How To Overcome Constant Worrying
October 8, 2007
The habit of worrying is a difficult thing to stop. It is a learnt behaviour and we may have picked it up from our surrounding and from people in our lives. Once we have learnt this, then there is no turning back until we have perfected the art. But all is not lost. There are a few psychological tricks for undoing this terrible, nerve-wrecking habit.
1) Negating Joys: We often believe that happiness must be earned and this is possible only by enduring unpleasantness. But how do you know if you have endured enough unpleasantness to deserve happiness?Another unspoken game rule: responsible adults can never enough unpleasantness to truly deserve happiness. Laid on top of the first neurosis is the idea that spending money will make you happy. Worrying is the easiest and most popular way to negate happiness. So we never stop working, we never stop spending money and we are never really happy.
2) The Condition Serves A Purpose: You won’t stop worrying if you think it serves you. So it is a good idea to distinguish the fight or flight response from worry. By making this distinction, you are less likely to over rate the value of worrying. The fight or flight response is useful on rare occasions for real danger. Worrying is never useful. Instead it handicaps and diminishes us. The more it triggers fight or flight responses with imagined threats, the more it prevents us from clear thinking.
3) Setting Straight Mental Furniture: There is a useful gimmick to help stop worrying. You simply cultivate the habit of postponing worrying. Your mind becomes conditioned to not dwell on worries in the present. The trick is that whenever you feel plagued by a worrying thought; note it down on a piece of sheet which is set aside for this purpose. You can then forget about it, knowing that you plan to worry later.
4) Trial And Error: What follows is slightly more esoteric than above. Feel free to ignore, strange as it may seem, you want what you worry about. Or atleast that’s what you inadvertently tell your brain when you worry. On one level, your brain can’t process “negatives.” If you tell it: “don’t think about crashing the car”, it can’t help being “attracted” to the thought/image of crashing.Consciously worrying is about preventing, resisting and avoiding the situation. For relatively “minor” worry problems, you can use psychological gimmicks to con your brain into letting go of your worry. Postponement of worrying techniques described above are a good starting point towards happiness.
Source: Mumbai Mirror
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