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Do you worry a lot do you know somebody who does worry a lot well this is the ultimate guide for understanding managing and better controlling worries hi everyone welcome to the ultimate video guide for managing worry this video is going to be a
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long video that puts together a number of other videos that i’ve previously uploaded that spell out the best ways to manage and understand excessive worry but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over i’m a registered psychologist in
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the province of british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended as a replacement or substitute for advice from your doctor or mental health professional now with those two things out of the way let’s talk about worry management
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so like i mentioned this video is really a compilation of a 14-part video series that i’ve previously uploaded about worry management you can choose to watch all 14 of those individual videos but i had a lot of people ask me to put them all together
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into one video that they can use as a reference and so that’s what this video is all about i would not recommend watching this video from beginning to end and expecting to remember all of it it is pretty dense and has a lot of material in it but i hope you’ll come back to it
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as you work through some of the worry management tools that i’m going to be talking about now one of the things i want to point out is these worry management skills aren’t things that i just dreamed up uh these are worry management skills that are backed by a lot of research and there’s
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been a lot of scientific work that has been put into putting together this treatment protocol it was developed by a brilliant researcher and psychologist at concordia university named michelle duga and he has done a lot of research on these skills and tools that i’ll be presenting and
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the great part is these skills and tools work and there’s a lot of research to back that these tools are highly effective for helping a person manage and understand their worry so i hope you’ll find this video helpful and look forward to any comments or thoughts
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that you have about it so with that being said let’s start with the first video that discusses the three features of worry and two different types of worry have you ever thought about what worry actually is that’s one of the first questions i
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ask my clients when we get into worry management is i ask them to provide me with a definition of worry and usually there’s a bit of a a pause and a look of confusion because i think most people know what worry feels like and everybody knows kind of how it feels to be worried but
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rarely do people ever stop to think about what worry actually is and that’s what i want to talk about today so that people can have a clear sense and a clear idea of what i’m talking about when i talk about worry so the first thing about worry is that worry is a thought process
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it is something that happens in your head it is something that you are thinking now worry tends not to be just a single thought it tends to be a collection of thoughts now that can be the same thought looped over and over and over and over again or it can be one thought
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leading to another leading to another leading to another until you get this scenario building now for example i wake up one morning i’ve got a really bad headache and i think to myself what if this is a brain tumor what if there’s something wrong
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now typically with worry the next thought isn’t well i wonder what i’m going to have for breakfast the next thought is either going to be looping over oh my goodness what if this is a tumor what if this is cancer what if this is something bad or spiraling into a negative scenario about what
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might happen if i have to get treatment and what would happen to my family those types of things so the first sort of defining feature of worry is that it is a collection of thoughts it is a thought process and a collection of multiple thoughts the second
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defining characteristic of worry is that worry tends to be future oriented what that means is that people don’t worry about things from the past typically they worry about stuff that’s going to happen in the future now sometimes people will stop me and they’ll say hold on a second i
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worry about things from my past but usually when people say that they’re worrying about stuff from their past what they’re actually talking about is they’re worrying about how the things from the past are going to affect them in the future so essentially how the implications
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of events that have happened in the past and what impact they’re going to have on a person’s future so for example if i’m worrying about having been fired from a job three years ago it’s not so much that i’m worrying about having been fired from the job three years ago it’s that i’m worrying
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about how i’m going to be able to explain that i was fired from that job three years ago in the upcoming job interview so now another small but sort of obvious component of this is that worry tends to be about future negative events people don’t worry about positive things
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happening right so rarely do people ever worry oh what if what if this job goes really well or what if this relationship turns out great what if my friends are really impressed with me people don’t worry about those things people usually only worry about negative things happening
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so that’s the second defining feature of worry worry is about future negative events now the third defining feature of worry is that worry is associated and accompanied by anxiety anxiety is the emotional result of the worry process now this is an
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important concept and important point because a lot of times people will use the terms worry and anxiety interchangeably i’m worried and anxious and that’s probably because people usually experience worry and anxiety at the same time but worry and anxiety aren’t the same thing
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worry is a thought process and anxiety is the emotion that results from that thought process so you can’t be worrying without being anxious but you can be anxious without worrying so i hope that makes sense that worry is the thought process anxiety is the emotional
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result that comes from that thought process so that’s the definition of worry that i work by that’s the definition of worry that i use when i’m working with my clients on worry management worry is this collection of thoughts or doubts about future negative events that are accompanied by
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anxiety so with that definition of worry out of the way i want to talk about two types of worry now the first type of worry is what we call a type one worry now a type one worry is a worry about a current actual real problem a problem that’s happening now
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a problem that i am dealing with in this moment so for example i get my credit card bill in the mail and the credit card bill is for three hundred dollars but i only have twenty dollars in my bank account and so i start to worry how is it that i’m going to be able to pay this credit card bill
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so that worry about being able to pay the credit card bill that’s an example of a type 1 worry it’s a worry about a problem that’s actually occurring now the other type of worries are called type 2 worries now type 2 worries are worries about
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future or potential problems problems that haven’t happened yet problems that may never happen so for example i get my credit card bill in the mail and the credit card bill is for three hundred dollars i have three hundred twenty dollars in my bank account so i can pay that credit card bill
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but i start thinking to myself well that was a close one what if next month i’m not able to pay my credit card bill and what if that has a negative effect on my credit rating and what if that means i’m not going to be able to get a car loan which means i’m not going to be able to
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get a good job because i can only get a job that i can commute to by walking or taking transit and so i’m not going to be able to sort of have a very successful career and no one will want to be with me and because i don’t have a good job and because i’m not able to afford a house
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because i won’t be able to get a mortgage and then i’ll get depressed because no one wants to be with me and i’ll lose my job and i’ll become homeless and i’m living under a bridge none of that stuff has actually happened but i’m worrying about it happening and that’s that sort
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of chaining and that spiraling of thoughts that i talk about yeah when i talked about earlier in terms of the definition of worry so type one worries worries about actual current real problems type two worries are worries about future or potential problems
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so you may be wondering okay so what we’ve got this definition of worrying these two types of worries what do i do with this how does this help well the key to understanding type 1 and type 2 worries isn’t so much in terms of being able to define the worries
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but when we talk about worry management tools we’re going to use slightly different tools depending on whether or not the worry is a type 1 worry or the worry is a type 2 worry and so that’s why it’s important early on to get into the habit of being able to recognize your worries
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think about your worries and define the worries as either is this a type one or is it a type two now sometimes worries can start out as type 1 and as part of that spiraling they go into becoming type 2 worries we call those mixed worries so there’s a component of it that’s a type 1 and a
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component of it that’s a type two so for now the idea is to just spend some time thinking about your worry and so this is what i encourage clients to do is to use this information by just trying to be more aware and more mindful of your worries and when you catch yourself worrying to even just try
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and think about is this a type 1 worry is this a type 2 worry what that can do is it can help you disengage from the worry even for a moment and for you to start thinking a bit more analytically and a bit more critically about the worry rather than getting caught up in the worry
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experience you’re now kind of observing it and thinking about it differently even just by simply being able to say this is a type 1 worry or this is a type 2 word everybody experiences worry so when i talk about worry management
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i’m not really talking about a worry cure what i’m talking about is helping people who worry a lot be able to better manage their worries so they’re not worrying as much because the reality is everybody worries it’s just a matter of how much do people worry so you can think of
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it kind of like falling on a continuum where one end of the continuum are people who don’t really worry very much at all they still worry but just not that much and it’s not particularly problematic or interfering for them then on the other end of the continuum are people who worry
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a lot and if a person worries excessively enough and if their worry is chronic enough they can meet criteria for what we call generalized anxiety disorder but regardless of whether or not a person meets criteria for generalized anxiety disorder or they are a person who worries excessively or
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they’re a person who worries a little bit the same worry management skills that i’m going to be talking about apply to all different types of worry and all different intensities of worry the worry experience for people usually starts with a trigger some sort of trigger situation
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leads them to begin worrying now triggers can be pretty much anything so triggers can be internal they can be thoughts that i have thinking about an argument that i had with my wife they can be physical sensations i wake up in the morning i’ve got a really bad headache
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triggers can be external my cell phone rings i check the call display and it’s worth calling and i think to myself why is work calling what’s going on is something wrong so pretty much anything can act as a trigger and the trigger then leads to what i call the what if
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question now the what-if question is kind of the foundation of worry now the thing about worry is it usually doesn’t just start and stop at one what if question so for example the trigger is i wake up in the morning and i’ve got a bad headache and i think to myself what if this is a brain tumor
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what usually happens is that worry either loops itself over and over and over again so i worry and i keep thinking to myself about what if i have a brain tumor what’s going on what if i have a brain tumor or it leads to a chaining or spiraling of additional what-if thoughts that ends up in this
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negative scenario building of what might happen and it’s that chaining and spiraling of what if thoughts that’s what we call worry and so when a person is worrying think about how that makes you feel for example so when you’re worrying what’s the emotion that you associate with the worry
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that emotion is typically anxiety so this is an important point to note that worry and anxiety are not the same thing so worry is this collection of what if thoughts anxiety is the emotion that results from the collection of these what-if thoughts
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so now think about this process and imagine if you worried a lot and you’re going through this process day after day after day trigger what if we’re anxiety trigger what if we’re anxiety trigger what if we’re anxiety how are you feeling by the end of the day
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now most of the time when i ask my clients that they’ll usually say two things one they feel exhausted now exhausted on multiple levels exhausted mentally because their mind will not shut off right they just keep worrying they just keep thinking their mind will not
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stop thinking about something and so mentally that can be exhausting but it can also be physically exhausting as well so you’re going through all of these negative thoughts in your mind and it’s normal for sort of the muscles to tense up and to just feel an increased physical tension
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um it can lead to problems with sleep because it’s difficult to sleep when you’re worrying so much and so it’s common for people to feel kind of exhausted and worn out by their worries both mentally and physically and the second outcome of this sort of constant worry process
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is a feeling or a perception of being demoralized demoralization and what i mean by that is that it’s hard to really look forward to anything when you worry a lot so it’s hard to get really excited or enthused about something because when you think about all the positive things that can
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happen what also happens is that you then begin to start thinking about all the negative things that could happen so it’s hard to really look forward to anything because you’re always thinking about all of the negative things that can occur and so the outcome of this worry process is a feeling of
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being demoralized and exhausted and think about it the more demoralized and exhausted you feel what do you think that’s going to do to the frequency of what-if thoughts it’s going to increase them and so you get into this self-feeding cycle of worry where
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you have a trigger leading to the what-if worry anxiety feeling demoralized and exhausted which just means you’re prone to creating more what-if questions in response to triggers so that’s kind of the the basic engine of worry this is kind of how worry works
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and as i’m going as i go along uh with this video series and talk about other factors that contribute to worry we’re going to be building on this model but it’s important to understand this is kind of the the core engine of worry so with that understanding in mind it leads to the first
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key worry management skill that i’m going to be talking about now this is a foundational skill it’s hard to do any of the other worry management skills i’m going to be talking about if you don’t do this skill and the first worry management skill is worry awareness training
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essentially becoming more aware of what it is that you worry about and having a better understanding of your worry experience now when i’m working with my clients and i bring this up a lot of times people will say hey i already know what it is that i’m worrying about i don’t need to
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get better at thinking about my worries but what i find for a lot of my clients is that they they kind of know what the big worries are but they don’t really have a great sense of their entire worry experience and for a lot of my
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clients they are such highly efficient worriers that they’re not even aware of everything that they’re worrying about that they worry almost automatically to a point that they’re not even aware they don’t even know what it is that they worry and so it’s not uncommon for people who
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come to see me to say i don’t really feel like i’m worrying but i have a lot of free floating anxiety now usually when i hear the term free floating anxiety it’s a cue for me that this is probably someone who is a highly efficient worrier and that they’re worrying but just don’t realize it yet
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and that’s where worry awareness training comes in so worry awareness training really what it is at its core is excavating your worries dusting them off and really beginning to examine them so that you can have a new understanding and a better understanding of what your
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worry experience is actually like getting a better understanding of that worry fingerprint your unique worry experience that’s unique to you so how do you do worry awareness training key tool i use with my clients is called a worry diary and what i’m going to be doing is putting a
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link to a worry diary that you can download in the description of the video below so please feel free to download that and take a look at it so the idea of a worry diary is that you don’t keep track of every single worry that you have rather what you’re doing is you’re taking a sampling
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of your worries so what i get my clients to do is to complete a worry diary three times a day for one to two weeks and the idea is to have some set times every day that you’re going to pull out your worry diary and write down what it is that you’re worrying about at that time so i encourage
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people to set an alarm so an alarm in the morning in the afternoon and sometime in the evening when the alarm goes off you pull out the worry diary and you complete an entry in the worry diary so with the worry diary the first column is the time and day so the date time that you’re
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completing the worry diary the next column is the situation what’s going on what’s the context that you’re worrying in this can map on to the trigger that we talked about before after that you write down what is it that you’re worrying about
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what are the what if thoughts that you’re having in that moment after you’ve completed the what ifs and wrote written down what you’re worrying about you make a rating of your anxiety on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is no anxiety at all
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10 is extreme anxiety so you make a numerical rating of how anxious am i in this moment and then the last column of the worry relates to what i talked about in a previous video when i talked about a definition of worry and types of worry and that relates to is this a type one worry
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or is this a type 2 worry now type 1 worries are worries about actual current problems type 2 worries are worries about future or potential problems and so you take a look at what it is that you’re worrying about and you make a rating is this type 1 is this type 2
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now sometimes a worry can be a bit of a mix of both so it starts out as a type 1 worry and it spirals into a type 2 worry if that’s the case you can write down both so you complete this worry diary if you do this worry diary for a week or two what it’s going to give
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you is a rich amount of data about your worry experience that you may have never had before are there days or times that you tend to worry more than other days and times are there certain situations or triggers that tend to trigger your worry more
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are there certain worries that come up over and over and over again kind of like your greatest hits of worry are there certain worries that are associated with higher levels of anxiety so for example it’s not uncommon for people to be well aware of the worries that are causing
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them levels eight nine and ten in terms of anxiety but when they do the worry diet they they realize wow there’s a whole bunch of worries that are causing me anxiety about three and four that i was never actually aware of and those worries can contribute to just that background
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hum of anxiety and nervousness and those may be worries that a person’s never thought about before this worry diary can also help you get a sense of are my worries more type 1 worries do i have more type 2 worries do i have kind of an equal mix of type 1 and type 2 worries this is all
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information that people typically don’t have about their worry experience and by getting this information it provides you with um a lot of background that you’re gonna be able to use then when we start talking about other worry management skills but none of the other worry management
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skills i’m going to be talking about are effective if you don’t know what it is that you’re worrying about and that’s the key and that’s the foundational skill of worry awareness training and in the last video i talked about a model for understanding worry
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and i talked about it as the bare bones engine of worry the the driving force behind worry so if you think of that as the engine of worry what we’re talking about today intolerance of uncertainty that’s the fuel that drives this worry engine so what is intolerance of uncertainty
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well intolerance of uncertainty one way to think about it is it’s kind of like a psychological allergy and if you think about how an allergy works suppose i’m allergic to dust and i walk into a room all it’s going to take is for there to be just a little bit of dust in that room and
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it’s going to cause a big allergic reaction on my part sneezy watery eyes that sort of thing whereas somebody else who’s not allergic to dust walks into the exact same room has no reaction at all so for people who are intolerant of uncertainty all it takes is for there to be just a little
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bit of uncertainty in a situation and it leads to a big emotional reaction a big emotional response so you can think of intolerance of uncertainty kind of like falling on a continuum where on one end of the continuum are people who are highly tolerant of uncertainty
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these are the people who for example can travel to europe with a one-way ticket and a quarter in their pocket they have no idea what they’re going to be doing for work what they’re going to do for money uh how long they’re going to be gone where they’re going to go but they just see it as
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a big adventure they’ll figure it out as they go whereas on the other end of the continuum if a person is highly intolerant of uncertainty and they’re traveling to europe they’re going to have a clearly laid out itinerary they’re going to know exactly what they’re doing on every day
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they’re going to have backup plans for if the weather’s changes they’re going to know exactly how they’re going to get from point a to point b everything is going to be highly organized those people are highly intolerant of uncertainty now what we know is that for people who worry a
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lot they tend to gravitate more towards the highly intolerant end of this tolerating uncertainty spectrum so the way intolerance of uncertainty works is it’s kind of like a lens through which a person views the world so you have this person and they’re faced with an uncertain situation
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and they’re looking at this uncertain situation through this intolerance of uncertainty lens what the intolerance of uncertainty lens is going to do is it’s going to bend the person’s perception or prediction of what’s going to happen to be a negative outcome so they’re
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going to think about all of the positive all of the possible negative things that can occur when faced with that uncertain situation but you can probably also recognize on a logical level that uncertain situations don’t always lead to negative outcomes that there can be a range of
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potential outcomes that on certain situations can result in so some are negative but some uncertain situations can turn out neutral or they’re neither good nor bad they just kind of are what they are and then there are some uncertain situations that turn out really positively
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so they turn out much better than a person anticipated the situation was going to turn out i call these happy accidents not expecting them to happen they happen and they’re really great so uncertain outcomes can fall anywhere on this continuum of possible outcomes but the
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intolerance of uncertainty lens prevents a person from really considering the possible positive or neutral outcomes and all the person ever focuses on is the potential negative outcomes so it’s not so much the uncertainty that is so sort of scary or anxiety provoking for a person who’s intolerant
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of uncertainty it’s not the uncertainty itself it’s what they feel that uncertainty represents which is the negative outcome the negative potential outcome that they focus on that this intolerance of uncertainty lends bends their predictions and their perceptions to be all about
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so what do you do with this information how exactly does this work and how can you use it to better manage worry well think about the dilemma that someone who is intolerant of uncertainty experiences on one hand
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i’m intolerant of uncertainty yet on the other hand there’s uncertainty in the world around me and so i have to try to find some way of reconciling these two things the inherent uncertainty of the world and my intolerance of uncertainty and invariably what people do is they
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tend to focus on ways of trying to eliminate uncertainty in their world trying to control their world trying to be highly organized try to seek lots of information avoid things that they are uncertain about it’s all designed to try and eliminate uncertainty in the world
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but how effective do you think that is do you think there is any way to fully eliminate uncertainty in the world well the answer is no if you think back to the original model of worry that i talked about
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it starts with a trigger and what i mentioned and why i pointed out is that anything can be a trigger so anything can trigger worry anything can trigger uncertainty any situation can have uncertainty associated with it so trying to eliminate uncertainty in the world
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as a way of trying to manage this intolerance of uncertainty is kind of like a losing battle it’s sort of like i’m at the bottom of a pit and i want to get out of the pit and the approach i use to try and get out of the pit is to pick up a shovel and to start digging
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now i’m doing lots of work i’m putting lots of effort and energy into trying to get out of the pit but is picking up a shovel and digging actually getting me out of the pit no it’s just a lot of work that’s not actually getting me anywhere and that’s what i find for a lot
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of my clients who deal with excessive worry and struggle with excessive worry they feel exhausted because everything they’ve tried to do to manage their worry hasn’t really helped all of the ways that they try and control their world all of the ways that they try and gather
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information all of the ways that they try to avoid or eliminate the uncertainty in their world isn’t really helping it’s like i’ve got a bucket and i’m trying to fill that bucket with water but the bucket’s got a big hole in the bottom of it so i’m constantly pouring water into the bucket but
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the bucket’s never getting full i will never be able to fully eliminate uncertainty in the world so the only way of dealing with this dilemma the world has uncertainty in it and i’m intolerant of uncertainty the only way of really reconciling this dilemma isn’t to focus on
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eliminating uncertainty from the world it’s to focus on becoming more tolerant of uncertainty it’s not enough to just know you need to be more tolerant of uncertainty the idea is you need to behave as if you’re more tolerant of uncertainty
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most everybody knows at a logical level that uncertainty can lead to a variety of outcomes they can lead to positive outcomes they can lead to neutral outcomes they can lead to negative outcomes that’s not an epiphany to people so trying to convince yourself that uncertainty
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is going to be okay just based on logic probably isn’t going to be enough to help you become more tolerant of uncertainty so the key is to start to behave as if you’re more tolerant of uncertainty to do exposure to uncertainty and see what happens and that’s how we build tolerance for uncertainty
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by essentially having experiences with uncertainty and seeing whether or not what i’m worrying about actually happens but before we can we can get into that you need to know the various different ways that intolerance of uncertainty is actually manifesting itself in your life
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in your behavior in the various things that you do and that’s what i’m going to be focusing on today what are the various manifestations of intolerance of uncertainty the various ways that intolerance of uncertainty kind of sneaks up on me sneaks into my life sneaks into my behavior
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and is maintaining my worry even if i’m not aware that that’s what’s going on so the first three manifestations of intolerance of uncertainty that i’m going to be talking about are essentially variants of the same thing avoiding doing certain things
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finding imaginary obstacles or reasons not to do certain things and procrastinating the idea of avoidance finding imaginary obstacles and procrastinating the idea behind this is that it gives me a temporary state of certainty so for example if a friend of
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mine called me up a few weeks ago and i haven’t returned that phone call and now i’m worrying about uh whether or not my friend’s going to be upset with me for not having returned the phone call as long as i’m not making the phone call if i avoid making the phone call to my friend
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i have certainty that in this moment my friend isn’t yelling at me my friend isn’t upset with me my friend isn’t telling me how disappointed they are in me that i didn’t return the phone call so it gives me this temporary state of certainty that the bad thing that i’m afraid of
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isn’t actually happening and that goes for finding those imaginary obstacles or reasons not to do certain things i can come up with all sorts of explanations and rationale as to why i’m not going to return that phone call to my friend today i can just put it off and say i’ll do it tomorrow
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they’re all forms of avoidance they’re all forms of things i do to give myself a temporary state of certainty that what i’m afraid of isn’t happening right now the next manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty is having to do everything yourself
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not delegating tasks to anybody else the way this works is that if i do everything myself i know it’s been done right i know it’s been done the way i think it should be done i know it’s been done to my standards to my expectations the moment i have to bring somebody else in or if
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i have to rely on somebody else to do it well now that brings up a whole bunch of uncertainty what if they don’t do it what if they don’t do it as well as i would have done it what if they mess it up and it becomes a big mess and they really screw it up and then i have to go in and
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fix it anyway you know what it’s just a lot easier if i do it myself so this idea of not delegating tasks needing to be in control that’s another manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty another manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty is not fully committing yourself to
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a relationship a job a project the idea behind this is that if i fully commit myself to something if i fully give it a hundred percent and the thing doesn’t work out then i’ll be devastated i’ll be really upset i will have fully invested in it and it doesn’t
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work out and so it’s almost like i’m hedging my bets kind of having one foot in one foot out not fully committing to it that way if the negative thing happens or if the relationship doesn’t work out or if the project doesn’t work out well i wasn’t fully committed to it anyway it’s not
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that big of a deal so it’s like i’m hedging my bets anticipating that it’s not going to work out now this can be uh really tragic i’ve seen this in a lot of clients unfortunately especially around the idea of relationships where they don’t fully commit to the relationship because they’re not
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sure if the relationship’s gonna turn out and so they’re kind of in and out of the relationship and they can never fully commit and they’re not sure if they can commit and eventually the relationship falls apart because they were never able to fully give themselves over to the relationship
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i also see this with students who don’t fully commit to their studies they don’t fully put effort into doing their studies into studying for the test and to doing the paper that way if they don’t do well
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well the reason why they didn’t do well is they didn’t really fully commit themselves to it anyway but if they were to fully commit themselves to it and they didn’t do well well the only answer is then is that they’re not good enough so it’s almost like by not fully committing
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themselves to the project to the assignment to the studying for the test they’re hedging their bets that if they if it doesn’t turn out well then that’ll be okay because they didn’t really commit to it anyway it’s almost like a built-in excuse for why it didn’t go right
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the next manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty is spreading yourself out really thin right wanting to sort of participate in a whole bunch of different things keeping yourself really busy but never fully committing to any
00:41:59
of those little things that you commit to or that you’re keeping yourself busy with the idea behind this is that i don’t want to miss out on any opportunities so i don’t want to say no to anything and then later find out that it would have been a great opportunity so i want to keep
00:42:16
all of my options open as long as possible but i won’t commit to any of them i just like to keep the various options available so it’s like i’m spreading myself out really thin and keeping busy doing a whole bunch of different things but never actually committing to any of them
00:42:37
now this can lead to feelings of exhaustion because i’m spreading myself out really thin all the time because i just don’t want to say no to something and then regret it later the next manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty that i want to talk about
00:42:56
is looking for a lot of information before proceeding to do something so for example if i’m going to buy a digital camera i’m going to research the heck out of that digital camera i’m going to read every review that has
00:43:16
ever been written about that digital camera i’m going to read every review about every other digital camera i’m going to watch all the youtube videos about all the features of the camera it’s almost like i’m constantly looking for that little holy grail piece of information
00:43:35
that’s going to give me certainty that this is the right decision to make so it’s this excessive information gathering to try and give me reassurance and to give me certainty that i’m making the right choice now think about how this affects things like efficiency or making
00:44:00
decisions it just takes so much longer to make a decision it makes me highly efficient because i can’t ever just make a decision i have to think through it over and over and over and look up lots of information before i can commit to making a decision about which camera i’m going to buy
00:44:20
and then the next manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty is that once i’ve made a decision or i doubt myself and then i check whether or not i made the right decision so uh once i’ve bought that camera i finally made a decision and i bought a camera
00:44:40
i spend the next six months reading reviews about all of the new cameras that came out since the time i bought that camera almost like i’m trying to convince myself or to prove to myself that i made the right choice that uh i should have you know i should have bought the one that i bought
00:44:59
rather than you know waiting a little bit longer because a better camera came out so it’s always like i’m second guessing decisions that i’ve already made after i make them the next manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty is seeking reassurance from
00:45:19
other people this is essentially a variant of the information gathering manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty except the way that you’re gathering information with reassurance seeking is rather than doing your own research you’re asking other people for reassurance hey uh i was
00:45:41
gonna do this this and this what do you think do you think i should be doing that um i uh i was going to answer my friend in this way what do you think do you think that’s what i should do what do you think i should do this reassurance seeking is very insidious because what it does
00:46:05
is it really undermines a person’s confidence in their ability if you were confident in what you were doing why would you have to seek reassurance and have to seek someone else’s input before you go ahead and do something so the act of reassurance seeking actually undermines confidence
00:46:29
and that’s why a lot of people who worry a lot lack confidence is because they’re really worried about making the wrong choices or making the wrong decisions or upsetting someone and so they engage in this reassurance seeking to try and give them a sense of certainty that everything’s
00:46:46
going to be okay but in doing so it just undermines their confidence and their abilities and it’s really tragic and it’s really um it’s really one of the ways that this intolerance of uncertainty chips away at a person and really contributes to their worry and their anxiety
00:47:08
the next manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty uh is one that when i bring it up with clients they either relate to it or they don’t relate to it at all um and the idea here is try and explain everything away rationally or always trying to imagine everything’s gonna turn
00:47:28
out well so it’s almost like creating a false sense of certainty so rather than going into an uncertain situation and saying look i don’t really know how it’s going to turn out let’s see this manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty is is kind of like always thinking the bright
00:47:48
side is going to happen and always telling yourself the bright side is going to happen so it’s not so much i don’t know what’s going to happen it’s everything’s going to be fine no no no everything’s going to be fine just think positively it’s all going to be okay
00:48:03
well the thing is i i don’t know it’s all going to be okay so by telling myself that i i kind of know that i’m sort of trying to pull the wool over my eyes it doesn’t really give me any sense of comfort because i know it’s not true i know that i can’t know for certain that it’s going to be okay
00:48:28
so this is well like i said this is one that sometimes people do sometimes they don’t or they don’t relate to but it is surprising when people will sometimes look at this manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty say yeah no i don’t do that but once they start paying attention to
00:48:45
their behavior they realize oh wow i actually do that and i never realized that i was doing it the next manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty that i wanted to talk about is double checking things or redoing them because i’m no longer certain that i did
00:49:04
them right in the first place so if i’m going to send an email i double and triple check that email because i want to make sure there’s no spelling errors in it i want to make sure that everything’s clear or there’s no way of misinterpreting what i’m saying or i don’t want
00:49:21
to offend someone so i want to make sure that the tone is is right in that email so i’ll double and triple check it i i won’t send it i’ll come back to it and read it over again this kills efficiency because i can’t just send an email i have to read it over
00:49:40
and read it over and read it over and try to be certain that there’s nothing wrong with it and the final manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty that i wanted to talk about today is over protecting others uh taking care of other people
00:50:01
this is a big one with parents and this is kind of like a variant of that earlier one that i talked about which is not delegating tasks except in this case the tasks that aren’t being delegated are allowing the person the other person to take care of themselves
00:50:19
so like i said this is a big one for parents who are overprotective or are over involved in their children’s lives and their children’s behavior in their children’s relationships so uh they’re the ones that are trying to uh fix or coordinate any sort of arguments or little fights between
00:50:41
their child and a friend or they do everything for their child because they want to make sure that the child is okay or that everything gets done right for the child so what this does is it it doesn’t really allow the person who’s being over protected from doing things on their own
00:51:02
from learning from their own mistakes so it’s like trying to cocoon them in this in this protective bubble wrap but it doesn’t actually protect the person because ultimately they’re going to have to learn to do these things on their own and so it really is about giving this person a giving
00:51:23
me a false sense of security and certainty that uh this person that i care about is going to be okay so that’s a lot of manifestations of intolerance of uncertainty and there’s a lot of different ways that this intolerance of uncertainty can kind of weave its way into a person’s
00:51:45
life and this is one of the reasons why i really like this concept of intolerance of uncertainty because you can think of it kind of like an umbrella concept that helps explain why all of these various seemingly different behaviors are all serving or all attempting
00:52:04
to serve the same purpose so how is me avoiding returning a phone call to a friend the same as me spending hours and hours researching a digital camera well because they’re both designed to try and eliminate uncertainty in my world and in doing so they’re both maintaining my worry
00:52:27
and my anxiety that things are going to turn out badly or things are going to turn out negatively so may raise the the question of well so what what do i do with this information so i see i’ve learned about all these manifestations of intolerance of uncertainty what now so the idea is
00:52:50
to spend some time observing your behavior and looking for personal examples in your life of the various ways in which intolerance of uncertainty may have manifested itself in terms of your behavior once you start looking for it what you may recognize is that there’s all sorts of ways
00:53:12
in which you’ve been behaving that are designed to eliminate or reduce or avoid uncertainty in your life and it’s that avoidance of uncertainty or that trying to eliminate uncertainty that may be one of the big things that’s perpetuating or maintaining your worry and your anxiety
00:53:35
so one of the things i often encourage people to do is you know keep a list of these manifestations of intolerance of uncertainty and spend a week or two paying attention to your behavior and seeing which of these do i do and what are personal examples of each of these things that i do
00:53:59
so the key to understanding building tolerance for uncertainty is to understand that when we talk about worries we’re talking about thoughts that are predictions of something that’s going to happen so the idea is to reconceptualize your worry or think about your worries
00:54:21
not so much as worries or factual things that are going to happen but essentially predictions and hypotheses of what’s going to happen so the key way we build tolerance for uncertainty is through behavioral exposure to uncertainty essentially doing what i call
00:54:45
tolerating uncertainty experiments so the idea with these tolerating uncertainty experiments is to put those predictions to the test and see how accurate those predictions actually are so for example if i’m avoiding returning a phone call to a friend because i’m concerned
00:55:07
they might be upset with me i might come up with a tolerating uncertainty experiment that gets me to call my friend so that’s the behavior that’s the tolerating uncertainty experiment behavior that i’m going to do return the phone call to my friend
00:55:28
the next thing to think about then is what is it that i’m worrying about what is my worry telling me is going to happen when i return the phone call to a friend so the idea is you’re setting up the experiment and you’re thinking about the hypothesis
00:55:51
the hypothesis or the prediction ahead of time and so what i’ll often give my clients is a worksheet to help them organize these tolerating uncertainty experiments in their mind and i’ll put a link to the worksheet down below so that you can download it and see it for yourself so the first two
00:56:10
the first two parts of the worksheet you do before you actually engage in the experiment come up with the chosen behavior and then you think about what is it that i’m worrying is going to happen what does my worry predict or what is my worry telling me is going to happen
00:56:30
now this is where worry awareness training becomes really important we talked about worry awareness training right at the beginning of this series on worry management you need to know what it is that you’re worrying about before you can actually begin to manage the worry
00:56:46
so the worry becomes central in this experiment this is what we’re testing we’re testing whether or not the worry what we worry about is actually going to happen so now i’ve come up with my behavior i’ve come up with my hypothesis the worry prediction
00:57:05
then i go and do the experiment i actually pick up the phone and i call my friend this is the data collection portion of the experiment and i write down and i record what actually happened i called my friend and they were really pleased to to hear from me they were surprised why i hadn’t returned
00:57:29
their call and uh they had some really exciting news to tell me and it turned out really well or i call my friend and they tell me that they’ve got some bad news they just lost their job and they were calling me up to get some support or to get some advice as to what they should do
00:57:50
or i call my friend and they are really angry with me and they’re really upset because i keep flaking out on them and i’m never available for them when they call whatever the outcome i record it and then i come up with my conclusion based on the outcome was my worry accurate
00:58:14
was my worry prediction did it actually come true so if you think about this if you do say a hundred of these tolerating uncertainty experiments and 95 of the hundred tolerating uncertainty experiments turn out negatively so they turn
00:58:34
out badly 95 percent of the time what does that tell you about uncertainty well what it tells you about uncertainty is that uncertainty is bad that uncertainty is something to be afraid of that most of the time the vast majority of the time
00:58:55
when i’m uncertain about something bad things will happen and so what i should do is get better at avoiding uncertainty get better at eliminating uncertainty in my life if 95 of the time these tolerating uncertainty experiments turn out badly
00:59:17
but what if 95 of the 100 experiments that i do turn out either neutral or positively what does that tell me about uncertainty well what it tells me about uncertainty is 19 times out of 20 the uncertainty is just fine nothing bad happens and so how do you think that’s going to change
00:59:44
how i orient myself towards uncertainty how do you think that’s going to change how i think about and feel about uncertainty well i’m probably not going to be as afraid of uncertainty if through a hundred experiences with it it’s turned out just fine
01:00:04
so the idea here isn’t to try and convince yourself through logic or just rational thinking that uncertainty is okay the idea here is for you to determine how you should feel about uncertainty through experiences with uncertainty and by setting up these tolerating uncertainty
01:00:27
experiments you’re giving yourself explicit examples of times where you did something you were uncertain about you were worrying that this was going to happen and what you were worrying about didn’t actually happen
01:00:46
and the more you see to the more you sort of see and the more you observe and the more you demonstrate to yourself that the things that you worry about don’t actually happen the less weight the less uh importance the less value you’re going to put on your worries
01:01:10
it’s kind of like if every time the weatherman said that it was going to rain it was sunny and every time the weatherman said it was going to be sunny it rained essentially the weatherman’s terrible at predicting the weather so the next time the weatherman says it’s going to rain
01:01:32
you’re not going to take your umbrella because you know it’s going to be sunny if your predictions are not very good you’re not going to put much weight or much value in those predictions and that’s all worry is it is a prediction
01:01:49
so that’s one way of building tolerance for uncertainty actually setting up these tolerating uncertainty experiments using the worksheet that you can download and fill out you fill out the first two sections before you do the experiment what is the experiment and what is your prediction
01:02:10
then you do it you record the data and you record your conclusion so it’s sort of forward thinking pre-planned tolerating uncertainty experiment the second way of building tolerance for uncertainty is taking advantage of naturally
01:02:30
occurring opportunities in your life to do things that you’re uncertain about the reality is we’re faced with uncertainty every day multiple times a day and the vast majority of the time that uncertainty is turning out fine we’re just not even really aware we’re not even
01:02:48
processing that the uncertainty is turning out fine so what i often encourage clients to do to try and take advantage of naturally occurring opportunities to be more tolerant of uncertainty is to imagine the following question tattooed to the frontal lobe of their brain
01:03:10
so essentially they’re filtering their world through this question and the question is if i were more tolerant of uncertainty what would i do in this situation if i were more tolerant of uncertainty would i order the same thing i always order in this
01:03:31
restaurant or would i order something different if i were more tolerant of uncertainty would i ask that person out for a date or would i stay in my seat and not say anything if i were more tolerant for uncertainty would i answer the call even though the i don’t recognize the number or would
01:03:54
i let it go to voicemail if i were more tolerant of uncertainty would i speak up and express my opinion in this meeting at work or would i stay quiet and wait to see what everybody else says you have countless opportunities to tolerate uncertainty on a daily basis you just have to
01:04:18
look for those opportunities and take advantage of those opportunities when they present themselves i were more tolerant of uncertainty what would i do in this situation you don’t have to do all of the tolerating uncertainties things but just be aware of it
01:04:39
just keep that question in mind help that orient you towards uncertainty to look for uncertainty in your day-to-day life and every once in a while do the uncertain thing and see what happens because what you do by doing these tolerating uncertainty experiments either
01:05:01
the ones that are pre-planned or the ones that are just taking advantage of naturally occurring opportunities that come up you can think of what you’re doing kind of like putting money in a tolerating uncertainty bank account what you’re doing is you’re
01:05:17
having conscious explicit experiences with uncertainty where you think about what it is that you are concerned is going to happen and then compare it to what actually happens and by being aware of that and seeing that the uncertainty doesn’t turn out badly all the time
01:05:38
or rarely turns out badly what you’re doing is it’s almost like you’re making deposits in this tolerating uncertainty bank account each time you do one of these experiments and so through these ex through these experiences with uncertainty the more and more of these
01:05:56
experiences that you have with uncertainty where uncertainty turns out well or fine or not negative that tolerating uncertainty bank account gets bigger and bigger and so when you’re faced with a bigger uncertainty in life what you can do is you can draw from this bank account you can
01:06:18
think about and reflect on all of the various experiences you’ve had with uncertainty in your life where it turned out fine and so if all of those uncertainties turned out fine there’s a good chance this big uncertainty that i’m concerned about is going to turn out fine as well
01:06:39
so those are the two main ways of building tolerance for uncertainty planning ahead and actually setting up experiments and taking advantage of the numerous opportunities you have in your day-to-day life to tolerate uncertainty
01:06:58
if i were more tolerant of uncertainty what would i do in this situation so today we’re going to be talking about another factor that perpetuates excessive worry and that relates to this notion of beliefs about the usefulness of worry one of the things that
01:07:22
we know about people who tend to worry a lot is that they tend to hold beliefs that the worry is actually serving some benefit for them so when i first bring this up with a lot of my clients what they tend to do is kind of look at me a little bit odd and say hold on a second
01:07:40
um i recognize that my worry is causing me a lot of problems and now you’re telling me that i have some underlying beliefs that worry is actually serving me some benefit or that i think it’s doing something good for me so the way i like to sort of introduce this concept
01:08:02
of beliefs about the usefulness of worry is to use an example and the example is that i change the oil in my car every 5 000 kilometers because i believe that changing the oil in my car every 5 000 kilometers is good for the long-term maintenance
01:08:19
of the vehicle it helps with the efficiency it helps with preventing costly repairs down the line and it’s just something that’s good to do because it helps my car run well and problem free now suppose one day a friend of mine pulls me aside and this friend knows everything there
01:08:40
is to know about cars and this friend says to me hey ramy you know that whole oil change every 5 000 kilometers thing it’s a bit of a scam by the oil companies all they’re really trying to do is to get you to buy more oil nothing bad is happening to the engine oil it’s perfectly
01:09:02
fine you don’t need to change it at all now if i believed what my friend was telling me how would that change my behavior would i continue to change the oil in my car every five thousand kilometers well probably not because the only reason i’m changing oil in my car every five thousand
01:09:24
kilometers is because i believe that changing oil in my car every five thousand kilometers is serving me some benefit some usefulness the moment i stop seeing any usefulness or benefit to changing the oil every 5000 kilometers then i’m going to stop doing it
01:09:44
so now relating this to excessive worry what we know is that for people who tend to worry a lot they tend to hold beliefs that worry is actually serving some benefit some usefulness for them so the first belief is this notion that worry helps motivate me the idea that uh when i’m worrying
01:10:11
about something it’s activating me to go and do something about it it’s activating me to engage rather than just being really relaxed about it and if i’m not worrying about it i’m not really going to be all that motivated to do anything to engage in an activity to try and change the situation at
01:10:33
all so the notion here is that worry in and of itself acts as a motivator to be that sort of that spark under me or that kick in the pants that i need to get going and uh and do something the second common belief about the usefulness of worry is that worry helps with problem solving
01:10:59
now the idea behind this is that if i’m worrying about a problem it’s keeping the problem in my mind it’s helping me think about the problem a lot and by thinking about the problem a lot what that’s doing is it’s helping me potentially come up with solutions
01:11:19
uh or you know ways of addressing this problem that i may not otherwise have if i wasn’t worrying about it as much so the idea here is that the worry benefits me because it helps keep a problem in my mind and helps me figure out ways to solve that problem
01:11:43
the third common worry belief is it’s got a bit of a superstitious flavor to it and the idea here is that worry in and of itself can prevent bad things from happening another way of thinking about it is if i don’t worry about something
01:12:04
then it’s almost like i’m jinxing myself it’s almost like uh if i don’t worry about this presentation that i’m going to give then that will be the time and that will be the presentation that things go really badly it’s almost like the universe is giving me a smack on the backside
01:12:24
for not worrying enough or not being concerned enough about this presentation so the notion here is that worry in and of itself can prevent bad things from happening related to this but just a little bit differently is this notion that worry can protect me from future negative emotions
01:12:53
so if i’m worrying about something bad happening it’s almost like i’m emotionally preparing myself just in case that bad thing were to happen so i won’t be caught off guard i won’t be surprised i won’t be blindsided by the negative thing because i’ve been worrying about it and i’ve been thinking
01:13:16
about it so the notion here is that if the bad thing were to happen well i’ve already kind of pre-prepared myself for the negative thing and i’ve prepared myself emotionally to deal with it so i’m not caught off guard and i’m not surprised
01:13:38
and the final worry belief is this notion that ruri represents a positive personality characteristic essentially what kind of person would i be if i didn’t worry about my children what kind of person would i be if i didn’t worry about my relationship what kind of
01:13:59
person would i be if i didn’t worry about my performance at work it’s almost like worry acts as this this measure of how much i care how conscientious how responsible i am so by worrying it demonstrates that i care about these things that i’m responsible that i’m conscientious
01:14:25
and so that’s actually a really good thing it demonstrates a really positive aspect or really positive aspects of my personality so if you think about these five worry beliefs if worry actually did serve to motivate me help me solve problems prevented bad things from happening
01:14:54
protected me from future negative emotions and demonstrated a positive personality characteristic well then that would seem to to be something that i should be doing of course i should be worrying if it actually served all of these purposes
01:15:15
but as you can probably guess worry doesn’t actually do any of these five things and i’ll explain why it doesn’t in uh the next video uh but you may now raise the question of okay well well so what what do i do with this information now you’ve you’ve told me about five
01:15:38
worry beliefs that promote anxiety and promote worry so what what can i do with this information well the first thing to do is to use these worry beliefs and notice them when you catch yourself worrying the idea here is that for a lot of people this this concept of part of the
01:16:01
reason why i worry excessively is because i think that the worry is doing something positive for me this is a bit of a foreign concept people often when i work with my clients they’ve never thought about any potential benefits that they may have perceived that worry is giving them and so the
01:16:21
first step is to just be aware of which of these worry beliefs actually play a role in my worry now there may be some of these worry beliefs that you’re sort of that we’re talking about that right away you’re saying no that doesn’t that doesn’t apply to me i don’t believe that at all
01:16:41
it’s not so much whether or not you believe the worry belief to be 100 true all the time but it’s more like you want to ask yourself the question am i behaving as if i believe this worry belief to be true and so uh for a week or two spend some time paying attention
01:17:03
to a what it is that you’re worrying about and then when you notice what you’re worrying about ask yourself are there any of these five worry beliefs that may be playing a role in this worry because once you’re aware of the common worry beliefs that you tend to use
01:17:24
then you can begin working on challenging those worry beliefs and evaluating whether or not those worry beliefs are true but you can’t do that unless you’re aware of what the worry beliefs actually are but once you identify the worry beliefs the question then becomes okay well what
01:17:50
do i do with that information so if i know that i’m engaging in this worry in part because i hold this worry belief how can i go about changing that and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today ways of challenging the validity of these beliefs and assumptions about worry so
01:18:13
what we’re going to do is go through each of the five worry beliefs and talk about different ways and different questions to ask yourself to help you challenge the validity of the worry belief because it’s important not only to recognize that the worry belief
01:18:30
isn’t true or that the worry belief is a myth but also to understand why it’s not true because that results in a much more compelling challenge to the usefulness of the worry so the first worry belief that we talked about is this notion that worry acts as a motivator
01:18:53
that worry is the kick in the pants that i need to get going to engage in in doing things that if i didn’t worry i wouldn’t be particularly motivated i wouldn’t be particularly successful here are some questions to think about how you’d go about challenging that belief so if you believe
01:19:14
that worry does actually motivate you well have you ever met anyone or ever known anyone who was really successful and was really able to motivate themselves who didn’t seem to worry excessively well if so then what that means is that worry isn’t a necessary component for success
01:19:38
or motivation another question to ask yourself is does worry dramatically improve your performance or your ability if so by what percentage it does it make a big change so when you’re worrying a lot do you find that you perform even better or do you find that sometimes when you’re worrying a lot
01:20:04
it actually interferes with motivation it actually causes problems that make you less motivated to engage in activity or to do something so think about how you feel when you’re worrying excessively what does that do to concentration what does that do to energy level
01:20:26
so if you’re worrying a lot and it’s causing you to lose focus or lose concentration how exactly does that help motivate you if your worrying is so exhausting and wearing you out so much how does that um how does that help you get things done if you don’t have as much energy
01:20:53
when you’re worrying a lot what does that do to your tendency to want to engage in an activity when we talked about intolerance of uncertainty we talked about one of the manifestations of intolerance of uncertainty is procrastination so if worrying is causing you to procrastinate a lot
01:21:13
how exactly can that be something that’s consistent with something that helps motivate you so these are some of the questions to ask yourself to challenge that belief that worry helps motivate me so the next worry belief that we talked about is that worry helps with problem solving
01:21:32
it’s this notion that by worrying a lot about the problem it keeps the problem in my mind and it helps me come up with solutions for that problem so if we want to look at whether or not this belief is true you want to ask yourself the question does worry actually solve the problem
01:21:52
is worrying the same as problem solving well worrying as we talked about in an earlier video is essentially looping a feared negative outcome over and over and over again in your head it is something that you’re doing cognitively it’s something that is just a bunch of thoughts
01:22:12
spinning in your head whereas problem solving is a much more active behavioral task you’re defining problems you’re coming up with possible solutions you’re implementing solutions you’re doing something about it so what you want to be clear on is are you worrying or are you problem
01:22:36
solving and you don’t want to be mixing up the two because worrying isn’t the same as problem solving worry doesn’t have any effect on the world worry is something that you’re doing in your head it doesn’t actually solve a problem so being very careful to
01:22:54
distinguish between worrying versus active problem solving another question to ask yourself just like with the the previous worry belief is do you know anyone who’s really good at solving problems who’s able to get things done who’s able to
01:23:13
figure out solutions to problems who doesn’t worry excessively well if you’re able to identify at least one person in your life who doesn’t worry excessively but is still able to solve problems what that suggests is maybe you don’t need to worry excessively to be good at solving problems
01:23:36
and tying back to another question that we asked earlier think about what worry does to your anxiety levels and think about when you’re feeling really anxious what does that do to how well you’re able to think clearly how well you’re able to concentrate how well you’re able to
01:23:56
think creatively well we know that worry and anxiety interfere in all of these things so by worrying what you’re doing is you’re making it more difficult to concentrate you’re making it more difficult to think clearly through situations and you’re making it more difficult to think more
01:24:18
clearly or more creatively so by worrying what you’re doing is actually interfering in the cognitive skills and the tools that you need for effective problem solving so these are some questions to ask yourself if you believe and if you think that worry helps you solve your problems
01:24:42
now the third worry belief we talked about has a bit of a superstitious flavor to it and it’s this notion that worry can prevent bad things from happening just the act of worrying can uh help prevent me from being jinxed uh or can prevent the bad thing from occurring well
01:25:06
to challenge this belief you want to ask yourself some questions based on experience have you ever worried about something bad happening and the bad thing actually did happen well if we were to able to prevent bad things from happening then every time you worried
01:25:26
the bad thing shouldn’t happen think about potentially setting up a an experiment one thing i i’ll often get people who hold this worry belief to do is to go out and buy a lottery ticket and then for one week to spend five to ten minutes every day worrying
01:25:49
excessively worrying as hard as they can about having wasted their money on that lottery ticket think about what should happen then if worry can prevent bad things from happening what should happen well they should win the lottery because by worrying about having wasted their money on
01:26:14
the ticket if worry can prevent the bad thing from taking place can prevent the negative outcome then the person shouldn’t experience a negative outcome which means that they should win the lottery not once in all my years of doing this has a client come back and said hey guess what i won the
01:26:32
lottery so that’s another way of challenging this notion that worry can in and of itself have some impact on the outcome you also want to think about is it the worry that’s preventing the negative outcome or is it things that you’re doing that are preventing the negative outcome so for example if
01:26:57
i’m worrying about a presentation that i’m going to give and that presentation turned out fine after i worried excessively was it the worry that ensured that the presentation went well or was it the fact that i prepared really well for the presentation that ensured that
01:27:15
the presentation went well is it maybe the fact that i kind of knew what i was talking about that ensured that the presentation went well maybe it has nothing to do with the worry a fourth common worry belief is this notion that by worrying about something bad happening
01:27:38
it almost protects me from future negative emotions by uh preparing me emotionally just in case the bad thing were to happen so if the bad thing were to take place uh by worrying about it what i’ve done is kind of prepared myself for that bad thing so i’m not caught off guard
01:27:58
i’m not surprised and in some ways then that that can help reduce the impact of the negative emotion well have you ever worried about something bad happening and the bad thing actually happened how did you feel afterwards did you say to yourself
01:28:17
yeah you know i don’t feel so bad because i’ve been worrying about it for the last three weeks probably not another way i get people to think about this is it’s a bit abstract and it’s a bit of a silly math uh puzzle but i like it because it it helps explain uh how to really get at this
01:28:38
notion or really challenge this notion that worry prevents me from feeling bad in case something bad happens so i want you to think about sort of negative emotion in terms of pieces of suck how much it would suck if this thing happened so suppose one of my big worries
01:29:00
is that my family is going to be killed in a motor vehicle accident and i worry about this a lot well think about what that worry does in terms of how it makes me feel well it’s probably going to suck to be worrying about this all the time and to be thinking about this all
01:29:24
the time so maybe that’s a hundred pieces of suck now imagine tragically one day my family is killed in a motor vehicle accident say that is a thousand pieces of suck well do you think the moment i pick up the phone and uh hear the message that my family’s been killed in a motor vehicle accident
01:29:54
do you think that moment when i hear that news that i’m going to be saying to myself wow it’s a good thing that i’ve been worrying about this for so long i don’t feel so bad right now no it’s gonna suck it’s gonna suck that thousand pieces of sock whether or not i’ve been worrying
01:30:13
about it or not so if you do the math i worry excessively about my family being killed in an accident that’s a hundred pieces of suck my family is killed in a motor vehicle accident that adds a thousand pieces of suck to the equation so what am i left with i’m left with
01:30:37
1100 pieces of suck well suppose i don’t worry excessively about it well i have zero pieces of suck and then if the bad thing were to actually happen i have a thousand pieces of sock so the net result is i end up with a thousand pieces of sock it’s still better than the 1100 pieces of sock
01:31:01
now suppose my family never gets killed in a motor vehicle accident well i’m worrying about it happening so that’s a hundred pieces of suck it doesn’t happen that’s zero pieces of sock i’m left with a hundred pieces of sock but if i don’t worry about it it’s zero pieces of
01:31:19
sock if it never happens that’s zero pieces of sock i end up with zero pieces of sock so um it’s a bit of a a sort of a strange or silly math puzzle but what i find is that for a lot of my clients it really resonates with them you know just do the math how many pieces of suck are you
01:31:40
actually saving by worrying about this probably not any and you’re probably actually making the situation worse so the final worry belief i want to talk about challenging is this notion that worry represents a positive personality characteristic that by worrying excessively
01:32:01
it demonstrates a sense of caring a sense of responsibility a sense of conscientiousness this is a big worry belief for parents especially moms who who often tell me what kind of person would i be if what kind of mother would i be if i didn’t worry about my children
01:32:24
and so i asked the question well what are some of the other characteristics that make you a good mother aside from worrying can you think of any other characteristics that are important to be a good mother another way of thinking about it is does the worry ever interfere in you being able to
01:32:45
be your best does it ever interfere in terms of how well you’re able to engage in relationships how well you’re able to be present in situations does the worry ever interfere in those things well if so then how can it be a positive personality characteristic how can it be
01:33:07
a positive personality characteristic if it interferes in your relationships if none of your friends or people close to you think that your tendency to worry is a good thing do you know conscientious responsible caring loving people who don’t worry excessively
01:33:28
if so then worry probably isn’t necessary to be conscientious to be caring to be responsible so these are the five worry beliefs and these are some questions to help you challenge each of those worry beliefs and so you might be thinking now okay
01:33:52
well so what what can i do with this how do i actually use this information to help me worry less so the way you do it is through something we call cognitive therapy and this is essentially thinking about your thinking now this is a bit of a challenging task because we’re not typically
01:34:13
used to thinking about what we’re thinking and we’re definitely not used to thinking about our thoughts about what we’re thinking and that’s kind of what we’re doing here so you have to be aware of what your worry is that’s cognitive layer one then you have to be aware of your worry belief
01:34:34
that’s cognitive layer two and now we’re challenging the beliefs about the usefulness of worry that’s cognitive layer three so this is a bit of a challenging task if you’re trying to do it all in your head and so to help uh to help be better able to challenge these worry beliefs
01:34:57
i’ve come up with a series of questions to help you work through this and i have a worksheet that i give my clients and i’ll be linking to it in the description down below so you can download and take a look at this but it helps you organize your thoughts to help challenge
01:35:15
the beliefs that you have about the usefulness of the worry so the way it works is the first thing you need to do is identify what it is that you’re worrying about this again goes back to that foundational skill i talked about in the very first video which is worry awareness training
01:35:34
being aware of what it is that you’re worrying about so you identify your worry then the next question to ask yourself is what are the beliefs about the usefulness of this worry that may be playing a role in this worry do i think this worry is helping motivate
01:35:51
me do i think this worry is helping me solve problems do i think this worry shows that i’m a caring person do i think that this worry is going to prevent something bad from happening do i think this worry is going to protect me from negative emotions in case something bad
01:36:06
does happen so you identify which of the worry beliefs might be playing a role in this worry the third question then to ask is if i had to prove to myself that these beliefs may not be true what are some of the things what is some of the evidence that i would point out
01:36:31
so essentially using some of those questions i talked about earlier and challenging each of these worry beliefs so if i think that this worry about my child shows that i’m a caring parent i may want to start asking myself some questions of well does does my worry ever interfere with
01:36:53
me being a good parent does my worry ever make it more difficult for me to be present in these situations and moments with my child well if so then how can that make me a good parent so you’re using some of those questions to help challenge the worry belief
01:37:14
then the fourth question you want to ask yourself is what’s the benefit for me continuing to worry about this issue right now and it’s not uncommon for the answer to this question to be none once you identified the worry belief and you’ve challenged the validity of the worry belief
01:37:39
oftentimes it’s easy for a person to see well there’s there’s no real benefit for me to continue worrying about it that takes us to the fifth question which is okay if there’s no benefit of continuing to worry about it what are the costs associated with worrying about it so when
01:38:00
you’re thinking about the costs associated with worry what you want to think about is things like how does this worry or your tendency to worry interfere with your productivity your performance um how does it make you feel how does it what is the impact that it has on your relationships
01:38:21
with other people what are the negative impacts that worrying excessively about this topic are having on you and having on uh other people are there other people who seem to get similar results as you without the same costs associated with this worry
01:38:46
so really thinking about what are the negatives associated with the worry what are the negative impacts that this worry is having on you because you want to think about that in the context of this equation that we’re looking at which is asking kind of the ultimate question
01:39:01
of should i continue to worry about this is there value in continuing to worry about this so you’ve gone through these five questions what’s the worry what’s the benefits associated with the perceived benefits associated with this worry what are some of the challenges uh to those
01:39:21
perceived benefits what is the potential benefit of continuing to worry about this what is the cost of continuing to worry about this and based on all of that information you come up with a conclusion a conclusion about now that i’ve thought through all of these things should
01:39:42
i continue to worry about this topic is there value in continuing to worry about this topic and what you end up with is a much more compelling challenge a much more compelling challenge to the purpose or the utility of that worry than what people typically do which is
01:40:01
just stop worrying about it it’s silly you shouldn’t be worrying about it well this goes beyond that it’s not so dismissive of the worry it’s more about i know i should stop worrying about it because of this this and this reason and because of this this and this cost
01:40:23
so it’s a much more compelling uh more rounded challenge to the validity of this worry so this is a challenging skill it’s challenging because for the most part we’re not used to thinking about our thinking so it takes a fair bit of practice and so i hope if you’re interested in
01:40:48
trying this out or using some of these skills please download that worksheet that’s in the description section below and try it out uh don’t worry if you’re not getting it right off the bat it is a challenging task but with practice what i find is that people get a lot better at
01:41:10
identifying and challenging some of the benefits they perceive that they’re getting from a worry what we’re going to be focusing on now is tools and skills specifically to address type 1 worries so worries about actual problems so it may not become as much of a surprise that
01:41:36
the primary way we deal with type 1 worries is to solve the problem that’s contributing to the worry and so that leads us to a question about you know why is it that people who worry a lot tend not to have very effective or tend not to engage in very effective problem solving so uh there was
01:42:00
some studies that were done that looked at how is it that people who worry a lot how how good are their problem solving skills compared to people who don’t worry a lot and you might be surprised by the findings and what they found was that there’s actually
01:42:16
no difference in the problem-solving abilities of people who worry a lot versus people who don’t worry a lot but what is different is that people who tend to worry a lot tend not to use the problem-solving skills that they have whereas people who don’t worry a lot
01:42:35
tend to be able to use their problem-solving skills more frequently and more effectively so you can think of this kind of like the way i like to think of it is it’s kind of like a garage door where it doesn’t matter if you have the best problem solving skills in the world
01:42:54
you can have the ferrari of problem solving skills but if that garage door is down it doesn’t matter if you have a ferrari in the garage or if you have a tricycle in the garage neither of those problem solving skills are going to be able to get out of the garage and so this garage door is
01:43:12
something that we refer to as negative problem orientation it’s a tendency to view problems in an overly negative way seeing problems as threatening as dangerous viewing myself as not being very good at solving problems or addressing problems and so if i don’t think i’m very good at
01:43:35
solving problems if i don’t think that i should be having problems if i don’t think that problems are are good or that every time i have a problem it means that there’s something wrong i’m not going to be all that motivated to actually want to engage or do something about a problem
01:43:56
and so if i’m not actually engaging in a problem if if i procrastinate or i avoid dealing with a problem what tends to happen to the problem well typically problems that you don’t deal with don’t go away by themselves and they tend to fester and grow and mushroom until they become
01:44:18
a crisis and now it’s a crisis that you have to deal with and so you go into the situation and now i’m dealing with a crisis situation and i deal with that crisis situation by spontaneously coming up with the first thing that comes to mind to try and deal with this problem that
01:44:38
is not a very good recipe for effective problem solving a crisis situation and me spontaneously coming up with a solution right off the top of my head to address this crisis situation and so what that ends up happening is what ends up happening is i don’t really address the problem
01:45:00
very well and then that reinforces my negative beliefs and my negative views about problems that problems are bad uh problems i shouldn’t have problems and i’m terrible at dealing with problems and so as long as i hold those views and i don’t engage in problem solving that’s just going to
01:45:19
maintain the problems and it’s just going to maintain my worry about those problems so if we want to improve worry management skills if we want to worry less about problems we need to get better at solving problems and in order to get better at solving problems we have to be able to
01:45:40
use the problem-solving skills we have and in order to use those problem solving skills we need to address this negative problem orientation we need to get the garage door to move up and then to be able to let our problem solving skills out of the garage so
01:46:00
negative problem orientation tends to have sort of three components to it and the first component of negative problem orientation is this tendency to see problems as abnormal or that there’s something wrong with me that i have problems that uh other
01:46:21
people don’t seem to have the same problems that i do related to this is the idea that problems should be solved quickly and easily and that if i’m not able to solve a problem really quickly or if i’m not able to solve a problem the first time i try to solve the problem
01:46:39
then that means that there’s something wrong that i should be able to solve a problem quickly and easily and if i can’t then that just goes to show that there’s something wrong with this problem or there’s something wrong with me for having problems like this so that’s
01:46:58
one sort of manifestation of this negative problem orientation second manifestation of this negative problem orientation is a tendency to focus entirely on the threat components of the problem so when faced with a problem all i think about is all the things that could go wrong
01:47:21
so if you think about uh if you think about the possible outcomes of a problem on a continuum where one end of the continuum is opportunity or challenge opportunities for things to work out and the other end of the continuum are uh i see it as entirely threatening 100 threat
01:47:42
well what we know is that with people with this negative problem orientation for with people who worry a lot they tend to gravitate more towards focusing on the threat aspect of a problem and so if all you think about when you think about solving a problem
01:47:58
is all the things that could go wrong and how badly it can turn out that’s not particularly motivating it’s not particularly good as a motivator to get me to do something about that problem so i end up in this paralysis zone where all i’m really doing is focusing on the
01:48:18
negative potential outcomes and i’m paralyzed to do anything about it so uh what ends up happening is i don’t really engage in trying to solve the problem or trying to deal with the problem because i don’t really see many opportunities for things to work out well
01:48:39
and that leads to the third component of negative problem orientation is that sometimes people can get so good at avoiding problems that they fail to recognize when a problem’s actually there they get so good at being avoidant to problems that they don’t recognize that a problem exists
01:49:00
until it’s too late until it becomes a crisis like i talked about before so if i’m not even aware or if i’m not even recognizing that a problem’s there i’m not going to be able to engage in trying to solve the problem so i have these three components of negative problem orientation
01:49:21
i see problems as abnormal that there’s something wrong with me for having problems i focus entirely on the potential threat or danger associated with the problem and i get so good at avoiding problems that i fail to even recognize when problems exist if i have those three things going on
01:49:45
i’m not going to be particularly good at actually engaging or doing anything with regards to problem solving so the question becomes okay well what do i do with this if i if i recognize that i’m i’m i have this negative problem orientation i don’t deal well with problems what do i do
01:50:06
so let’s talk about how you challenge each of these components of negative problem orientation so if you find that you tend to view problems as abnormal or is there something wrong with me for that i have problems or problems should be solved quickly and easily first thing i
01:50:28
typically ask my clients is well do you know anyone who doesn’t have problems or is the presence of problems indicative of there’s something being wrong or is it the case that just everybody has problems and that there’s nothing really wrong with
01:50:47
the fact that you actually have problems because having problems is just a natural state of being everybody has problems so it’s really about normalizing the occurrence of problems beautiful people in hollywood have problems people who are down and out have problems
01:51:07
rich or rich and powerful politicians have problems everybody’s got problems so the fact that you have a problem or the fact that you have problems doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something wrong with you it just means that you’re like everybody else
01:51:24
we all have problems and no one ever said that problems should be solved quickly and easily i sort of think of it as kind of like the the sitcom approach to viewing problems where people hold this attitude that uh problems should be resolved just like they are on tv sitcoms where
01:51:45
a problem arises in the first five minutes of the show there’s then 20 minutes of zany hijinx and then everything gets wrapped up nicely in the last five minutes problem solved everyone goes on with their life while that works really well in tv sitcoms no one ever said that real world
01:52:06
or real life problems are actually like that so if you’re having problems that you find are challenging or difficult to overcome well welcome to the club everybody has those types of problems and no one ever said that problems should be solved quickly or easily so really challenging
01:52:24
this component of negative problem orientation is really about normalizing the occurrence of problems and normalizing the fact that some problems are just really difficult to address the second component of negative problem orientation this tendency to focus on the threat
01:52:43
component of the problem well if you think back if you think about our our continuum and i’m stuck in the paralysis zone where all i’m thinking about is all of the potential threat or danger that is associated with this problem
01:52:58
all of the things that could go wrong with this problem well you know part of this has to do with intolerance of uncertainty and we talked about that in a prior video intolerance of uncertainty goes very well and hand in hand with this fear of addressing problems or this viewing problems
01:53:20
as threats because problems at their core by definition are things that we’re uncertain about the solution to the problem if we knew exactly what we needed to do to solve a particular problem then it wouldn’t be a problem it would just be a series of steps that i need to engage in
01:53:39
what makes it a problem is the uncertainty and the unknown of what it is that i need to do to solve this problem or how i solve this problem and so this intolerance of uncertainty can get a person to really focus on all of the the potential threat or danger associated with
01:53:58
potentially trying to address this problem so the idea here is to try and reframe the problem as an opportunity and try and get it out of this paralysis zone where all you’re focusing on is the potential threat so it’s just a reframe uh thinking about the problem in a bit
01:54:21
of a different way you don’t have to see the problem as entirely good or it’s going to be really wonderful to try and solve this problem but you just need to get out of this paralysis zone so you just need to reframe or shift the problem or shift your perception of the problem just
01:54:38
a little bit to get out of that paralysis zone so that you can see a little bit of opportunity and with that little bit of opportunity now you might be more motivated to actually engage in this problem and solving the problem so so how exactly do you do this well
01:54:56
let’s think about an example suppose i have a job interview coming up and one of my things is that i’m terrible at job interviews um i always get really nervous and anxious hands get sweaty and uh and i just my voice tends to tends to quake and i tend to ramble and all this sort of thing
01:55:16
and i’m really concerned about this job interview and i see it as a real problem of how i’m going to go about dealing with this job interview so one way of reframing this as an opportunity is to look at it and say okay yeah i’m i haven’t had really good experiences at job interviews
01:55:37
in the past but the opportunity in this is for me to practice the skill of interviewing for a job so even if i don’t get this job the opportunity here is that i get some practice engaging in a job interview and in doing so i’m going to potentially get better so that for my
01:55:58
next job interview i’ll have some experiences that i can learn from and that will help me in the next job interview so it’s again it’s not sort of making it entirely pollyanna this job interview is going to turn out great i really love job interviews that’s not realistic
01:56:16
thinking but it’s more about just reframing it a little bit to get out of that paralysis zone and to look for even just a little bit of opportunity with this problem um if you’re ever struggling to find an opportunity and a problem a good default is always this is an opportunity for
01:56:38
me to tolerate uncertainty like i said problems by definition are uncertain and so if you’re looking for an opportunity the opportunity is this gives me a chance to work on my tolerating uncertainty which if you’ve seen previous videos you know that’s a key to cutting off the murray fuel supply
01:56:59
so to help with this sort of challenging or reframing problems as opportunities i have a worksheet that i’ll link to in the description below you can download the worksheet and it sort of walks you through how to take a a type one worry or worry about an actual problem
01:57:18
and then to reframe it as an opportunity or a challenge so the third component of this negative problem orientation this tendency not to recognize or not to be aware of problems until it’s too late so there’s a couple ways of addressing this the first is these problems or problems that a person
01:57:44
doesn’t deal with very well they tend not to be one and done types of problems these are problems that tend to come up again and again and again they tend to recur for a person so one way of becoming better at recognizing problems early on is to actually keep a list of
01:58:05
what are problems that tend to recur for me again and again and again because by keeping this list what it does is it it keeps your mind or keeps you alert to potential problems that may come up that you wouldn’t necessarily recognize unless you were
01:58:22
looking for them so for example um one of my recurring problems is that i’m always terrible at um at school projects that involve a working in groups and every time that’s happened to me in the past it’s been a real mess where uh i have either difficulty trying to take control of the
01:58:43
situation or i just become incredibly passive in this situation and it doesn’t work out very well so that’s something that i can keep track of that’s a recurring problem that comes up again and again for me so i just have it on this on my list of recurring problems just as a way of keeping it
01:59:01
in the forefront of my mind another way of being more aware or recognizing problems earlier on is to use your emotion as a bit of a red flag a bit of a cue to stop and to look around and to ask yourself is there a problem here that i’m not addressing so you notice yourself feeling really
01:59:23
anxious in a situation that’s a moment to stop and say okay i’m feeling really anxious what’s going on here is there a problem that i’m not dealing with is there a problem that i’m not addressing i had this uh a good example of this with a client a few years ago and this client found that he was
01:59:43
just really really anxious whenever he was at work and so we got to this part of the worry management program where we talked about negative problem orientation and he used his anxiety at work as a cue and he stopped and asked himself one day okay what’s going on here why am i always so anxious
02:00:03
at work and as obvious as this may sound as simple as this may sound what he realized by sort of stopping and asking himself that question was that he hated his job he hated everything about it it was going nowhere it wasn’t really that
02:00:21
reinforcing for him he didn’t like the people that he was working with and so once he was able to recognize and identify that the problem was that he hated his job and that’s why he was so anxious whenever he was at work he was then able to engage in some problem solving so what he did is he
02:00:39
worked on his resume and he submitted his resume applied for a bunch of jobs and he got a new job and lo and behold he was no longer anxious at work so it was using his anxiety at work as that red flag of that that caused him to stop and ask is there something that’s going on here
02:01:01
that’s making me anxious or that’s that i’m worrying about is there a problem here that i’m not dealing with and once he did he was then able to take some steps and deal with the problem so those are the manifestations of this negative problem orientation and those are some tips
02:01:22
to try and improve your orientation towards problems like i said this is this is the garage door and until you deal with negative problem orientation as long as you tend to view problems in a really negative way as threats and that you avoid dealing with you’re not going to be able
02:01:42
to deal with the problems and you’re probably going to continue worrying about the problems excessively by addressing this negative problem orientation by normalizing the occurrence of problems by reframing problems as opportunity instead of threat and by recognizing problems
02:02:00
earlier on what you’re doing is you’re raising that garage door and you’re allowing yourself to use your problem solving skills that you already have and to use them in a really effective way so what we’re going to be talking about is six steps in problem solving and these six steps
02:02:26
like i said it’s kind of like a recipe and if you follow the recipe what you’ll find is that you’re a lot more effective or it gives you a framework to be more effective in terms of solving problems so the very first step in problem solving this one you probably already know and probably pretty
02:02:47
obvious to you is that you need to define the problem and the way i like to think about defining the problem is to sort of ask yourself three questions what is the situation that currently is what would i like the situation to be and what is the barrier or the obstacle between what is
02:03:09
and what should be because then you can reframe the problem is a question about how you address or remove the barrier to get the situation to what you want it to be so the first step is defining what your problem is so let’s use an example as we go along here
02:03:31
suppose my problem is that i’m feeling like i’m overweight that i need to lose some weight and the barrier i’ve discovered is that i really just don’t have a very healthy lifestyle my lifestyle is one that it doesn’t allow me to uh be particularly healthy with regards to diet with
02:03:50
regards to exercise and so the problem is that my lifestyle is preventing me from being more healthy and helping me lose weight so step one define the problem step two comes directly from step one and it’s defining what the goal is so i’ve defined the problem but what is it that i want what is my goal
02:04:16
and to try to be as kind of specific and clear and behavioral as possible with regards to the goal so in my example the goal may be that i want to lose 15 pounds so that’s my goal so that leads us to the third step which is what i call the brainstorming step coming up with
02:04:41
alternative possible solutions to address this problem now i find that with a lot of the clients i work with this is the part of the problem solving that they tend to rush through the idea with brainstorming is you want to try and generate possible solutions to help you address
02:05:04
this problem and those possible solutions need to meet sort of three principles for effective or good brainstorming the first principle is what i call the quantity principle and what that means is you want to generate a lot of possible solutions what people often do
02:05:25
when they’re engaging in problem solving they just come up with the first one or two uh ideas or solutions that come to mind and that’s what they go with brainstorming takes it beyond just those one or two possible solutions and gets you to think about lots of
02:05:43
different possible solutions so when you’re thinking about brainstorming i like to tell people rough rule of thumb 10 to 15 possible solutions to this problem so that’s the quantity principle the second principle of effective brainstorming is the um the diversity or different types of
02:06:08
possible solutions so if for example i’m going through my brainstorming and i’m coming up with possible solutions like uh my my possible solution is to go to the gym and run on the treadmill another possible solution is to go to the gym and ride the exercise bike another possible solution
02:06:32
is to go to the gym and go on the elliptical trainer now these are all different solutions but they’re all kind of the same solution so you want uh some diversity in the possible solutions that you’re coming up with so it’s not just the same thing over and over again you want some
02:06:52
uh variety in the possible solutions you’re coming up with so one of my possible solutions could be going to the gym and running on the treadmill or it could be eating more salad or hiring a personal trainer or taking up hiking or going on a low carb diet or packing my own
02:07:13
lunch for lunch rather than getting something at a restaurant so i’m coming up with lots of different possible solutions to help solve the problem or that could potentially solve the problem the third principle of brainstorming is one that i find that people really struggle
02:07:32
with and this principle refers to deferring judgment in other words when you’re brainstorming you’re not actually judging the possible solutions that you’re coming up with you’re just coming up with the solutions it’s not about evaluating whether or not the solutions will work the idea is
02:07:53
you want to be as creative as possible with your solutions you want to get out of the typical box that you usually think of when it comes to solving problems and think a little bit outside of that box so when you’re doing the brainstorming some of the solutions you come up with should be a bit out
02:08:13
there they should be a bit ridiculous and bizarre because what that means is that you’re allowing yourself to think outside how you typically think i once had this experience with a client this was a mom of two kids she loved her kids dearly but she just wasn’t getting enough time away from
02:08:33
the kids where she could do things to recharge her batteries and so she tried all of the things like babysitting swaps with other moms or having her parents look after the kids but she just wasn’t getting a big enough chunk of time away from her kids and so one of the things that she
02:08:50
came up with as she was doing the brainstorming was putting her kids on a rocket and sending them to the moon and so she thought well that’s kind of a ridiculous idea i could never do that but it got her thinking okay well i can’t send my kids to the moon but i can send them to summer
02:09:09
camp and so she got the idea to register them for a summer camp and they went away to a sleepover camp she had a week away from them really recharged her batteries and she felt really great because it had helped solve the problem of having some time away from her kids where
02:09:27
she could really charge her batteries and so she wouldn’t have got there if she hadn’t allowed her mind to go into kind of really out there possible solutions like sending the kids to the moon so you want to defer your judgment allow yourself to be creative allow yourself to be a bit out there
02:09:46
with the possible solutions it’s not about judging the solutions at this point so after brainstorming then you want to evaluate the possible solutions this is where you determine whether or not those solutions could potentially work so in order to evaluate the solutions i like to get people to
02:10:09
think of a few questions so first of all will this possible solution likely solve my problem so for example if one of the solutions i came up with while i was doing my brainstorming to help me lose weight is to to go and and do an all donut diet
02:10:32
well it’s kind of an out there solution but it’s probably not going to solve my problem it’s probably not going to help me lose that 15 pounds so right there i can dismiss that solution as one that’s probably not going to be all that effective another question i want to ask is how
02:10:51
much time and effort is going to be involved in this solution so if i come up with a solution of going to the gym seven days a week and working out eight hours a day well chances are that’s gonna help me get into really good shape but it’s not really all that realistic and it’s probably
02:11:10
way more time and way more effort than i’m willing to do so i’m unlikely to do that solution i’m going to want to think about what will be the impact on myself how will i feel about myself for coming up with the solution or implementing the solution and what will be the impact on other
02:11:30
people if i implement this solution so for example if one of the potential solutions i came up with is to steal my best friend’s girlfriend who happens to be a personal trainer so i can get free personal training lessons well that might help me get into better shape because she’ll
02:11:49
give me free personal training lessons but i’m probably not going to feel very good about myself for having done that and my friend probably isn’t going to be too pleased with me for having done that either so that’s not a very good solution either so you you have this list of possible
02:12:10
solutions that you’ve brainstormed so the idea is to try and evaluate these solutions based on these questions and to try to come up with the best possible solution not the perfect solution there likely will be no perfect solution and so it’s at this stage where you have to really
02:12:32
tolerate some uncertainty because you’re not going to know exactly what the best solution is you’re just going to have to pick one that seems like it’s the best solution and go with it tolerating the uncertainty of that so once you’ve decided on a solution
02:12:53
the fifth step is to actually come up with a plan and implement the solution so if i come up with uh if one of my solutions is to eat more salad i need to come up with a plan for how i’m going to actually implement solution of eating more salads so
02:13:13
i’m going to make sure to add salad to my grocery list i’m going to make an effort to buy the salad the salad mix so salad dressing all of the fixings for the salad and i may pick a day of the week um maybe tuesday or thursday will be my salad days and so i’ll make a plan to
02:13:35
implement uh eating more salad on those days so i come up with a plan and then i implement the plan and then the final step step six is one that people often don’t think about but it’s actually pretty critical in terms of problem solving and step six is to verify whether or not the
02:14:00
solution has worked so to have sort of a set date or set time that you’re going to look back and say okay i’ve been doing the solution i’ve been implementing my plan has it helped so maybe i give myself a month of eating salad every tuesday and thursday and so what i do is i weigh myself at
02:14:22
the end of the month and see whether or not it’s worked if it has worked that’s great i can reward myself give myself a pat on the back for coming up with the solution and implementing it and uh and it working so i can feel good about myself for having taken some steps to solve this problem
02:14:44
but if it hasn’t worked if i in the solution verification stage i realize i actually haven’t lost any weight i’ve actually gained a few pounds then this is an opportunity for me to look back on my problem-solving approach and to ask myself where might things have gone wrong
02:15:03
well maybe i didn’t define the problem correctly um maybe when i look back on my brainstorming i only came up with one or two solutions i didn’t actually do the brainstorming that well maybe when it comes to evaluating the possible solutions i look back on it and realize you know what
02:15:24
the one that i picked seemed like it was going to work but it didn’t maybe i should try one of the other possible solutions that i came up with or i could look at it and say hey you know what maybe the solution that i picked would have worked if i’d actually done it and so looking back on it
02:15:42
i realized i didn’t actually do a very good job of implementing the solution that i came up with so the idea of the solution verification step is to help you to look back and figure out where it went wrong if it did go wrong and then to problem solve or then to try different
02:16:02
different approaches or different tweaks to your solution to try to get at a solution that works so the process is self-correcting if you allow it to be self-correcting and if you allow yourself the opportunity to reflect on whether or not it’s working so those are six steps to a recipe of six
02:16:25
steps to help you solve problems more efficiently so you might be wondering okay well that’s all great and interesting and all but how does that help me worry less well the idea is with these type 1 worries if you’re able to more effectively solve the problem that you’re worrying about
02:16:47
then you’re not going to be worrying about it anymore understanding these problem-solving steps can also help you recognize what problem-solving is versus what it isn’t right so when we talked about worry beliefs one of the common worry beliefs
02:17:06
is that worry helps me solve problems well by understanding what problem solving looks like defining the problem defining a goal brainstorming evaluating possible solutions implementing a plan and then verifying whether or not the plan worked that’s much different than worrying about
02:17:26
negative things happening from this problem so understanding these steps to problem solving also helps you understand a little bit better what problem solving looks like what effective active problem solving looks like versus worrying about a problem
02:17:44
now obviously these problem-solving steps that i’m talking about aren’t going to be applicable to every problem now there are some problems that are just pretty simple to solve right so if i take my lunch to work every day and one day i forgot my lunch at home well i’m not necessarily going
02:18:05
to have to go through these six steps of problem solving to figure out what it is that i need to do i’ll just go down to the food court and buy myself lunch but these problem-solving steps can be really helpful for some of those more difficult problems some of those problems
02:18:24
that you find that you’re struggling with or that you’ve been struggling with for a while and so if you can break down the problems and use these problem solving this problem-solving recipe it might be able to help you get to a more effective solution to the problem and to
02:18:43
assist with that i’m going to link to a problem solving worksheet down in the description below so you can download that worksheet and it can help you walk through these six steps of problem solving just as a way of of writing down how you’re going to approach the problem
02:19:04
type 2 worries are worries about future or potential problems problems that haven’t happened problems that may never happen but still a person worries about them now the thing about these type 2 worries is that they tend to tap into the core fears that a person often has so these type 2
02:19:29
worries tend to be about the most scary things that we fear or that we dread happening worries about failure failure academically failure in life more generally worries about losing a job or a relationship breakup worries about you or someone you care about becoming very sick
02:19:54
or a family member dying in a motor vehicle accident these types of things so these type two worries tend to be quite scary and quite upsetting when they come up so if you think about it if uh if you catch yourself worrying about one of these really sort of scary core fears what’s
02:20:18
the most natural thing the most natural reaction to do with those worries well for a lot of people who worry a lot and for a lot of people who don’t worry a lot the most natural thing when these unpleasant worries these unpleasant thoughts about future negative events come up the most natural
02:20:39
thing to do is to try and push those thoughts out of your mind try not to think about them and it makes sense if if these thoughts bring up you know sort of images or or thoughts about things that are really distressing or really upsetting to think about it’s natural
02:20:57
to just want to avoid thinking about that in general it’s something we call cognitive avoidance so pushing these thoughts suppressing these thoughts from my mind so that i don’t have to think about the thing that’s so upsetting that obviously i don’t want to think about
02:21:19
now this cognitive avoidance may make sense on the surface and it’s kind of the most natural response to these upsetting thoughts but one experiment one little exercise i do with my clients to sort of explain how this cognitive
02:21:37
avoidance works is to get them to for one minute to think about anything they want to think about anything at all but in that one minute i get them to try really hard not to think about a pink elephant so they can think about anything they want to think about just not a pink elephant
02:22:03
and so i start a timer and i get them to think about whatever they want just not the pink elephant but if they happen to think about a pink elephant i ask them to make a a mark on a piece of paper each time the thought or image of a pink elephant comes to mind
02:22:20
and usually what happens is uh in that one minute i see them really start to struggle either they start to kind of laugh or they start to roll their eyes or they but they’re making marks on that sheet of paper and what ends up happening at the end of that minute is
02:22:38
they’ve thought about the pink elephant a lot and so i often ask them a few follow-up questions like uh how many times in the past week have you thought about a pink elephant and usually the answer to this question is well i haven’t thought about a pink elephant at all and
02:23:00
then i asked them okay well in the past week how much effort did you put into trying not to think about a pink elephant they tell me well i wasn’t trying not to think about a pink elephant at all and so i point out well isn’t it interesting that in one week of putting no effort into
02:23:21
trying not to think about a pink elephant you didn’t think about a pink elephant at all but in one minute of trying not to think about a pink elephant you thought about a pink elephant multiple multiple times we call this the paradox of thought
02:23:40
suppression the more you try not to think about something the more you end up thinking about it so relating this to type 2 worries if i’m avoiding thinking about these type 2 worries because they’re really upsetting to think about and i don’t want to think about them and so
02:24:03
if i’m trying to deal with these type 2 worries by pushing the worries and by pushing the thoughts out of my mind it’s essentially me doing a pink elephant with these worries i’m trying not to think about it and by trying not to think about it all that really does is it
02:24:21
causes the worry to come up over and over and over and over again and each time it comes up i try and push it out of my mind which means it’s just going to come up again and then i’m going to push it out of my mind and it’s going to come up again so the reason why these type 2 worries keep coming up
02:24:42
is often because a person’s trying not to think about it and the harder you try not to think about it the more the worry is going to keep coming up so it’s this uh really kind of self-destructive uh self-fueling cycle um i liken it to trying to hold a beach ball underwater the more pressure
02:25:06
you put to hold that beach ball underwater the more pressure there is for the beach ball to keep popping up and then you grab it and you push it back down again it pops up and you grab it and you push it back down again but it just keeps coming up and so while this cognitive avoidance
02:25:23
on the surface seems like the most natural thing to do when these type 2 worries come up it’s actually one of the factors that’s maintaining the type 2 worries so that leaves us with the question okay if trying not to think about the type two worries is what’s
02:25:44
causing the type two worries to come up over and over and over again what can i do about it well the answer to that question is something we call cognitive exposure and i’ll be talking about that in the next video
02:26:04
if trying not to think about the type 2 worry is what’s causing the worry to come up over and over and over again the solution the tip or the tool for managing these types of worries may seem very counter-intuitive and the idea is rather than trying not to think about the worry rather it’s to
02:26:31
think about the worry over and over and over and over and over again until you essentially drain the emotion out of the worry thought so again remember that worries are they’re just thoughts they’re predictions about the future and with these type two worries what can happen is you have
02:26:55
this anxiety and this emotion connected with the worry and the worry thought so every time the worry thought comes up the anxiety comes up and if you feel really anxious every time this thought comes up it makes sense to want to try and get the thought out of your mind because the anxiety is
02:27:13
really uncomfortable so the way around this is by thinking about the worry again and again and again the the metaphor i like to use to explain this is to imagine that you’re watching tv and one day there’s this weird satellite glitch that happens and whatever it is that you’re watching on
02:27:38
tv disappears and what ends up happening is this really grotesque horrible horror film comes on the tv it’s really upsetting and it’s really gross and and distressing and so you just turn off the tv but the next time you turn on your tv lo and behold the same thing happens the same
02:27:58
movie interrupts what you’re watching and it gets really distressing for you and you turn off the tv you do it again and it just keeps happening well imagine what would happen and how you’d feel if you watched if you allowed yourself to watch that horror movie all the way from the
02:28:19
beginning to the end well you’d probably find it really distressing you’d probably find it really uncomfortable and really unpleasant and you feel really distressed watching that movie but then you force yourself to watch it a second time well the second time you watch it you may find it even more
02:28:39
distressing and even more upsetting because you kind of know what to expect and you kind of know the horrors that are that are awaiting but then you force yourself to watch it a third time and a fourth time and a fifth time and a sixth time by the hundredth time you’ve watched the horror
02:28:58
movie by the thousandth time you’ve watched the horror movie what do you think is going to happen to your emotional reaction to it well you’re you’re probably going to be pretty bored uh you’re probably going to be like oh yeah guy jim’s out of the shower with a big knife
02:29:15
big deal the movie hasn’t changed one bit what’s changed is your emotional reaction to the movie essentially it’s drained any emotion out of the movie and so it’s no longer all that distressing and so um you’re watching the same movie it’s the exact same movie that you saw
02:29:38
the first time you saw it when it was really upsetting for you but it’s no longer upsetting it’s the same process with this idea of cognitive exposure you essentially want to take these type 2 worries and think about them over and over and over again to their their
02:30:00
really horrible hand the most distressing parts of it that you don’t let yourself think about with these type two worries what often happens with people is their their mind will go to a certain point in the worry and they say okay you know what it’s too much i i can’t take anymore and
02:30:16
they they stop thinking about it and so it’s almost like one of those old-fashioned record players and it just keeps skipping so it plays the same part of the song and just keeps skipping over and over and over again so it’s not playing the song all the way through that’s what happens
02:30:33
with these type 2 worries a person doesn’t allow themselves to think about the type 2 worries all the way through to the the horrible end that they imagine but by doing this and by doing this repeatedly essentially what you’re doing is you’re giving the worries the air time
02:30:53
so it’s almost like these worries want their air time they want you to think about them and so you give the worries their air time and you think about them in concentrated ways until the emotion essentially drains from the worry and if the emotion drains from the worry it’s
02:31:11
not going to be so upsetting when it comes up and if it’s not so upsetting when it comes up you’re probably not going to try and push the thoughts out of your mind so it’s a bit of a strange concept to wrap your head around but it works and in fact this is the exact same
02:31:32
treatment approach that we use for people with post-traumatic stress disorder the difference with between post-traumatic stress disorder and this is that in post-traumatic stress disorder the traumatic event has happened to the person it’s happened to the person in their past
02:31:48
whereas in generalized anxiety disorder and excessive worry the traumatic event is something that a person imagines happening in the future but it’s the same process to drain the emotion out of the thought so how do you go about doing this cognitive exposure how do you how do you
02:32:09
do it well cognitive exposure is different than worrying about the worry with cognitive exposure the idea is you sit down and you write out a script imagining your type 2 worry in all of the graphic horrific upsetting detail that you can imagine all the way to the end to
02:32:34
those darkest parts that you don’t even allow your mind to go to that you don’t let yourself go to and you take your mind there you write out this script detailing what you imagine happening and i encourage person to write out the script in the first person present tense so like it’s
02:32:56
actually happening to them because what that can do is it it puts you in the worry scene it puts you in that scenario and it allows you to sort of more closely imagine yourself in that situation and so you write out the script it should be anywhere from like one to three or five
02:33:19
minutes long it doesn’t have to be any longer than that but you want to include as much a detail as possible as much sensory detail as much thought detail as you can so i’ll give you an example of a script um now this is a script for someone imagining
02:33:40
uh that they’re going to die of cancer so the script may go something like this um i was diagnosed with or i was diagnosed with my cancer a few weeks ago and it is spread rapidly through my body uh the cancer is my fault because i didn’t take care of myself i had a unhealthy
02:34:02
lifestyle i ate poorly um i spend too much time in the sun without sunscreen so it’s all my fault that this is happening to me i’ve gone through a series of upsetting and painful procedures the treatments have caused me to lose my hair i’ve lost weight i’m fatigued i’m exhausted all
02:34:29
the time i’m now coughing up blood and it makes me sick every time i see myself in the mirror i know now that i’m on my deathbed i can feel my life draining from me this was all my fault i did this to myself and now here i am in this hospital bed having just soiled myself
02:34:58
and i can smell how awful it smells and i feel exhausted and weak i can’t even call out for help i’m in this darkened hospital room in this darkened ward and i see only shadows in the background i know my death is coming soon and it’s going to be a bleak emptiness that i’m
02:35:22
going to face for eternity so now notice that that may not be something that you worry about but that type of script it’s descriptive enough that it’s like this kick in the gut it it should make you uncomfortable and so the idea is you write out this script about this really horrific
02:35:45
type 2 worry whatever your type 2 worry is whatever the the worry that you’re struggling with is you write out a script as detailed as possible and once you have that script the idea is to take 30 45 minutes an hour a day and read that script over and over and over again so you read the
02:36:13
script all the way through and i encourage people to make a note of how upsetting or distressing it was on a scale from zero to ten where zero is not distressing at all ten is uh extremely distressing extremely upsetting so after every time you read the script you make a rating from zero to 10. then
02:36:36
immediately you read it again from 0 to 10 make a rating and again and again at least 10 or 15 times in that 30 to 45 minutes to an hour chunk of time that you’re setting aside to do this you want to do this at a time when you’re not going to be distracted so turn off your cell phone
02:37:00
sort of get away so that people aren’t going to be distracting you now it’s key to understand this is going to be very distressing it’s going to be very very difficult to do it’s going to make you feel very uncomfortable and so if you’re feeling uncomfortable even at the thought of doing it
02:37:20
that’s normal this isn’t something that anyone should look forward to doing because the whole idea is to bring up the emotion to bring up the distress and to learn to cope with it and to let it just go away on its own like watching that horror movie over and over and over again
02:37:42
so you do these ratings and what you should find is that uh within a session of doing this so from the beginning where you start with a rating the first time you read it maybe a 9 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. and then you read it over 15 times
02:38:01
what you should find is that at the end of that 15th time of reading it your rating should be lower right the first time you do it maybe your rating at the 15th time is a five or a six out of ten and then you do it again the next day and the day after that and i encourage people to
02:38:20
do this for a week or two and what they find is that over the course of that week or two the ratings both within each session tend to decline and between each session they tend to decline so after a couple of weeks of doing this the distress at the you know 10th or you know 15th
02:38:44
day that you’ve done this those distress scores are a lot lower than they were in the first day so this is like i said a very challenging exercise this isn’t something that you want to do with every worry because it takes a lot of time and it’s quite distressing so you want to use this
02:39:05
on those worries that are particularly problematic those worries that come up again and again that you’re really struggling with because this works it’s it’s not pleasant but it works so i’d liken it a lot to that buckley’s cough syrup commercial you know it tastes awful but it works that’s kind
02:39:27
of what what this cognitive exposure is all about as well it tastes awful but it does work as we’ve gone along we’ve talked about lots of different tools for managing these various uh factors that maintain worry we’ve talked about worry awareness training and categorizing worries as type one or
02:39:51
type 2 worries we’ve talked about the importance of building tolerance for uncertainty through behavioral experiments with uncertainty we’ve talked about ways of challenging worry beliefs we’ve talked about improving problem orientation by recognizing problems earlier on by normalizing
02:40:11
the occurrence of problems and by reframing problems as opportunities instead of threats we’ve talked about cognitive exposure and how that can be used to help address and deal with type 2 worries so we’ve talked about a whole bunch of skills a whole bunch of tools
02:40:33
and for a lot of my clients when we get to this point of therapy they’ve learned a lot but there’s a little bit of confusion in terms of like all of these skills seem a little bit disconnected and they don’t really understand how they all come together and how to use all of them to effectively
02:40:52
manage worry and that’s what i want to talk about in this video exactly how we put together these tools and skills the order in which to use them kind of like a recipe to best manage worry so the very first step in terms of this worry management recipe
02:41:14
goes back to the very first tool we talked about which is worry awareness training you have to be aware and you have to know what it is that you’re worrying about and then you categorize the worries once you’ve identified the word you think about it and categorize it is this a type
02:41:31
1 worry or is this a type 2 worry so let’s start with type 1 worries what would be the formula or the recipe for dealing with type 1 worries and as a review type 1 worries are worries about actual current real problems problems that you’re actually experiencing in this moment
02:41:54
so the first step with type 1 worries is you’ve identified it as a type one worry well the next thing to do is to think about are there any ways in which i’m being intolerant of uncertainty in this situation are there various things that i’m doing that may be avoiding or trying to eliminate
02:42:15
uncertainty with this problem so for example let’s imagine that i have a problem like i’ve just gotten into an argument with my friend and uh me and my friend haven’t spoken in a couple of weeks so it’s a current problem that i’m dealing with well what are some of the ways in which i might be
02:42:39
intolerant of uncertainty in this situation well i may be avoiding reaching out to my friend because i’m concerned that they’re still upset with me and so i’m engaging in avoidance or i may be checking in with other friends and seeking reassurance about you know what i did was it was it wrong
02:43:03
would they be upset with me how would they react have they heard anything from my friend about it so thinking about all of the things that i might be doing that are intolerant of uncertainty and thinking about what is the opposite that i could be doing what are things that i can be
02:43:20
doing to tolerate uncertainty in that situation so that’s the the step looking for opportunities to be more tolerant of uncertainty or to be tolerant of uncertainty with this problem after that after i’ve worked on tolerating uncertainty the next thing i want to do is to think about which of the
02:43:43
worry beliefs might be playing a role in this worry so i might hold some worry beliefs that maybe me worrying about you know my relationship with my friend it demonstrates that i’m caring it demonstrates that i’m conscientious it demonstrates that i’m a responsible person
02:44:03
who cares about his relationships that’s why i’m worrying about it so once i’ve identified that worry belief that’s continuing to have me worry about this i can begin to challenge that worry belief using some of those challenging questions i talked about in a previous video
02:44:23
so i’ve engaged in trying to tolerate uncertainty i’ve identified and challenged my worry beliefs the next step is to deal with that negative problem orientation so recognizing the problem earlier on well i’ve identified the worry so that’s good
02:44:41
now i want to normalize that problems are normal it’s not um it’s not that there’s something wrong with me that i’m having this problem with my friend it’s that these things kind of happen um and then i want to try and reframe this problem as an opportunity so
02:44:58
i can look at this as this is terrible me and my friend are never going to get back together if i try to reach out to my friend they’re going to be really upset with me and it’s going to lead to an even worse outcome so i’m thinking about all of the threat associated with this worry but
02:45:17
the goal here is for me to try to reframe that as what’s the opportunity or the challenge here well maybe the opportunity in this is for me and my friend to be able to work out this problem and by doing so we actually get closer because we’ve gone through it we’ve worked out
02:45:36
our difficulties and now we’re at a at a better place than we were even before the problem came up so then i can engage in the problem-solving steps because i’ve now looked i’ve identified the the problem i’ve reframed it i’ve normalized it that negative problem orientation is out
02:45:58
of the way and now i can actually engage in some of those problem-solving steps that we talked about in a previous video so identifying the problem identifying the goal brainstorming possible solutions of how i can fix this relationship with my friend
02:46:14
evaluating those possible solutions and picking one developing a plan for what i’m going to do and actually utilizing the plan or implementing the plan and then seeing whether or not it’s helped seeing whether or not me and my friend have resolved our difficulties
02:46:34
so that if i do all of those things and if i solve the problem at the end i’m no longer going to be worrying about this issue so that’s the recipe for how you deal with type 1 worries you identify it and label it as a type one worry you look for tolerating uncertainty opportunities as
02:46:56
a type one worry you challenge the worry beliefs that are contributing to this type one worry you address the negative problem orientation and you engage in problem solving so um it’s actually pretty similar to the order in which i presented these tools as we were going through the videos
02:47:17
and that was for a reason because that’s kind of the order in which you want to use these tools so that’s a type 1 worry well how do you deal with type 2 worries well if you remember type 2 worries are worries about future or potential problems problems that haven’t happened yet problems that
02:47:36
may never happen and so what’s the approach for dealing with these type 2 worries well the first few steps are actually identical for dealing with type 1 worries so you’ve identified the worry you’ve labeled as a type 2 worry the first thing to do is to look for opportunities to
02:47:56
tolerate uncertainty so for example if my type 2 worry is i’ve planned my one vacation a year to be a sunny a warm weather destination vacation and i’m starting to worry about the weather and that the weather is going to be terrible and that it’s going to rain
02:48:16
the whole time and my vacation is going to be ruined and this is something that really sort of bothers me or is really concerning for me and that i’m worrying about it a lot well thinking about what are some of the things that i might be doing to be more what are some
02:48:33
of the things that i could do to be more tolerant of uncertainty in this situation well maybe i shouldn’t be checking the weather and the weather forecast for my hot weather destination maybe i shouldn’t be checking uh the farmer’s almanac to see
02:48:51
historically what the weather was like at that destination over the time that i’m gonna be traveling there maybe i shouldn’t be looking into all of the possible things i could do if the weather is not great or if it is raining the whole time because those are all things that
02:49:11
are designed to eliminate uncertainty and so what i want to do is to try to be just more tolerant of uncertainty in this situation and not do those intolerant of uncertainty behaviors so once i’ve worked through the things that i can do to be more tolerant of uncertainty
02:49:30
i may want to challenge uh some of the beliefs about the usefulness of this worry so maybe i’ll hold i hold a belief that worrying about this means that i’m kind of preparing myself so that if i worry about it ahead of time if when i get to my vacation it is raining i’ll kind of have
02:49:50
prepared myself emotionally for it and so i won’t be so upset well identifying that worry belief and challenging that worry belief as we talked about in the challenging worry beliefs video so now i’ve i’ve gone through i’m tolerating uncertainty i’ve identified and challenged the worry beliefs
02:50:10
the next step i want to do if i’m still worrying about this is to engage in that cognitive exposure exercise that i talked about which is essentially to write out a script imagining that worst case scenario imagining that i end up on this vacation and it’s pouring the whole time
02:50:29
and imagining how bad it would be to its very end and then reviewing that script over and over and over again to essentially drain the emotion out of it so that’s the process for type 2 worries and if you notice the first few steps are identical to the steps in type 1 worries all that differs is
02:50:51
what you do at the end whether it’s cognitive exposure or whether or not it’s problem solving so those are the recipes that’s the order in which you want to use these tools and that’s how these tools sort of fit together to work together for the most effective worry management now one of the
02:51:11
things that can come up is sometimes my clients will say okay i understand this and i understand it makes sense what i do with type 1 where is it makes sense what i do with type 2 worries but what if i make a mistake at that very first step what if i label a type 1 worry as a type 2
02:51:32
worry so for example it’s a worry about an actual problem but i mislabel it as a type 2 worry so i think it’s a worry about a future or potential problem well whenever clients bring this up i say okay well let’s walk through what would happen then well so it’s a type one worry in actuality
02:51:54
but i imagine it a type two worry so what i’m gonna do with dealing with the type two worry is i’m going to be tolerating uncertainty well i’d be doing that for a type 1 worry anyway i’d be identifying and challenging worry beliefs well be doing that for a type 1 worry anyway
02:52:12
then i’d engage in cognitive exposure so i write out a script and start working on a script about the worst case scenario that i can imagine in this well that wouldn’t really work for a type one worry because the type one worries about an actual problem but what will happen and this has
02:52:35
happened with some of my clients before is they start working on a worry script and they start reviewing the worry script and what they find is that they start to get really frustrated because they’re reviewing a wordy script about something they have control over
02:52:53
and then once they identify that no wait this is something i have control over then they can recognize you know what this isn’t actually a type two worry this is a type one worry and at that point they then shift to dealing with it in terms of addressing the negative problem
02:53:10
orientation and engaging in problem solving so there’s nothing really wrong with misclassifying a type 1 worry as a type 2 worry because once you get to the cognitive exposure part of the the recipe you’ll recognize that this cognitive exposure isn’t working because i can do something
02:53:32
about it and once i recognize i can do something about it i can then shift over to addressing it like a type one word so think about what would happen if it’s actually a type two worry but i misclassify it as a type one worry so to worry about a future or potential problem but i deal
02:53:54
with it like it’s a worry about a current problem well the first few steps are going to be identical i’m going to be tolerating uncertainty i’m going to be identifying and challenging worry beliefs the only difference is now i’m going to start to engage in problem solving or i’m going to try
02:54:12
to engage in problem solving for a problem that doesn’t exist well as soon as i start to try and engage in problem solving i’m going to recognize that the problem doesn’t currently exist and once i’m aware that the problem doesn’t currently exist that’s my cue that this is actually a type 2 worry
02:54:31
and so then i can shift to working on a cognitive exposure script if i need to so the idea here is not to worry about or not to get too preoccupied with having to have it perfectly clear is this a type 1 worry is this a type 2 worry like i said from the very beginning just do your best just
02:54:53
sort of do your best to try and figure out if this is type 1 or type 2 and just go with it because the process is self-correcting the first few steps are going to be identical whether or not it’s type 1 or a type 2 worry and if you misclassify the worries it’s ok because you’ll recognize that
02:55:13
as soon as you start doing either the cognitive exposure or the problem solving and you’ll recognize that it’s not working which means that you’ve probably misclassified the worry and so you just need to shift to whatever tool you need to use for the other type of work
02:55:35
for some people they find that some of their worries don’t really fit nicely into this type 1 type 2 categorization that there seems to be a bit of type 1 component to the worry but also a type 2 component to the worry so the worry is is kind of more complex there’s kind of this mix
02:55:58
of type 1 and type 2 worries so the question becomes how exactly do i deal with this how do i deal with these complex worries and so what i wanted to talk about is kind of a formula recipe for these type these complex worries that actually follows quite nicely from the previous video
02:56:23
so if you think about the very first step in worry management we identify it as recognizing what it is that you’re worrying about and labeling the worry is it type one or is it type two well in this situation what you’re doing is you’re recognizing and you’re identifying the worry
02:56:42
and recognizing that it’s both type one and type two it’s a mixed worry so i’ll give you an example of a mixed worry suppose i have a business and during the busiest time of the year i have a whole bunch of staff members quit or get sick and so i don’t have enough staff to be able to fill
02:57:06
all of the orders that i have and so then i start to worry well this is going to really upset a lot of my customers and what if those customers decide that they’re going to go shop somewhere else and then this will have a real negative impact on my business and my business is going to decline
02:57:26
and maybe shut down in the future because i’m not going to be able to recover from this setback so it’s got a bit of a type one component to it that i’m dealing with a problem right now of my staff all either quitting or getting sick and not having enough staff to uh complete all
02:57:46
of the orders so that’s the type one component of the worry but the type two component of the worry is my business suffering in the future because of this and ultimately me losing my business because all of my customers have gone somewhere else that’s the type two component of this worry
02:58:08
so we’ve got a little bit of a mix our type one worry has spiraled into a type two worry so what do you do with this i’ve identified it as a complex worry i’ve identified it as a mixed worry what’s what do i do to manage this worry well very first step as we talked about in the previous
02:58:29
video is to look for ways in which i can be more tolerant of uncertainty in this situation how do i tolerate uncertainty or another way of thinking about it is what are the ways in which i’m being intolerant of uncertainty in this situation so maybe what i’m doing is i’m avoiding notifying my
02:58:55
customers that their shipment is going to be delayed because i’m concerned that if i notify them they’re going to cancel the order well all that’s really doing is maintaining my worry about you know what my customers are thinking so more tolerating uncertainty thing to do in
02:59:12
that situation is to notify them call them explain to them what’s going on and see what happens so thinking about what are the ways in which i can be more tolerant of uncertainty in this situation second thing you do like with all worries is to identify and challenge worry beliefs
02:59:33
to think about what are the worry beliefs that might be playing a role in me worrying about these series of events and the future series of events do i think that worrying about this situation worrying about not having enough staff to fulfill these orders
02:59:51
is worrying about it going to help me solve that problem well then i can think about the tools that i’ve learned to help me challenge that belief that worry aids in problem solving so i identify and challenge the worry beliefs that might be contributing to my worry so i’ve gone through
03:00:12
those steps and those are the same steps we use regardless of the worry regardless of whether it’s a type 1 or a type 2 worry but now what do i do it’s still there maybe i’m still worrying about it and it’s this mixed word it’s still got type 1 and it’s still got type 2 components to it
03:00:30
well what i recommend for clients in this type of situation is to focus on it like it’s a type 1 worry so look at the negative problem orientation that may be contributing to the worry so uh trying to reframe the problem as an opportunity what’s the opportunity in this situation for me
03:00:50
well maybe the opportunity is for me to figure out ways of becoming more streamlined in how i get my product out to my customers maybe i can figure out more efficient ways of fulfilling the orders with fewer staff which will help me grow my business in the future so there’s opportunities in this and
03:01:12
so if i can reframe those offer reframe the the problem rather than just seeing it as a threat i reframe it as an opportunity then i’m more likely to then be able to engage in some problem solving with this so i then engage in those problem solving steps to try and address the problem of
03:01:33
not having enough staff to fulfill these orders so i engage in those six problem solving steps that i talked about in an earlier video so now i’ve engaged in effective problem solving suppose i’ve i’ve solved the problem so i’ve i figured out ways of either hiring new temporary staff or being more
03:01:55
efficient and being able to fulfill these orders with the staff that i have so i’ve solved that problem well there’s a good chance that by solving the problem i’ve now eliminated the type 2 worry part of this worry as well so i’ve eliminated the type 1 because i’ve addressed the problem
03:02:15
but now that i’ve addressed the problem maybe i’m not going to worry about losing all my customers anymore and maybe i’m not going to worry about becoming bankrupt and losing my company so by addressing it as a type one worry i may fully solve the type two worry part of
03:02:34
this and fully address the complex worry by just treating it like it’s a type one worry but suppose that i solved the problem i’ve addressed the type one worry part of it but there’s still this mingling worry that i have about yeah that was close what if in the future
03:02:54
my business falls apart and i start to keep worrying about that type two part of the worry well if i’m still worrying about the type two part of the worry then i can engage in the cognitive exposure we’ve talked about so write out a script imagining that worst case scenario and then
03:03:14
reviewing that script over and over and over again to essentially drain the emotion out of that worry so these complex worries even though they seem more complex they’re actually pretty straightforward in terms of the steps you need to use in the order you need to use them
03:03:37
and they’re very similar to how we deal with be it a type 1 worry or be it a type 2 worry so you essentially treat it like it’s a type 1 worry you identify the worry tolerate uncertainty challenge worry beliefs address the negative problem orientation and engage in problem solving
03:03:58
at that point if there’s any type 2 part of the worry left over then you engage in the cognitive exposure so what i like about this is that it flows nicely with what we talked about in the previous video about our recipe for managing worries and that complex
03:04:21
worries are actually not all that complex in terms of what you need to do to address the worry so what we’ve done over the last 14 videos is talk about a number of worry management skills and tools we started out with our basic engine of worry we talked about the role that
03:04:49
intolerance of uncertainty plays as the fuel that drives the worry engine we’ve talked about the role of beliefs about the usefulness of worry and how that those beliefs can maintain excessive difficult to control worry we’ve talked about the role of negative problem orientation
03:05:08
and ineffective problem solving in keeping worry about current problems going we’ve talked about how cognitive avoidance can maintain worries about future or potential problems we’ve also talked about a flow chart for and recipe for how you go about managing
03:05:30
different types of worries including type 1 worries type 2 worries and mix or complex worries so we have talked about a lot of tools we’ve talked about a lot of skills and you may have learned a lot by watching all of these videos so the question becomes okay well what do i do with
03:05:51
this now moving forward now one of the things i want to point out is that this isn’t this model of worry that i’m talking about here isn’t just something that i’ve imagined it’s actually based in a lot of scientific research that has backed this model of worry and back this treatment
03:06:10
protocol that i’ve been walking you through this treatment protocol is based on the research and work of a really brilliant psychologist named michelle duga who’s at concordia university in montreal and what duga and his colleagues did was they developed this protocol and then they
03:06:32
administered it to a number of people who worried excessively people with generalized anxiety disorder and what they found was that at the end of treatment not surprisingly the vast majority of people who went through this treatment showed significant improvements in their worry levels
03:06:54
in terms of their anxiety levels so it showed that at the end of treatment the treatment had actually worked it actually been really effective in terms of helping people better manage their worry but what they did was they took the research even a step further and they followed up
03:07:12
the people two years later and what they found was actually quite encouraging they found that the majority of people who went through this treatment protocol at two years later we’re still showing the same gains and the same improvement that
03:07:30
they had demonstrated at the end of treatment and so what that means is that the treatment wasn’t just effective as long as the person was in the treatment or was receiving the therapy but that they maintained the progress two years later and so there are lasting improvements and
03:07:48
lasting gains from this treatment but what they also found was that there was a subset of people who actually showed even further improvements at the two-year mark that they demonstrated even lower levels of worry and even lower levels of anxiety two years later than they did when they
03:08:10
stopped the therapy so what this demonstrates is that for the most of the people the vast majority of people who go through this treatment and who go through the treatment protocol actually maintain their gains or show even further improvement two years later and that’s great to
03:08:29
know so what it means is that this treatment isn’t just something that you do and then the benefits go away it’s something in which the benefits are maintained for at least two years likely beyond but in the research what they also found was that there was a small subset of people
03:08:50
who experienced a recurrence of symptoms so at two years later they are actually demonstrating higher levels of worry and higher levels of anxiety than they were when they stopped treatment and so what dugon his colleagues looked at was what was the difference between these groups
03:09:08
of people what was it about the people who showed a recurrence of symptoms who showed a deterioration in their level of worry and anxiety at two years compared to the people who maintained their gains for who even got better at two years
03:09:27
and not surprisingly what they found was that the people who maintained their gains or who continued to get better at two years those were the people who were still using the worry management skills whereas the people who showed a worsening in their symptoms at two years they were people who
03:09:48
at the end of treatment had felt better and then they were just happy to be done with excessive worry they were happy to be over it and they just wanted to move on with their lives and so they stopped using the skills and this is one of the things about this type of
03:10:07
treatment or this approach for worry management it’s a skills-based form of treatment it is not a worry cure it’s worry management because the reality is everyone worries and everyone will always worry but this treatment isn’t about preventing worry
03:10:28
it’s about helping a person control and manage the worry so it’s not so excessive or interfering in a person’s life and so if you stop using the tools then they’re going to stop being of benefit and you’re likely going to fall back into old habits of excessive worry and high anxiety
03:10:51
and so it really is about what can you do to make sure that you’re continuing to use your tools what can you do to ensure that you’re maintaining the gains and using these worry management skills on an ongoing basis and i want to give a few tips about how to do that uh in this video so the
03:11:14
first thing to realize and the first thing that’s really important to understand is that there will be times when you will experience a resurgence in worry there will be times in your life moving forward where you will experience higher levels of worry because life stressors will come up
03:11:32
things will come up and we know that life stress tends to exacerbate and increase worry for people now there’s a difference between a temporary increase in worry and a full relapse of worry so what you want to do is to take these life stressors and
03:11:53
to take these uh the increase in worry that comes with these life stressors and really apply the worry management tools to address the worries as they come up and help you get through those life stressors and get through the worries associated with those life stressors
03:12:12
now sometimes life stressors are unexpected they come out of the blue i suddenly lose my job someone in my family suddenly gets sick and i didn’t anticipate it there was no way i could have anticipated it it’s not really much you can do about those types of stressors however there
03:12:34
are some life stressors that are predictable and so what you want to do one of the first things you can do and to ensure that you’re maintaining uh your use of these worry management skills is to plan ahead for future stressors so for example some predictable life stressors are
03:12:55
the holiday season christmas and new year’s a lot of people find that time of year to be extremely stressful well that’s an example of a predictable stressor so if you know that the holiday season’s coming up the idea is to plan ahead for what it is that you’re going to do
03:13:13
to better manage your worry or to manage your worry that comes up with that stress so it may be that you plan to do more formal tolerating uncertainty experiments during that time it may be that you’re more hyper aware and hyper tuned to those problems that tend to come up for you over
03:13:36
and over again and so you can identify those problems earlier on during the holiday season and then be able to kick into your reframing and problem solving so you want to plan ahead and if you can plan ahead for foreseeable futures and to develop a plan for what you’re going to be doing
03:13:56
to manage your worry during that time that can go a long way in preventing you from spiraling into excessive worry and high levels of anxiety during those stressful times second thing you can do to maintain your worry is to think about what are some early warning signs that you may want to
03:14:18
pay attention to that would indicate to you that you’re starting to slip back into old excessive worry habits now the thing is people don’t just tend to start worrying excessively one day it’s for a lot of people it’s something that they’ve done their whole life so you may have
03:14:40
gone through these worry management videos you’ve learned a lot of skills and you’re using them and you’re able to really manage your worry quite well but it’s important to remember that you’ve only been managing your worry quite well for a few weeks now compared to maybe a lifetime of
03:15:00
excessive worry so that lifetime of excessive worry is kind of like an old habit and so it’s really easy to fall back and slip back into those old worry excessive worry habits so the idea is to think about what are some clear signs for me that are going to be like early
03:15:23
warning signs that tell me that i’m starting to slide down an old familiar path of excessive worry you want to try to make these as specific as possible so that they can be your early alarm or your early warning sign that something bad or something wrong is going on in terms of worrying
03:15:43
excessively so things like noticing that you’ve been having trouble sleeping for the last four nights in a row things like noticing that you haven’t been doing any tolerating uncertainty experiments for a couple of weeks noticing that maybe you’ve been avoiding some social
03:16:04
interactions because you’ve been a little bit more uncomfortable or or experiencing a bit more stress those behavioral indicators those behavioral signs that maybe you’re sliding back into old habits because once you recognize that maybe you’re starting that slide back into old habits
03:16:24
you can then kick into using your worry management skills again and really focusing on those worry management skills to get back on track and to ensure that that little lapse doesn’t lead to a full relapse in terms of high levels of worry high levels of anxiety because it’s a lot easier
03:16:44
to make a course correction earlier on than it is when you find yourself worrying excessively again and the third tip for ensuring that you’re maintaining your progress is to have a plan for what you would do if you ever did find yourself worrying excessively again now i know for a lot
03:17:08
of people they don’t like to think about this they want to to be positive and optimistic about being able to manage their worry moving forward and that it’s not going to be a problem for them again but i like to think of this more like an insurance policy
03:17:26
so the idea is to sit down and spend some time writing out a recipe or a formula for exactly what it is that you would do what are the various steps that you would need you would go through if you noticed yourself worrying excessively again so it
03:17:45
may be uh bookmarking or uh or highlighting some of these videos and going back to watching some of these videos it may be that you’ve taken some notes from these videos so it’s about reviewing your notes and having a plan for what is it what it is that i’m going to do if i catch myself
03:18:05
worrying excessively again and you can have this this instruction manual and you can fold it up put it in an envelope and then right on the outside of the envelope open in case of worry emergency because if you ever catch yourself worrying excessively again at some point in the future
03:18:26
it’s really difficult in that moment to remember exactly what it is that you need to do to better manage or better control your worry so what you can do if you ever find yourself in that situation is you go to this envelope you open it up and then you just read the instructions that you have come
03:18:45
up with for you and so it can be a nice insurance policy and hopefully you never need it because you’ve been planning for stressors you’ve been catching yourself in those early warning signs that you might be falling back into old habits and you’re continuing to use the worry management
03:19:05
skills that you’ve learned on an ongoing basis maybe you never need to open that letter but it’s there for you just in case you need it so those are some tips for maintaining the progress that you’ve made uh through using these worry management tools that i’ve been talking about
03:19:26
and that’s the end of our 14-part series on worry management you’ve learned a lot if you’ve watched all of the videos you’ve learned a lot about worry you’ve learned a lot about the factors that maintain worry and all of the tools that you can use to manage worry this is not
03:19:49
five simple steps to overcome worry i’ve never believed in that sort of approach because i think it tends to invalidate and minimize worry if it was as easy as five simple steps nobody would be worrying excessively worry management is a lot of work that’s a lot
03:20:10
of hard work but if you understand the skills and you understand the tools and you use them these skills and tools work and you can better control and better manage your worry so i would love to hear your thoughts and comments about this so please leave me some comments down below
03:20:33
uh if you like this video if you found it helpful please hit the like button and if you’d like to see more of my videos please hit the subscribe button and the notification bell and you’ll be alerted every thursday when i post a new video so thank you for making it all the way