I’ve been working from a high-rise hotel the last couple days and enjoying the view out my very large window – I can see tops of buildings, tiny cars, neighborhoods, trees, helicopters circling, and mountains in the distance.  

I was speaking with my sister yesterday via FaceTime and she asked me if I worried about being so high up (because Hi, I’m Sally, and I’m a Worrier) and I told her that, besides the view, I liked being towards the top of the building because in an earthquake, there would be less stuff on top of me.  

She looked at me like I was from Mars. “That is fascinating,” she said, “Do you want to know how many times I’ve ever thought of that?  Zero.  Zero times.”  And we laughed.  

Bless my heart.

I’ve done a lot of thinking, researching, working, and coaching around the topic of worry.  In fact, when people ask me what I coach on I typically say “Whatever someone is worrying about…”

Worry, itself, is not a bad thing.  Having “a” worry is completely normal. 

And there are actually a lot of documented reasons why a family or a team or a community needs a few people who worry!

A worry often gives us a clue of something we need to do, plan for, handle, expect, or manage.  

You might have a worry about not having your plane ticket for an upcoming trip – a clue that you might want to buy it. 

But worry-ing might feel like some underlying dread or uneasiness or fear about that upcoming trip – which is not something that can be ‘solved’ as easily.  

And this (worry-ing) can sometimes keep us stuck.  Worrying becomes a problem when it’s persistent. 

Believe me, I should know.

Tchiki Davis, Ph. D., says worrying “involves negative thought patterns–patterns that we’ve used over and over again. This can make them deeply ingrained in our brains.  So stopping worrying involves confronting our beliefs, values, [thoughts], and emotions.”

She gives us 5 tips if we want to dive a little deeper.   I am adapting some of them for our purposes. 

1. Explore the origins of your worry.

If you worry about one specific thing (like work, kids, health, money, etc.) but you don’t worry about everything, you should consider taking constructive action to change your situation in that area (i.e. constructively do, plan for, handle, expect, or manage that particular thing.)

But if you’re like me, and you worry about just about everything, then working on your “worrying thoughts” is a good first step.

So…..

2. Identify your unique worry patterns – i.e. your worrying thoughts.

Here are some thought patterns (or thinking errors or cognitive distortions, as we sometimes call them) that lead to worry. Some people will find that they have all of these patterns; other people will just have a few. But by understanding what thoughts cause our worries, we can more easily loosen them up.

• Catastrophizing is when we expect the worst possible outcomes.
• Minimization is when we downplay the good things.
• All-or-nothing thinking is when we interpret a situation as all good or all bad.
• Overgeneralization is when we believe that having one negative experience means we will always have this negative experience.
• Negative attention is when we focus on the negative things that went wrong rather than focusing on the positive things
• Rumination is when we think about something distressing over and over again
• Mind reading is when we believe we know what others are thinking even though we haven’t actually asked them what they think.

There are specific strategies to help with each of these distortions – all of which could be a post on their own!

3. Stop worrying by moving your body.

When you worry, your sympathetic nervous system is activated (it’s the fight or flight system). Even if you completely stop worrying, it won’t get those neurochemicals out of your body right away. That’s why movement can really help with worry.

Exercise activates the parasympathetic nervous system (in the longer term) which relieves stress and helps calm the body, returning it to its emotional baseline.

Walking is one of my best ways to work out my worry.

4. Try mindfulness to calm worries.

By sitting quietly, noticing your thoughts, and letting them go, mindfulness can help redirect worries. Over time, mindfulness can train the mind to calm the body so you don’t get so stuck in worrying.

The single best way I know to redirect my brain is to count backwards from 171.  Why 171?  It’s big enough that it takes a bit to get to zero, but small enough that I can actually get to zero if I need to. 

5. Talk to someone about your worries.

This sounds like a shameless plug, but these are Dr. Davis’s words. “Talking with a trusted counselor or friend can help you gain more perspective on your worry”—What are you really worrying about? What is worrying about it doing for you? Who would you be if you weren’t worrying about it? How can you think about this situation differently? Etc., etc., etc. 

Keeping your worries to yourself can lead them to build up and feel even more overwhelming. By talking to someone, you can release some of the pressure.

I can’t wait to hear about how you’re working on your worries.  And if you need someone with whom to talk them through, I sincerely hope you’ll give me a chance.  

Let’s relieve some of the pressure, together.

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