Three Evidence-Based Strategies to Manage Worries
People who struggle with anxiety are often searching for more effective ways to manage their worries. Worries can become debilitating when they’re so frequent that they interfere with your day-to-day life. Here are several strategies based in CBT/ACT that I often recommend to clients to manage frequent worries:
Challenge Your Worry: It can be useful to ask yourself some detective questions to “debunk” your worry, and consider what coping strategies you have if your worry DOES come true. Some examples include: What are the facts that support my worry? What are the facts that go against my worry? How likely is this worry to actually come true? If this worry does come true, how bad would it be? Have I handled similar situations before? How could I cope with this?
Disengage with Worry: Finding ways to disengage with your worries can be so helpful! One way to do this is to reframe your worries as “junk thoughts” that don’t deserve attention. We have tons of thoughts throughout each day, and not every thought needs attention or exploration. When a worry does come up, you can remind yourself: “There’s that junk thought again, no need to do anything.” Another way to disengage with worry is to label your worries (“Here goes my Worry Voice again, I’m not surprised, it usually shows up at times like this”) or put a sentence starter in front of your worry to remove it feeling like a fact (“I’m having the thought that…” or “My Anxious Brain is telling me…”).
Worry Time/Worry Postponement: This strategy may sound counterintuitive, but if you’re dealing with worrying frequently throughout the day, scheduling a worry time can be a useful way to reduce how much time you’re spending worrying. Pick a time (not close to bedtime, about 10-20 minutes total) when you ALLOW yourself to fully think about and explore your worries. Whenever a worry pops up outside of this time, you can remind yourself, “I don’t need to think about this now, I can address this during worry time.”