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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello, my name is Allie. I am a cognitive behavioural therapist working for the NHS in West London, and I'm looking forward to bringing you some podcasts this week focusing on strategies and techniques that you can use to manage your mental health. So for today's podcast, I want to focus on something that we all do and that is worrying. So firstly, what is worry? So worry is actually a behavioral response to anxiety and because it is a behavioral response, it is something that we do have a degree of control over, even if it might not feel like sometimes.
Speaker 1:So worrying can be helpful for us sometimes and it's a way that we maybe try to deal with a problem, and that's fine if there's a problem to be solved. So worry is helpful if you, for example, are crossing a road and suddenly a car comes running, sorry, racing, not running, cars don't run, racing around the corner towards you and you suddenly think in a split second, this is dangerous, I need to get out of the way, and you will jump back on the pavement. You probably noticed that you maybe have a racing heart, that you've got some muscle tension, that you almost have jolt of energy to get you back onto the pavement and into safety. And that is your fight or flight response kicking in. So worrying is unhelpful if we are worrying about something that we can't do anything about.
Speaker 1:So that might be something that may or may not happen in the future. For example, worrying about someone you are dating suddenly losing interest in you. That's not something that is happening in the moment, and Even though we might think that we are trying to solve that problem by worrying about it and maybe figuring out a way to deal with that, actually at the end of the day we're not going to be able to solve a problem that doesn't exist. So worrying in that respect is futile. Our brains are not very good at determining the difference between what is real and what is imagined, so we may respond to an imagined worry in exactly the same way that we respond to a worry that is real.
Speaker 1:So we are going to respond in exactly the same way to the idea of someone rejecting us on a date, as we respond to the idea of getting hit by a bus, or as one of our ancestors might have responded to the threat of a tiger or a bear, for example, out in the wild. And that sort of response is only designed to be helpful to us in the moment. It's not designed to be a state in which we live for more than maybe just a few minutes at a time. And in in the twenty first century, we are faced with all sorts of metaphorical tigers and bears that are coming to get us. So we find ourselves in a state of fight or flight, probably for most of the time.
Speaker 1:I wonder how long you lose each day or each week to worrying about something that you can't do anything about. We describe that worry as being futile, so it's not going to help you get anywhere in life, in terms of solving a problem, if the problem is not there in the first place to be solved. Just think of all the things you could be doing, instead of worrying about something that's not happening. I'm sure there are probably things that you are missing out on because of the time that you might spend worrying about something that is completely out of your control. If you think about it, there are two broad types of worrying that we've talked about today.
Speaker 1:So we've talked about the sort of worries that are helpful for us. We call them in CBT practical worries. So they're worries that are happening right now. There's something that we can do something about. So an example might be that you've forgotten to pay a bill this month, and you've got a letter or a message saying that you need to pay it.
Speaker 1:So there's something you can do about that. If you can pay it, then you can make a plan of action. Okay. I'm gonna pay that when I get home. Or if you can't pay it, then you can still plan to speak to the company and to try and arrange something with them.
Speaker 1:So it's something that's happening here and now, but you were able to take some control over that. Now the other type of worry, something that's not happening right now, is what we call a what if worry or a hypothetical worry. They usually do start with those words, what if. What if my partner falls out of love with me? What if the train is late?
Speaker 1:What if I don't get this job that I'm applying for? So there are things that are not actually happening, but they may or may not happen in the future. Now because we can't put a plan of action in place for these and to manage these, what we do in CBT is advise you to postpone this worry, to let this worry go. Now obviously letting go of a worry sounds a lot easier said than done. You might be thinking to yourself what a stupid piece of advice.
Speaker 1:Well I'm going to give you a technique that so many of my patients have found really, really helpful in helping them manage their worries. And all of them, at the start, when I introduced this technique to them, said I think you are absolutely insane for giving me this technique, but I'm gonna try it anyway. So, you know, leave your leave your preconceptions at the door for this one, and just give it a try. So firstly, the key is to notice when you are worrying. Now it can help to keep a bit of a worry diary to start this.
Speaker 1:You could do this on your phone. I think there are apps that you can use if you type in worry diary, or you could even write them down on a notepad if you prefer the pen and paper approach. So just notice when your worries come up and write down what you're worrying about. You might wanna notice some patterns as well. So are you mostly having hypothetical worries?
Speaker 1:Are you having a bit of both hypothetical and practical? Are you noticing that there's a particular time of day that you worry more? So it's good to get into a habit of working first with those hypothetical worries. So when you notice that you are having a hypothetical worry, one of those what if worries that isn't happening, that you can't do anything about, write that worry down on your phone, in your app, on your piece of paper, and then refocus on what you were doing beforehand. So you may find that that worry crops up again, that's absolutely fine.
Speaker 1:Just write it down and refocus. And just keep going with this process throughout the day. It doesn't matter how many times you do this, just keep consistently doing it. If you're struggling to refocus, then sometimes it can be helpful to actually do something physical. So getting up, making a cup of tea, make getting something to eat, going for a little bit of a walk, having a stretch, listening to music, doing something that distracts your brain and gives you something physical to do.
Speaker 1:Now the very act of writing down this worry has tricked your brain into thinking it's doing something about it, when in reality all you're doing is just writing it down. And this is really helpful for people who worry at night. Perhaps they wake up with worries that they, can't then get back to sleep because of. So you've written down your worries, and you have let that worry go. You've refocused on something else.
Speaker 1:The next step is to, and this is the part that seems a little bit out there, find a time each day in which you are going to do nothing but worry. Hear me out. Think about what time you could spend no longer than twenty minutes just going over your worries in your head and tell yourself I'm sending this worry to worry time, I'm postponing it, and later on I'm going to give myself time to specifically go over and over this worry in my head as many times as I want to. So a lot of patients say that they maybe do it when they get in from work, so maybe around about 06:30, and they figure out where they're going to do it. For example, that could be in their house or outside.
Speaker 1:So they find a place where they're going to actually do their worry time. Now this should be a time and a place that you can stick to with some degree of regularity. There may be some days that you have to adapt it a little bit, but try to make it as regular as possible, a little bit like keeping an appointment with yourself. So, once you have set that time and that place, the plan is that you will take all of those worries that you have thought of during the day, and you will sit and worry about them for no longer than twenty minutes at a time. Now during that time, you might want to think about, you know, is there really anything I can do about this?
Speaker 1:Is there anything that I can be that I can gain from having this worry and holding onto it? Just go over and over it as much as you want in your mind, as long as it's staying within that twenty minute time limit. Set yourself a timer so that you don't go over that time limit. I would recommend that you don't do this too close to your bedtime because sometimes actually bringing up the worries can result in some of those fight or flight symptoms maybe being activated slightly, and you don't really want that coming up when you're trying to go to bed in thirty minutes time, say. Once you have finished your worry time and your timer has gone off, then make a pact with yourself to do something that is interesting and fun and takes you away from the worries.
Speaker 1:So, for example, some people like to go and cook dinner. Some people do exercise. Some people read a book or watch something on TV. If you can do something physical, that's even better. Maybe do one of the turtle replay workouts, for example.
Speaker 1:And that is your worry time completed. If a worry comes up after you've finished worry time, then you write it down and you take it to worry time the next day. The reason that we do this is to free up time during the rest of the day where you can just do what you need to do in your life without having the pressure of hypothetical worries taking over your time. So, this is the rationale behind it. And this comes from a study from some psychologist called Dugas et al, and they created this model of anxiety, specifically of generalised anxiety disorder.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that they found was that people who experience anxiety would often either spend a lot time on their worries, or they would avoid their worries altogether. And then that would make them feel even more distressed. So, by doing this technique, they found that people in the study would spend more time actually doing the things they enjoyed, rather than worrying. And actually, it put a reduction on some of those physical symptoms of worry, and also the time they spent worrying. So, we're not aiming to eradicate worry completely, because that would actually be quite dangerous.
Speaker 1:But what we are aiming to do is to dial the worry down. So imagine if you had a dial, like an old fashioned radio, and it was turned up to volume 10, then we want to try and dial down that worry level so it's a manageable level for you. You may find that when you come to worry time that you actually don't have many worries. Or the worries that you look at on the page, you may think, I don't know why I was worrying about that. That's not actually a problem anymore.
Speaker 1:In which case, then don't worry about them. Don't try and find worries and pull them out of thin air just for the sake of doing worry time. If you get to worry time and you don't have anything that you feel you want to worry about, then that's okay. You have successfully postponed your worries, and you don't need to force yourself to worry. You can just go straight ahead and skip onto the part where you do something fun and engaging for yourself.
Speaker 1:So I would really encourage everybody to have a go at this for a period of maybe three weeks, giving it chance to really bed in, and then see how you get on. See if you are still feeling as anxious. See if you have managed to free up some time for some of the things that you really enjoy. I would really love to hear how you get on. So please do feel free to go to the Turtle social media pages and let me know how things went for you.
Speaker 1:And I hope that you have a fantastic week.