Are You a Worrier? 2 Quick Mental Techniques to Stop Worrying

Worrying. That is the conversation of today. Ruminating, worrying your brain, producing anxious thoughts and telling you worst case scenarios and just totally harassing you with what ifs, with thoughts about bad things that could happen. And the question that I've been being asked a lot lately is why am I worrying? How do I stop worrying? How do I make my brain stop telling me every terrible possible thing that could happen? And so today we're going to talk about worrying. We're going to talk about how to stop worrying, and we're going to talk about how to prevent yourself from being a worry wart in the long run. And I actually want to stop. Start by I'm going to read you a story. I have it written out on my computer here, so you're going to see me kind of looking over at my computer. But I want to start by telling you a story. And as you're listening to the story, if you can close your eyes and just imagine the scene playing out. And there's something really important at the end of the story that I want you to notice. I'm going to just say it once, I'm going to read it once and I want you to tell me if you caught on to what I'm getting at in this story. It'll take just a couple minutes. You ready? Today's theme is worrying. And we're going to start and I'm going to read you a story. Story time with Dr. Cain. Right. Okay. So once upon a time, there's a little girl. And she worried. She worried about the birds, she worried about the trees, and she worried about her family. And one day she was on a walk down a long grove lined with snapdragon flowers, trees, and there were birds everywhere. She was with her grandmother. The little girl pointed to the branches as they were walking and she said, grandma, do you see that red bird up there in the tree? And nodding, her grandmother smiled and said, yes, I believe that's a spring robin. The little girl bit her lips, a telltale sign that she was worrying. And she said, but Grandma, what if the robin doesn't find enough food and dies? The grandma walked a few steps further without commenting, and then she stopped by a white stone bench and sat down, beckoning to the little girl to sit beside her. Look up. Grandmother said, do you see the leaves in the trees? Yes. The little girl nodded. Well, how many leaves would you say there are? Oh, thousands, replied the little girl, who was quite astute at math. The grandmother nodded. Once there was a study done by scientists and they discovered that 90% of everything people worry about never happens. 90%. Exclaimed the little girl. Yes, nodded Grandmother. That's right. So that means that if each of these leaves worried about not getting enough sunlight and water, that 90% of their worries would be for naught and they would get all of the sunlight and water that they needed. The little girl contemplated for a moment, and then she looked up at her beloved grandmother, a twinkle in her eye. Well, you see, Grandmother, that proves that worrying works okay? So, hello, I'm Dr. Nicole, and today we are talking about worrying. And stories like that always make me chuckle a little bit because we all know that worrying isn't necessarily serving us. We all know that worrying isn't the solution to the problem that we're worrying about, but we do it anyway, right? I find that I love to worry. I worry about all sorts of things. I worry about if my husband's going to make it through traffic without getting hit by some driver. I worry about is my cavapoo getting enough of the right kind of food. I worry about are my patients doing well. I worry about technology. I worry about the pandemic. I worry about the vaccine debate. I worry about politics. We worry about things, right? That's part of human nature. Human nature has worrying as part of the experience. But the question is, is my worrying serving me or is my worrying stealing my life? And if you're anything like me, your worrying is probably moving in for maybe a teeny little bit part to trying to take center stage and maybe running the show a little more than you would like, right? So worrying, how do we stay? Stop worrying. If you feel like worrying is ruining your life, if you feel like worrying is taking over, if you feel like your world is over occupied by worrying, if you feel like worry is hijacking your happiness, this is the message for you and me and that little girl, by the way, right? So today I want to share with you why we worry. And we're going to talk about what you can do about worry. We're not going to just suppress worry. We're going to honor worry so that worry is able to work with us instead of against us. This is going to be great. Is anyone with me? Am I the only one here that worries? Or are there other people that experience worry? I see some hearts, I see some waves. Thank you so much for being here today. Because we want to be with each other. We want to commune with each other and know that we're not alone. That's important when it comes to health and community and people is to be Honest and authentic about our experiences. And today, our experience is worrying and what we're going to do about it. And I've got your back. So we are going to use the ACT method to identify why we worry and what to do about it. And the ACT method is a methodology that I've been developing for the past 10 years to create solutions to where you feel stuck. Stuck. And when you learn the ACT Method, you will have answers to all of the quandaries that come up. Why am I anxious? Why am I depressed? Why do I worry? And what do I do about it? So I'm going to teach you about the ACT method as it pertains to worrying today. So if you just joined us, I'm Dr. Nicole. And today we're talking about worrying. And we began the conversation with a story, AKA little joke about a little girl that worries. And she was a very clever little girl. And so if you missed that part, go back and listen at the beginning. And now we're going to be diving into why we worry. So the a, the A in the ACT method is all about acknowledgement. Worrying is a part. Worrying is a part of you that is trying to help you and give you data and serve you and protect you so that you have strategies and information to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. Worrying has gotten you through life. Worrying can be really helpful. In fact, one of your earliest worries was there's a study done in developmental psychology where they would put a baby on a surface and then there'd be glass extending out like a nice, secure glass table. And then they looked and saw what age it was that the baby would no longer crawl onto the glass. And they were able to decide at what age it looked like. Babies develop depth perception and awareness, like, wow, I'm on a height, right? So that feeling of worry, like, ooh, this doesn't look safe to me. You evolved, you developed to have this. But what can happen is that when worry gets a little overzealous and worry decides it's time for it to take center stage. Instead of whispering little helpful supports to you, like, hey, baby, don't crawl onto that glass that looks like it's a big cliff, worry starts to hijack your happiness, right? So instead of a concern, like we have a comment here, instead of worrying just being a little bit of data, it becomes something that wastes your energy. That's a really good way of describing it, is worrying wastes your energy. Worrying is when it takes that and it levels it up a notch. So if you feel like you're ruminating. If you feel like you're dwelling, if you feel like you're obsessing, and, and if you feel like worrying is hijacking your time, it's wasting your energy. But the question is, is why are we doing it? Right? So first we have to establish that worrying is very natural. Worrying has kept you alive, Worrying has been here for you. And one of the first things that we need to do is we need to acknowledge the rule that worrying has. And so I want you to say this to your worry when it comes up. Because the first step in the act method is acknowledge. We have to acknowledge we can't deal with a problem, we can't correct a problem that we aren't even willing to acknowledge that we have. And if we ignore our worry or try to suppress our worry or distract from our worry, it's just going to get louder and louder because it has a job to do and it's been committed to doing that job since you were very, very young. Right? So we have to acknowledge your worried self. We have to acknowledge your worried thoughts, your worried parts. And so this is what I want you to say. And if you have something to write with, write it down. I'll say it to you twice so that you can write it down. Or you can download and listen to this video. This will be here for you. There'll be a blog on this topic, so you could just go to the blog. But this is what I want you to say. When you have worry, I want you to directly acknowledge your worry. Because of what you deny will amplify. Right? What you deny will amplify. So we have to directly address you, your worry. Okay, so number one, I want you to say worry, I see you. I see you worry. I acknowledge you. Instead of trying to change you or silence you, I'm going to respectfully listen to you. What do you need me to know? Okay, so right now we're talking to our worry. Worry is going to happen. You are going to worry. And the way that you deal with worry is going to impact the, the way that worry lives with you. So let's, this is what you're going to say. I'm going to say it again. I see you worry. I acknowledge you. Instead of trying to change you or silence you worry, I am going to respectfully listen to you. What do you need me to know? Okay, so the first thing is you're going to acknowledge your worry. You're going to acknowledge the thoughts that are coming up. That's really important, right? And Then we are going to examine the cast of characters that are around your worry. And so an example of a cast of characters around worry. These are anything that can make you worry. Maybe you're worried about your kid going back to school, maybe you're worried about your health, maybe you're worried about your aging loved ones, maybe you're a senior citizen and you're worried about your health or your partner's health, or your parents health. Maybe you're worried about the pandemic or politics, Maybe you're worried about scorpions on the trails here in Arizona. It can be anything, right? And so those are your cast of characters, those are all of the variables. So you're going to acknowledge the worry, you're going to speak to your worry, you're going to face your worry head on, and then you are going to acknowledge the cast of characters. Let me tell you an example from my life, because examples are everything, right? So my worry, my biggest anxiety for my story was sleep. The more anxious I got, the more amplified my nervous system was and I didn't sleep. Guys, if you've ever had insomnia for a long time, I have so much compassion and empathy for you. It's literally horrible. It was the worst thing I went through in my life. I would go days without sleeping, riddled with panic. And what I wanted to do is just suppress it, suppress it, suppress it. I was like, what supplements can you give me? What meditations do I need to do? What acupressure points do you want me to do? Are there benzos? Like, what can I take? Just anything to make this anxiety better and to not sleep. But what I wish I would have known then is that had I acknowledged what my anxiety was trying to tell me, had I looked at the cast of characters surrounding my anxiety, it would have changed my life so much sooner. And instead I was stuck in this rabbit hole. Spiral, spiral, spiraling. The worrying got more. I was like, oh my gosh, what if I don't sleep tonight? What if I don't sleep tomorrow night? And then I didn't and it got worse, right? And so if you're stuck in the spiral, the first thing you need to do is you need to radically acknowledge it. And one of the really important parts of this is when we acknowledge it, we accept it as it is. So I say anxiety, worry, I see you, I acknowledge you. I'm going to not try to change you, I'm not going to try to silence you. I'm just going to respectfully listen to what you need Me to know. And that is the acceptance part. And so what I needed to do that I didn't do at that time was accept the fact I may not sleep tonight, I may stay anxious for a while. And instead of fighting that, if I was to simply just accept and be like, this is what my body is doing, this is what my mind is doing, I got myself here through a variety of scenarios, cast of characters, lots of different players involved in my development of anxiety and insomnia. And by fighting it and resisting it and suppressing it and trying to do all of the therapies that all of the experts said would work, I found myself getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. Right, Is anyone with me? Have you ever been there? Do you feel like you're stuck in a record group? Do you feel like there's all these experts telling you, just be positive, just think your way out of it. Don't worry, be happy. Like, is anyone with me? If you have been there, I'm telling you the opposite. I'm telling you to acknowledge it and accept it. And then once we accept it, then we have time and opportunity and space for transformation. So that's the T in the act method. So I'm scrolling down here because I don't want to miss anything that I've written out for us today. So the first thing is we acknowledge, we accept. And a great way to keep that in mind is, has anyone here heard of the Serenity Prayer? The Serenity Prayer, he says, give me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And when I first heard that, it was so annoying and frustrating to me. I was like, oh, everybody says the Serenity Prayer. And as I got older, I was able to garner from it what was good and what was useful. And what I think really sparkles in that prayer is that I am accepting what I can change. I am accepting what I cannot change. And that gives me the power to change what I can. So when I was in spiral down anxiety, I couldn't change the fact that maybe that night I couldn't sleep. But what I could change was the circumstances that put me into where I was to begin with. And so by forcing myself to focus on my agency, helped me get my life back. So maybe this Serenity Prayer works for you, maybe it doesn't, but find something that does. So we want to focus on acknowledgement, acceptance, changing what you can, and then focusing on what you can get control over. So if you're Worried about your parents aging, you can't change that. You can't change your parents aging. You can't necessarily change a lot of things that you may be worried about, right? And so we have to accept that the pieces that we can't change because the opposite of acceptance is resistance. And resistance is going to make you ruminate and worry, and your brain is going to try to find solutions that are not findable for certain things, right? So accept what you can't change and let go the need to try to change what you can't change and then focus on what you do have power over. So, for example, if you have aging parents, you can't stop them from aging, but you can spend as much quality time with them as possible possible. Make meaningful memories. You can do that over zoom. You can do it in person if you feel safe doing that. You can write letters, you can record conversations or video conversations to make family tapes. Whatever you can do to create meaning, that's what you need to do. Where you have the control, where you have the power. Create the courage to make the change where you possibly can, right? Otherwise your brain is just going to focus on what you can't change, you're going to ruminate, and you're going to get stuck in this spiral like I did, right? Okay. So the other thing that I want to talk about with worrying is that sometimes we just don't have the bandwidth to do all of this work. And there is a time and a place for worry. So worry comes up. We know that if you deny it, it will amplify. We know that whatever you suppress is going to further express. So we know we need to acknowledge our worry. But sometimes you can't do that if you're in the middle of a speaking engagement, if you're in a meeting, if you're trying to be present for someone else, if you're driving whatever it is, if you don't have the bandwidth to do it right then and there, I want you to be the one who's taking center stage, who's controlling your life instead of your life controlling you. And so sometimes that means that you can't do the work right Then when the worry comes up, so you acknowledge your worry and then you put it in a protective box. You say, I hear you, I acknowledge you. I thank you for sharing worry. And right now I'm going to need to put you into this protective box and I promise we'll do the work later. Right? So we're going to do that. We're going to imagine you notice it. If it's not the time, then you're going to set it aside. The protective box technique I learned from emdr, we all stand on the shoulders of giants. EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It's a form of therapy that's incredibly useful for trauma. And in emdr, they do what's called the box technique. And all you simply do is you imagine. You close your eyes, you imagine that there's a protective box, and you breathe into the worry, you breathe into the thoughts, and then you imagine breathing them out and putting them into a protective box and allowing yourself to take just 30 seconds to a minute, breathe those thoughts in there intentionally, and put that in there. And another strategy that you can use if worrying is coming up and if you don't have the time, the wherewithal, the bandwidth to deal with it, there's a strategy that I do called thought relocation, and I'm going to teach you that. And that's what we're going to finish up with today. If you just jumped on, we're talking about worrying. We started with a story. If you missed it, go back to the beginning. It's really cute, it's really fun, and I think it's actually kind of funny. And then we've been talking about why we worry and what to do about worry. We've been applying it to the ACT method, and we're going to be finishing up with a strategy for worry that I created called thought relocation. So your brain is going to think, especially if you're stressed, if your nervous system is on overdrive. And so again, we can't suppress that. We're either going to put it away into our protective box or we're going to do thought relocation. Thought relocation is a mindfulness exercise that I created. And all you simply do is you notice in your brain where your thoughts are. So sometimes I notice when I'm thinking, I sort of feel it energetically in my forehead. I feel like I'm actively thinking in my forehead. Sometimes I feel like my more creative thoughts are over here. It's just where you sort of just notice them, energetically feel them, and then we're going to relocate them. And then I actually just got a question, and I want to answer this question at the end of this, which is, would worrying too much create apathy? And would this technique help? And apathy is actually. It's a dissociative strategy, and we have a ton of content on how we can use dissociation to our Benefit instead of dissociation, using you. So hang tight, we'll talk about that. So thought relocation is where we take our thoughts. We notice where we have the thoughts in our brain. Sometimes you might need to close your eyes to find those thoughts. They're spinning, they're doing their thing, they're worrying. And then I want you to imagine that you pull those thoughts out like an orb or a ball, and then you push them away. You imagine I'm still thinking. My brain gets to do all the thinking that it wants, but I'm going to push it away. So you're going to imagine pushing it forward. Then you're going to imagine pushing it to your right side. So you imagine all those thoughts, they're still thinking, they're worrying, they're doing what they do, but you're pushing them to the side. And then you're going to push them to the other side. And then this is the really good one. Then after you've practiced, because these three are usually easier, you're going to actually relocate. You're going to push them to the back so that your thoughts are still doing that. We're not suppressing it, but your thoughts are now in the back of your mind so that you have the mind space and the bandwidth to. To continue doing what you need to do while your worries are back here. So that's called thought relocation, the protective box technique. You may need to keep doing that, you may need to practice it. And this is actually going to change your neuroscience, which is super freaking cool. So let's go back really quickly to answer the question about creating apathy. So apathy, as I'm understanding it, is that feeling of just kind of like, I don't feel anything. Sometimes we get so worried that we just shut down. Right. Have you ever felt that before? Where I just, like, I can't anymore. I'm just so overwhelmed. I'm so stressed. I just feel apathetic. I feel like I can't care. I feel blah. Right. And sometimes people go into apathy as a protective mechanism, but we want to control that. So disassociation, otherwise people know it as derealization or depersonalization is where we feel either physically and or emotionally removed from ourselves. Disassociate association is to associate with or be with. Disassociate just simply means you're disassociating, you're not with, you're separate from. And so thought relocation is a form of that. Right. We're pulling those thoughts and we're disassociating. Them from ourselves. We're creating space between our active brains so that those thoughts aren't like really all up in your face and your mind and your space. You're disassociating them, you're pushing them away. And you can also choose to disassociate at will. And I have a whole bunch of content on that. In fact, it's one of my highlights. You can click on that button and I teach you how to choose to dissociate or distance yourself. And so using that at the mind space of you know what, I'm going to just shut down from this emotionally right now. I don't have the emotional bandwidth and so you can mindfully say I'm imagining that these feelings that's coming with the worry, I'm going to put them in this worry orbiting and I'm going to push them away. So that's just to get you started. So today has been all about worry. If you feel like you're stuck in a vicious spiral of worry, if your brain is just intrusive, obsessive worrying, and if it's especially about things that you can't control, this has been the post for you. I'm going to make sure to put a blog up on my website that has all of this in writing. We'll also save this if this has been valuable for you. Give a little heart, a little like a little comment that helps me stay on the grid of what's useful for you. We also have a one week challenge. It's totally free. I love giving free stuff away. And like I was telling you earlier, it has strategies in it that I wish that I would have known 10 years ago. And so I put it all together. Beautiful. One week challenge. It has videos, it has emails, it has a booklet. It's just a way for me to love on you. And then when you don't want our emails anymore, you hit unsubscribe. So this has been Dr. Nicole, I love you. I honor you. Click the link in the bio, check out all of our free goodies and thank you so much for being here. I'll see you guys soon. Much love, Much love. Bye.