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If You Knew How to Not Worry – Wouldn’t You Already Be Doing it?

We’re supposed to worry when bad things are about to happen to us or our loved ones – right?

Wrong!

Worry is normal. I mean everyone does it. But what use is it? What purpose does it serve? And is there any way to just worry about the really important things and not worry about all the other stuff?

Worry – we all do it.

But why?

What purpose does it serve?

For the majority of clients who come to see me for help with anxiety or stress I focus my first session on worry. Worry is what is causing a lot of the trouble a lot of the time. The problem I have is that people think they are supposed to worry. Their parents did it. Their friends do it. In fact worry is so integrated into the fabric of Western society that to not worry is thought to be uncaring, antisocial, or even, dare I say it, heartless.

Now who wants to be thought of as uncaring, never mind heartless?

I mean, if your Mum is seriously ill in hospital, what it would it look like if you just went about your business with a smile on your face? Then your best friend is being evicted and will be on the streets and homeless in short order – hardly the occasion for levity is it?

Before I return to those questions I want to come at this from another direction.

Considerworrying is magical thinking.

By magical thinking I mean exactly that, thinking thoughts in order to control outcomes.

We don’t want Mum to die, or be seriously impaired. We don’t want our friend to suffer the humiliation of having to beg for help. We want everything to work out for the best because we are kind, caring people. But the only way that we can prove that to the World is by showing the world that we are worried. Anything less would be a devaluing of ourselves. We want to be thought kindly of – and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But what exactly does the worrying achieve. In my own experience all that I’ve ever noticed happening when I worry is that I feel bad. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t like feeling bad. Whenever I’ve had a bill and no money to pay it I’ve worried. But I’ve also noticed that the worrying doesn’t magically make the money appear. All it does is make me feel bad. It doesn’t even motivate me to do something to get the money, because I’m worried, I’m already performing under par and my ability to think and act effectively are compromised. I’ve found the best time to make money to pay bills is when I’m not worried about the bills.

Considerworrying is a way to ward off evil.

We have discovered that when we worry enough about something bad happening, it rarely does. The truth is that to any one individual really bad things (beyond the ability to cope with them) don’t happen that often, but we don’t notice the statistics, we notice that when we worry bad things don’t happen and so worrying becomes a way to ensure that bad things don’t happen. And like any other superstition we get scared not to worry, because then something bad really will happen and it will all be our fault because we didn’t worry.

The risk becomes too great to take.

Considerworrying is a preparation.

We also worry about things like our own or other people’s illnesses as a way to prepare ourselves for the worst. We do that because we don’t believe we have the internal resources to cope and so we imagine all the possible ways we can of not coping in the hope that somehow that will help us to cope. But what you will notice, if you look back on your life, is that when there was no warning of ‘disaster’, you still coped. It probably wasn’t fun, but you managed to get through it. It may have left scars, but you survived.

In my life I’ve been an expert worrier. I’ve also discovered that it is possible not to worry. I’ve also noticed absolutely no difference in outcomes whether or not I worry.

But in my study of minds and the interesting things they get up to I have found that, whenever a worry raises its ugly little head, I can interrogate it and find out what message it is attempting to bring to my attention. Let’s take, purely as an example, a serious illness in the family. When we project into the future, we see the loss we might experience and the grief we will suffer. We also see our own discomfort as we watch our loved one in distress. All of this worries us because it interferes with living the peaceful and happy life we really feel we deserve to be living.
The truth is we don’t actually know what is going to happen, but we try to buffer ourselves against the worst by pre-living it in our imagination.

With the friend who is suffering, again we project into the future, but this time we imagine that it is us that is homeless and we feel all the feelings associated with that. We really don’t like that and don’t want it for our friend. So again we suffer.

Have you noticed the pattern?

We use our imagination to create negative fantasies about the very outcomes we do not want.

And then we feel bad because what we experience in our imagination is experienced by the body as if it is real – so we feel all of the uncomfortable emotions associated with the undesired outcome.

So how we do we stop this pattern.

And how do we stop it without becoming the hard, heartless, uncaring human being that we fear so much?

Whenever you find yourself imagining negative outcomes then immediately imagine a positive outcome as well. Whenever you think about the worst that could happen, then follow it by thinking about the best that could happen. Spend just as much time worrying about the positive outcomes as you do about the negative. This keeps things in balance.

If there is something really seriously negative going on in your life and you just can’t pull your thoughts away from it. Then make an appointment with yourself for 15 minutes twice a day. In that 15 minutes you have permission to do your very best worrying. You can use this time to think about even more dire outcomes than you ever previously imagined. But, you must stick strictly to those times to do your worrying.

It is only fair to warn you that if you do either, or both, of these then you will experience a shift in your perception of life that will seriously damage your ability to worry as freely or as intensely as you did before.

Michael

By Michael

I have been a hypnotherapist for around 12 years. My specific interests are in stress and physical healing. My fascination is with how the mind 'creates' the world. I am a fan of Esther & Jerry Hicks.