised means that the apology just went out the window. To use but, is to butt out what you’ve just said.)

And so on

The above solutions are only suggestions and you will have your own, of course. The other thing is that you can put down silly solutions, and make yourself laugh.

For eg:

• Tell John he has to wear a nappy to work because he's behaving like a baby!
  

• Imagine John wearing a nappy and you seeing the looks on customer’s faces when they see him.

Of course, some solutions are not to be followed through, they are just written down to help relieve your stress. 

Next, ask yourself what you have learnt from the situation: “What have I learnt from this situation?”

LEARNINGS

1. Never let things go so long without addressing them.
   

2. Once something has happened 3 times – I’ve proven that the situation needs work, so choose to confront the person, or my lack of confrontation.
   

3. Act quickly to nip things in the bud
   

4. Being nice won’t get me respect
   

5. Being violent won’t get me what I want
   

6. Being teary doesn’t help people to act helpfully
   

7. Being strong – listening, thoughtful, rational and thinking through the consequences helps everyone
   

8. Being an observer of the other person or people and of myself (as though I was looking at me and others) gives me distance from my emotions so I can be quite neutral and rational, even curious about his or her behaviour.
   

9. If I’d let him/her see how angry I felt, they’d know there was a problem – first time.
   

10. Never let my fear get in the way of my integrity
    

11. Never let the feelings of being gradually worn down replace action. Taking action will dissipate that feeling.
    

12. Laugh!
    

13. I Forgive myself
    

14. I accept myself
    

15. Remember that sweet and nice probably won’t cut it if I want to advance my career. I must have respect as well, and respect needs strength from me.
    

16. Remember to ask myself “How important is this in the fullness of my lifetime?” Will it still matter in 5 years time? If it won’t, I choose to let it go now.

Again, write learnings - states of being and feeling, that mean something to you. 

Usually, when we have learnt something fully, we can let a situation go easily and effortlessly. Plus, we don’t need to experience that situation again, because we’ve learnt from it. 

If you are attracting negative consequences, then put the learnings in, take them to heart, mind and body, and then you will release the sabotage pattern of negative situations. 

Then review the list and ask yourself which solutions will work for you, and choose one that suits best. 

Then, reread your learnings you’ve written and choose the ones that fit best for you, to really sink into your consciousness so that you can easily and effortlessly let go of the problem.

TAKE ACTION WITH YOUR SOLUTION and LOSE ANXIETY TOO

Then check your solution and if you still need to, do it. 

The thing is, the more you practise the worry space: problem, solution, learnings, the less worrying anything will be! 

Just follow the rules: 

• Only take 15 mins (so you have to worry quickly)
  

• Only worry at the allocated time

The purpose of the worry space is to let go of what is worrying you by taking action - just writing down the problem and possible solutions is an action. 

So the rule for that one is - I worry purposely to let go of a problem or challenge, easily and effortlessly now.  If you’ve written anything down that you don’t want others to find, burn or destroy the sheet of paper. It would not help you if someone hurt the person you were angry or upset with, and you were implicated through writing down your worries and solutions.

Do this every day, for every problem, as it comes up, and you will find that the rest of the day is free and easy! 

Truly, the art of the worry space is very valuable because you will tame and train your mind to focus at will, let go of anxiety, and that’s exercising discipline within your power and control. 

© Narelle Stratford, Psychologist, 2008