{"id":152078,"date":"2024-02-03T15:36:02","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T15:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/152078"},"modified":"2024-02-04T21:05:57","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T02:05:57","slug":"3-hours-of-worry-management-skills-the-ultimate-generalized-anxiety-disorder-guide-dr-rami-nader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/152078","title":{"rendered":"3 HOURS of Worry Management Skills: The Ultimate Generalized Anxiety Disorder Guide | Dr. Rami Nader"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qGbgibPSn3s?si=6t65_46q3EZRnAeX\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe>\r\n\r\ndo you worry a lot do you know\r\nsomebody who does worry a lot\u00a0\u00a0 well this is the ultimate guide for understanding\r\nmanaging and better controlling worries\u00a0\u00a0 hi everyone welcome to the ultimate video guide\r\nfor managing worry this video is going to be a\u00a0\u00a0 long video that puts together a number of\r\nother videos that i’ve previously uploaded\u00a0\u00a0 that spell out the best ways to manage and\r\nunderstand excessive worry but before i get\u00a0\u00a0 into that just a couple of disclaimers to\r\ngo over i’m a registered psychologist in\u00a0\u00a0 the province of british columbia canada and\r\nthis video is for informational purposes only\u00a0\u00a0 it is not intended as a replacement or substitute\r\nfor advice from your doctor or mental health\u00a0\u00a0 professional now with those two things out\r\nof the way let’s talk about worry management\u00a0\u00a0 so like i mentioned this video is really a\r\ncompilation of a 14-part video series that\u00a0\u00a0 i’ve previously uploaded about worry\r\nmanagement you can choose to watch\u00a0\u00a0 all 14 of those individual videos but i had a\r\nlot of people ask me to put them all together\u00a0\u00a0 into one video that they can use as a reference\r\nand so that’s what this video is all about\u00a0\u00a0 i would not recommend watching this video from\r\nbeginning to end and expecting to remember\u00a0\u00a0 all of it it is pretty dense and has a lot of\r\nmaterial in it but i hope you’ll come back to it\u00a0\u00a0 as you work through some of the worry management\r\ntools that i’m going to be talking about\u00a0\u00a0 now one of the things i want to point out is these\r\nworry management skills aren’t things that i just\u00a0\u00a0 dreamed up uh these are worry management skills\r\nthat are backed by a lot of research and there’s\u00a0\u00a0 been a lot of scientific work that has been put\r\ninto putting together this treatment protocol\u00a0\u00a0 it was developed by a brilliant researcher\r\nand psychologist at concordia university named\u00a0\u00a0 michelle duga and he has done a lot of research on\r\nthese skills and tools that i’ll be presenting and\u00a0\u00a0 the great part is these skills and tools work and\r\nthere’s a lot of research to back that these tools\u00a0\u00a0 are highly effective for helping a person\r\nmanage and understand their worry so\u00a0\u00a0 i hope you’ll find this video helpful and\r\nlook forward to any comments or thoughts\u00a0\u00a0 that you have about it so with that being said\r\nlet’s start with the first video that discusses\u00a0\u00a0 the three features of worry and\r\ntwo different types of worry have you ever thought about what worry\r\nactually is that’s one of the first questions i\u00a0\u00a0 ask my clients when we get into worry management\r\nis i ask them to provide me with a definition\u00a0\u00a0 of worry and usually there’s a bit of a a pause\r\nand a look of confusion because i think most\u00a0\u00a0 people know what worry feels like and everybody\r\nknows kind of how it feels to be worried but\u00a0\u00a0 rarely do people ever stop to think about what\r\nworry actually is and that’s what i want to talk\u00a0\u00a0 about today so that people can have a clear\r\nsense and a clear idea of what i’m talking\u00a0\u00a0 about when i talk about worry so the first thing\r\nabout worry is that worry is a thought process\u00a0\u00a0 it is something that happens in your head it\r\nis something that you are thinking now worry\u00a0\u00a0 tends not to be just a single thought it tends\r\nto be a collection of thoughts now that can be\u00a0\u00a0 the same thought looped over and over and\r\nover and over again or it can be one thought\u00a0\u00a0 leading to another leading to another leading\r\nto another until you get this scenario building\u00a0\u00a0 now for example i wake up one morning i’ve got\r\na really bad headache and i think to myself\u00a0\u00a0 what if this is a brain tumor\r\nwhat if there’s something wrong\u00a0\u00a0 now typically with worry the next thought isn’t\r\nwell i wonder what i’m going to have for breakfast\u00a0\u00a0 the next thought is either going to be looping\r\nover oh my goodness what if this is a tumor what\u00a0\u00a0 if this is cancer what if this is something bad\r\nor spiraling into a negative scenario about what\u00a0\u00a0 might happen if i have to get treatment and what\r\nwould happen to my family those types of things\u00a0\u00a0 so the first sort of defining feature\r\nof worry is that it is a collection of\u00a0\u00a0 thoughts it is a thought process and a\r\ncollection of multiple thoughts the second\u00a0\u00a0 defining characteristic of worry is that worry\r\ntends to be future oriented what that means is\u00a0\u00a0 that people don’t worry about things from the\r\npast typically they worry about stuff that’s\u00a0\u00a0 going to happen in the future now sometimes people\r\nwill stop me and they’ll say hold on a second i\u00a0\u00a0 worry about things from my past but usually\r\nwhen people say that they’re worrying about\u00a0\u00a0 stuff from their past what they’re actually\r\ntalking about is they’re worrying about how\u00a0\u00a0 the things from the past are going to affect them\r\nin the future so essentially how the implications\u00a0\u00a0 of events that have happened in the past and what\r\nimpact they’re going to have on a person’s future\u00a0\u00a0 so for example if i’m worrying about having been\r\nfired from a job three years ago it’s not so much\u00a0\u00a0 that i’m worrying about having been fired from\r\nthe job three years ago it’s that i’m worrying\u00a0\u00a0 about how i’m going to be able to explain that\r\ni was fired from that job three years ago in\u00a0\u00a0 the upcoming job interview so now another\r\nsmall but sort of obvious component of this\u00a0\u00a0 is that worry tends to be about future negative\r\nevents people don’t worry about positive things\u00a0\u00a0 happening right so rarely do people ever worry\r\noh what if what if this job goes really well or\u00a0\u00a0 what if this relationship turns out great what\r\nif my friends are really impressed with me\u00a0\u00a0 people don’t worry about those things people\r\nusually only worry about negative things happening\u00a0\u00a0 so that’s the second defining feature of\r\nworry worry is about future negative events\u00a0\u00a0 now the third defining feature of worry is\r\nthat worry is associated and accompanied by\u00a0\u00a0 anxiety anxiety is the emotional result\r\nof the worry process now this is an\u00a0\u00a0 important concept and important point because\r\na lot of times people will use the terms worry\u00a0\u00a0 and anxiety interchangeably i’m worried and\r\nanxious and that’s probably because people\u00a0\u00a0 usually experience worry and anxiety at the same\r\ntime but worry and anxiety aren’t the same thing\u00a0\u00a0 worry is a thought process and anxiety is the\r\nemotion that results from that thought process\u00a0\u00a0 so you can’t be worrying without being anxious\r\nbut you can be anxious without worrying\u00a0\u00a0 so i hope that makes sense that worry is\r\nthe thought process anxiety is the emotional\u00a0\u00a0 result that comes from that thought process so\r\nthat’s the definition of worry that i work by\u00a0\u00a0 that’s the definition of worry that i use when i’m\r\nworking with my clients on worry management worry\u00a0\u00a0 is this collection of thoughts or doubts about\r\nfuture negative events that are accompanied by\u00a0\u00a0 anxiety so with that definition of worry out\r\nof the way i want to talk about two types of\u00a0\u00a0 worry now the first type of worry is what we\r\ncall a type one worry now a type one worry\u00a0\u00a0 is a worry about a current actual real\r\nproblem a problem that’s happening now\u00a0\u00a0 a problem that i am dealing with in this moment so\r\nfor example i get my credit card bill in the mail\u00a0\u00a0 and the credit card bill is for three hundred\r\ndollars but i only have twenty dollars in my bank\u00a0\u00a0 account and so i start to worry how is it that\r\ni’m going to be able to pay this credit card bill\u00a0\u00a0 so that worry about being able\r\nto pay the credit card bill\u00a0\u00a0 that’s an example of a type 1 worry it’s a worry\r\nabout a problem that’s actually occurring now\u00a0\u00a0 the other type of worries are called type 2\r\nworries now type 2 worries are worries about\u00a0\u00a0 future or potential problems problems that haven’t\r\nhappened yet problems that may never happen so for\u00a0\u00a0 example i get my credit card bill in the mail and\r\nthe credit card bill is for three hundred dollars\u00a0\u00a0 i have three hundred twenty dollars in my bank\r\naccount so i can pay that credit card bill\u00a0\u00a0 but i start thinking to myself well that was\r\na close one what if next month i’m not able\u00a0\u00a0 to pay my credit card bill and what if that has\r\na negative effect on my credit rating and what\u00a0\u00a0 if that means i’m not going to be able to get a\r\ncar loan which means i’m not going to be able to\u00a0\u00a0 get a good job because i can only get a job that\r\ni can commute to by walking or taking transit\u00a0\u00a0 and so i’m not going to be able to sort of have\r\na very successful career and no one will want\u00a0\u00a0 to be with me and because i don’t have a good\r\njob and because i’m not able to afford a house\u00a0\u00a0 because i won’t be able to get a mortgage and\r\nthen i’ll get depressed because no one wants\u00a0\u00a0 to be with me and i’ll lose my job and i’ll\r\nbecome homeless and i’m living under a bridge\u00a0\u00a0 none of that stuff has actually happened but i’m\r\nworrying about it happening and that’s that sort\u00a0\u00a0 of chaining and that spiraling of thoughts that\r\ni talk about yeah when i talked about earlier\u00a0\u00a0 in terms of the definition of worry so type one\r\nworries worries about actual current real problems\u00a0\u00a0 type two worries are worries\r\nabout future or potential problems\u00a0\u00a0 so you may be wondering okay so what we’ve\r\ngot this definition of worrying these two\u00a0\u00a0 types of worries what do i do with this how\r\ndoes this help well the key to understanding\u00a0\u00a0 type 1 and type 2 worries isn’t so much in\r\nterms of being able to define the worries\u00a0\u00a0 but when we talk about worry management tools\r\nwe’re going to use slightly different tools\u00a0\u00a0 depending on whether or not the worry is a type\r\n1 worry or the worry is a type 2 worry and so\u00a0\u00a0 that’s why it’s important early on to get into\r\nthe habit of being able to recognize your worries\u00a0\u00a0 think about your worries and define the worries\r\nas either is this a type one or is it a type two\u00a0\u00a0 now sometimes worries can start out as type 1 and\r\nas part of that spiraling they go into becoming\u00a0\u00a0 type 2 worries we call those mixed worries so\r\nthere’s a component of it that’s a type 1 and a\u00a0\u00a0 component of it that’s a type two so for now the\r\nidea is to just spend some time thinking about\u00a0\u00a0 your worry and so this is what i encourage clients\r\nto do is to use this information by just trying to\u00a0\u00a0 be more aware and more mindful of your worries and\r\nwhen you catch yourself worrying to even just try\u00a0\u00a0 and think about is this a type 1 worry is this\r\na type 2 worry what that can do is it can help\u00a0\u00a0 you disengage from the worry even for a moment and\r\nfor you to start thinking a bit more analytically\u00a0\u00a0 and a bit more critically about the worry\r\nrather than getting caught up in the worry\u00a0\u00a0 experience you’re now kind of observing it\r\nand thinking about it differently even just\u00a0\u00a0 by simply being able to say this is a\r\ntype 1 worry or this is a type 2 word everybody experiences worry so\r\nwhen i talk about worry management\u00a0\u00a0 i’m not really talking about a worry cure what i’m\r\ntalking about is helping people who worry a lot\u00a0\u00a0 be able to better manage their worries so\r\nthey’re not worrying as much because the\u00a0\u00a0 reality is everybody worries it’s just a matter\r\nof how much do people worry so you can think of\u00a0\u00a0 it kind of like falling on a continuum where\r\none end of the continuum are people who don’t\u00a0\u00a0 really worry very much at all they still worry\r\nbut just not that much and it’s not particularly\u00a0\u00a0 problematic or interfering for them then on the\r\nother end of the continuum are people who worry\u00a0\u00a0 a lot and if a person worries excessively enough\r\nand if their worry is chronic enough they can\u00a0\u00a0 meet criteria for what we call generalized anxiety\r\ndisorder but regardless of whether or not a person\u00a0\u00a0 meets criteria for generalized anxiety disorder\r\nor they are a person who worries excessively or\u00a0\u00a0 they’re a person who worries a little bit the\r\nsame worry management skills that i’m going to\u00a0\u00a0 be talking about apply to all different types\r\nof worry and all different intensities of worry\u00a0\u00a0 the worry experience for people usually starts\r\nwith a trigger some sort of trigger situation\u00a0\u00a0 leads them to begin worrying now triggers can be\r\npretty much anything so triggers can be internal\u00a0\u00a0 they can be thoughts that i have thinking\r\nabout an argument that i had with my wife\u00a0\u00a0 they can be physical sensations i wake up in\r\nthe morning i’ve got a really bad headache\u00a0\u00a0 triggers can be external my cell phone rings\r\ni check the call display and it’s worth\u00a0\u00a0 calling and i think to myself why is work\r\ncalling what’s going on is something wrong\u00a0\u00a0 so pretty much anything can act as a trigger and\r\nthe trigger then leads to what i call the what if\u00a0\u00a0 question now the what-if question is kind of the\r\nfoundation of worry now the thing about worry is\u00a0\u00a0 it usually doesn’t just start and stop at one what\r\nif question so for example the trigger is i wake\u00a0\u00a0 up in the morning and i’ve got a bad headache and\r\ni think to myself what if this is a brain tumor what usually happens is that worry either loops\r\nitself over and over and over again so i worry and\u00a0\u00a0 i keep thinking to myself about what if i have a\r\nbrain tumor what’s going on what if i have a brain\u00a0\u00a0 tumor or it leads to a chaining or spiraling of\r\nadditional what-if thoughts that ends up in this\u00a0\u00a0 negative scenario building of what might happen\r\nand it’s that chaining and spiraling of what if\u00a0\u00a0 thoughts that’s what we call worry and so when a\r\nperson is worrying think about how that makes you\u00a0\u00a0 feel for example so when you’re worrying what’s\r\nthe emotion that you associate with the worry\u00a0\u00a0 that emotion is typically anxiety so this\r\nis an important point to note that worry and\u00a0\u00a0 anxiety are not the same thing so worry\r\nis this collection of what if thoughts\u00a0\u00a0 anxiety is the emotion that results from\r\nthe collection of these what-if thoughts\u00a0\u00a0 so now think about this process and imagine if\r\nyou worried a lot and you’re going through this\u00a0\u00a0 process day after day after day trigger\r\nwhat if we’re anxiety trigger what if\u00a0\u00a0 we’re anxiety trigger what if we’re anxiety\r\nhow are you feeling by the end of the day\u00a0\u00a0 now most of the time when i ask my clients that\r\nthey’ll usually say two things one they feel\u00a0\u00a0 exhausted now exhausted on multiple levels\r\nexhausted mentally because their mind will\u00a0\u00a0 not shut off right they just keep worrying\r\nthey just keep thinking their mind will not\u00a0\u00a0 stop thinking about something and so mentally that\r\ncan be exhausting but it can also be physically\u00a0\u00a0 exhausting as well so you’re going through\r\nall of these negative thoughts in your mind\u00a0\u00a0 and it’s normal for sort of the muscles to tense\r\nup and to just feel an increased physical tension\u00a0\u00a0 um it can lead to problems with sleep because it’s\r\ndifficult to sleep when you’re worrying so much\u00a0\u00a0 and so it’s common for people to feel kind\r\nof exhausted and worn out by their worries\u00a0\u00a0 both mentally and physically and the second\r\noutcome of this sort of constant worry process\u00a0\u00a0 is a feeling or a perception of being demoralized\r\ndemoralization and what i mean by that is that\u00a0\u00a0 it’s hard to really look forward to anything\r\nwhen you worry a lot so it’s hard to get really\u00a0\u00a0 excited or enthused about something because when\r\nyou think about all the positive things that can\u00a0\u00a0 happen what also happens is that you then begin to\r\nstart thinking about all the negative things that\u00a0\u00a0 could happen so it’s hard to really look forward\r\nto anything because you’re always thinking about\u00a0\u00a0 all of the negative things that can occur and so\r\nthe outcome of this worry process is a feeling of\u00a0\u00a0 being demoralized and exhausted and think about\r\nit the more demoralized and exhausted you feel\u00a0\u00a0 what do you think that’s going to do\r\nto the frequency of what-if thoughts\u00a0\u00a0 it’s going to increase them and so you get\r\ninto this self-feeding cycle of worry where\u00a0\u00a0 you have a trigger leading to the what-if worry\r\nanxiety feeling demoralized and exhausted which\u00a0\u00a0 just means you’re prone to creating more\r\nwhat-if questions in response to triggers so that’s kind of the the basic engine\r\nof worry this is kind of how worry works\u00a0\u00a0 and as i’m going as i go along uh with this\r\nvideo series and talk about other factors that\u00a0\u00a0 contribute to worry we’re going to be building on\r\nthis model but it’s important to understand this\u00a0\u00a0 is kind of the the core engine of worry so with\r\nthat understanding in mind it leads to the first\u00a0\u00a0 key worry management skill that i’m going to\r\nbe talking about now this is a foundational\u00a0\u00a0 skill it’s hard to do any of the other worry\r\nmanagement skills i’m going to be talking about\u00a0\u00a0 if you don’t do this skill and the first worry\r\nmanagement skill is worry awareness training\u00a0\u00a0 essentially becoming more aware of what it is that\r\nyou worry about and having a better understanding\u00a0\u00a0 of your worry experience now when i’m working\r\nwith my clients and i bring this up a lot of\u00a0\u00a0 times people will say hey i already know what\r\nit is that i’m worrying about i don’t need to\u00a0\u00a0 get better at thinking about my worries\u00a0\u00a0 but what i find for a lot of my clients is that\r\nthey they kind of know what the big worries are\u00a0\u00a0 but they don’t really have a great sense of\r\ntheir entire worry experience and for a lot of my\u00a0\u00a0 clients they are such highly efficient worriers\r\nthat they’re not even aware of everything that\u00a0\u00a0 they’re worrying about that they worry almost\r\nautomatically to a point that they’re not even\u00a0\u00a0 aware they don’t even know what it is that they\r\nworry and so it’s not uncommon for people who\u00a0\u00a0 come to see me to say i don’t really feel like i’m\r\nworrying but i have a lot of free floating anxiety\u00a0\u00a0 now usually when i hear the term free floating\r\nanxiety it’s a cue for me that this is probably\u00a0\u00a0 someone who is a highly efficient worrier and that\r\nthey’re worrying but just don’t realize it yet\u00a0\u00a0 and that’s where worry awareness training comes\r\nin so worry awareness training really what it is\u00a0\u00a0 at its core is excavating your worries dusting\r\nthem off and really beginning to examine them\u00a0\u00a0 so that you can have a new understanding\r\nand a better understanding of what your\u00a0\u00a0 worry experience is actually like getting a\r\nbetter understanding of that worry fingerprint\u00a0\u00a0 your unique worry experience that’s unique to\r\nyou so how do you do worry awareness training\u00a0\u00a0 key tool i use with my clients is called a worry\r\ndiary and what i’m going to be doing is putting a\u00a0\u00a0 link to a worry diary that you can download in the\r\ndescription of the video below so please feel free\u00a0\u00a0 to download that and take a look at it so the idea\r\nof a worry diary is that you don’t keep track of\u00a0\u00a0 every single worry that you have rather what\r\nyou’re doing is you’re taking a sampling\u00a0\u00a0 of your worries so what i get my clients to do\r\nis to complete a worry diary three times a day\u00a0\u00a0 for one to two weeks and the idea is to have some\r\nset times every day that you’re going to pull out\u00a0\u00a0 your worry diary and write down what it is that\r\nyou’re worrying about at that time so i encourage\u00a0\u00a0 people to set an alarm so an alarm in the morning\r\nin the afternoon and sometime in the evening\u00a0\u00a0 when the alarm goes off you pull out the worry\r\ndiary and you complete an entry in the worry diary\u00a0\u00a0 so with the worry diary the first column is\r\nthe time and day so the date time that you’re\u00a0\u00a0 completing the worry diary the next column\r\nis the situation what’s going on what’s the\u00a0\u00a0 context that you’re worrying in this can map\r\non to the trigger that we talked about before\u00a0\u00a0 after that you write down what\r\nis it that you’re worrying about\u00a0\u00a0 what are the what if thoughts\r\nthat you’re having in that moment after you’ve completed the what ifs and\r\nwrote written down what you’re worrying about\u00a0\u00a0 you make a rating of your anxiety on a scale\r\nfrom 0 to 10 where 0 is no anxiety at all\u00a0\u00a0 10 is extreme anxiety so you make a numerical\r\nrating of how anxious am i in this moment\u00a0\u00a0 and then the last column of the worry relates\r\nto what i talked about in a previous video when\u00a0\u00a0 i talked about a definition of worry and types of\r\nworry and that relates to is this a type one worry\u00a0\u00a0 or is this a type 2 worry now type\r\n1 worries are worries about actual\u00a0\u00a0 current problems type 2 worries are worries about\r\nfuture or potential problems and so you take a\u00a0\u00a0 look at what it is that you’re worrying about and\r\nyou make a rating is this type 1 is this type 2\u00a0\u00a0 now sometimes a worry can be a bit of a mix\r\nof both so it starts out as a type 1 worry\u00a0\u00a0 and it spirals into a type 2 worry if\r\nthat’s the case you can write down both so\u00a0\u00a0 you complete this worry diary if you do this worry\r\ndiary for a week or two what it’s going to give\u00a0\u00a0 you is a rich amount of data about your worry\r\nexperience that you may have never had before\u00a0\u00a0 are there days or times that you tend to\r\nworry more than other days and times are\u00a0\u00a0 there certain situations or triggers\r\nthat tend to trigger your worry more\u00a0\u00a0 are there certain worries that come up over and\r\nover and over again kind of like your greatest\u00a0\u00a0 hits of worry are there certain worries that\r\nare associated with higher levels of anxiety\u00a0\u00a0 so for example it’s not uncommon for people to\r\nbe well aware of the worries that are causing\u00a0\u00a0 them levels eight nine and ten in terms of anxiety\r\nbut when they do the worry diet they they realize\u00a0\u00a0 wow there’s a whole bunch of worries that\r\nare causing me anxiety about three and\u00a0\u00a0 four that i was never actually aware of and those\r\nworries can contribute to just that background\u00a0\u00a0 hum of anxiety and nervousness and those may be\r\nworries that a person’s never thought about before\u00a0\u00a0 this worry diary can also help you get a sense\r\nof are my worries more type 1 worries do i have\u00a0\u00a0 more type 2 worries do i have kind of an equal\r\nmix of type 1 and type 2 worries this is all\u00a0\u00a0 information that people typically don’t have\r\nabout their worry experience and by getting\u00a0\u00a0 this information it provides you with um a lot of\r\nbackground that you’re gonna be able to use then\u00a0\u00a0 when we start talking about other worry management\r\nskills but none of the other worry management\u00a0\u00a0 skills i’m going to be talking about are effective\r\nif you don’t know what it is that you’re worrying\u00a0\u00a0 about and that’s the key and that’s the\r\nfoundational skill of worry awareness training and in the last video i talked about\r\na model for understanding worry\u00a0\u00a0 and i talked about it as the bare bones engine of\r\nworry the the driving force behind worry so if you\u00a0\u00a0 think of that as the engine of worry what we’re\r\ntalking about today intolerance of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 that’s the fuel that drives this worry\r\nengine so what is intolerance of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 well intolerance of uncertainty one way to think\r\nabout it is it’s kind of like a psychological\u00a0\u00a0 allergy and if you think about how an allergy\r\nworks suppose i’m allergic to dust and i walk\u00a0\u00a0 into a room all it’s going to take is for there\r\nto be just a little bit of dust in that room and\u00a0\u00a0 it’s going to cause a big allergic reaction on my\r\npart sneezy watery eyes that sort of thing whereas\u00a0\u00a0 somebody else who’s not allergic to dust walks\r\ninto the exact same room has no reaction at all\u00a0\u00a0 so for people who are intolerant of uncertainty\r\nall it takes is for there to be just a little\u00a0\u00a0 bit of uncertainty in a situation and it leads to\r\na big emotional reaction a big emotional response\u00a0\u00a0 so you can think of intolerance of uncertainty\r\nkind of like falling on a continuum where on\u00a0\u00a0 one end of the continuum are people\r\nwho are highly tolerant of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 these are the people who for example can travel\r\nto europe with a one-way ticket and a quarter\u00a0\u00a0 in their pocket they have no idea what they’re\r\ngoing to be doing for work what they’re going to\u00a0\u00a0 do for money uh how long they’re going to be gone\r\nwhere they’re going to go but they just see it as\u00a0\u00a0 a big adventure they’ll figure it out as they\r\ngo whereas on the other end of the continuum\u00a0\u00a0 if a person is highly intolerant of uncertainty\r\nand they’re traveling to europe they’re going to\u00a0\u00a0 have a clearly laid out itinerary they’re going\r\nto know exactly what they’re doing on every day\u00a0\u00a0 they’re going to have backup plans for if the\r\nweather’s changes they’re going to know exactly\u00a0\u00a0 how they’re going to get from point a to point\r\nb everything is going to be highly organized\u00a0\u00a0 those people are highly intolerant of uncertainty\r\nnow what we know is that for people who worry a\u00a0\u00a0 lot they tend to gravitate more towards the highly\r\nintolerant end of this tolerating uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 spectrum so the way intolerance of uncertainty\r\nworks is it’s kind of like a lens through which\u00a0\u00a0 a person views the world so you have this person\r\nand they’re faced with an uncertain situation\u00a0\u00a0 and they’re looking at this uncertain situation\r\nthrough this intolerance of uncertainty lens\u00a0\u00a0 what the intolerance of uncertainty lens is\r\ngoing to do is it’s going to bend the person’s\u00a0\u00a0 perception or prediction of what’s going to\r\nhappen to be a negative outcome so they’re\u00a0\u00a0 going to think about all of the positive all\r\nof the possible negative things that can occur\u00a0\u00a0 when faced with that uncertain situation but you\r\ncan probably also recognize on a logical level\u00a0\u00a0 that uncertain situations don’t always lead to\r\nnegative outcomes that there can be a range of\u00a0\u00a0 potential outcomes that on certain situations can\r\nresult in so some are negative but some uncertain\u00a0\u00a0 situations can turn out neutral or they’re\r\nneither good nor bad they just kind of are\u00a0\u00a0 what they are and then there are some uncertain\r\nsituations that turn out really positively\u00a0\u00a0 so they turn out much better than a person\r\nanticipated the situation was going to turn out\u00a0\u00a0 i call these happy accidents not expecting them\r\nto happen they happen and they’re really great\u00a0\u00a0 so uncertain outcomes can fall anywhere on\r\nthis continuum of possible outcomes but the\u00a0\u00a0 intolerance of uncertainty lens prevents a person\r\nfrom really considering the possible positive or\u00a0\u00a0 neutral outcomes and all the person ever focuses\r\non is the potential negative outcomes so it’s not\u00a0\u00a0 so much the uncertainty that is so sort of scary\r\nor anxiety provoking for a person who’s intolerant\u00a0\u00a0 of uncertainty it’s not the uncertainty itself\r\nit’s what they feel that uncertainty represents\u00a0\u00a0 which is the negative outcome the negative\r\npotential outcome that they focus on that\u00a0\u00a0 this intolerance of uncertainty lends bends their\r\npredictions and their perceptions to be all about so what do you do with this information how\u00a0\u00a0 exactly does this work and how can\r\nyou use it to better manage worry well\u00a0\u00a0 think about the dilemma that someone who is\r\nintolerant of uncertainty experiences on one hand\u00a0\u00a0 i’m intolerant of uncertainty yet on the other\r\nhand there’s uncertainty in the world around me\u00a0\u00a0 and so i have to try to find some way of\r\nreconciling these two things the inherent\u00a0\u00a0 uncertainty of the world and my intolerance of\r\nuncertainty and invariably what people do is they\u00a0\u00a0 tend to focus on ways of trying to eliminate\r\nuncertainty in their world trying to control\u00a0\u00a0 their world trying to be highly organized try\r\nto seek lots of information avoid things that\u00a0\u00a0 they are uncertain about it’s all designed\r\nto try and eliminate uncertainty in the world but how effective do you think that\r\nis do you think there is any way\u00a0\u00a0 to fully eliminate uncertainty in the world\u00a0\u00a0 well the answer is no if you think back to the\r\noriginal model of worry that i talked about\u00a0\u00a0 it starts with a trigger and what i mentioned\r\nand why i pointed out is that anything can be\u00a0\u00a0 a trigger so anything can trigger worry\r\nanything can trigger uncertainty any situation\u00a0\u00a0 can have uncertainty associated with it so\r\ntrying to eliminate uncertainty in the world\u00a0\u00a0 as a way of trying to manage this intolerance\r\nof uncertainty is kind of like a losing battle\u00a0\u00a0 it’s sort of like i’m at the bottom of a\r\npit and i want to get out of the pit and\u00a0\u00a0 the approach i use to try and get out of the\r\npit is to pick up a shovel and to start digging\u00a0\u00a0 now i’m doing lots of work i’m putting lots of\r\neffort and energy into trying to get out of the\u00a0\u00a0 pit but is picking up a shovel and digging\r\nactually getting me out of the pit no it’s\u00a0\u00a0 just a lot of work that’s not actually getting\r\nme anywhere and that’s what i find for a lot\u00a0\u00a0 of my clients who deal with excessive worry\r\nand struggle with excessive worry they feel\u00a0\u00a0 exhausted because everything they’ve tried to\r\ndo to manage their worry hasn’t really helped\u00a0\u00a0 all of the ways that they try and control their\r\nworld all of the ways that they try and gather\u00a0\u00a0 information all of the ways that they try to\r\navoid or eliminate the uncertainty in their world\u00a0\u00a0 isn’t really helping it’s like i’ve got a bucket\r\nand i’m trying to fill that bucket with water but\u00a0\u00a0 the bucket’s got a big hole in the bottom of it so\r\ni’m constantly pouring water into the bucket but\u00a0\u00a0 the bucket’s never getting full i will never be\r\nable to fully eliminate uncertainty in the world\u00a0\u00a0 so the only way of dealing with this\r\ndilemma the world has uncertainty in it\u00a0\u00a0 and i’m intolerant of uncertainty the only way of\r\nreally reconciling this dilemma isn’t to focus on\u00a0\u00a0 eliminating uncertainty from the world it’s to\r\nfocus on becoming more tolerant of uncertainty it’s not enough to just know you need\r\nto be more tolerant of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 the idea is you need to behave as if\r\nyou’re more tolerant of uncertainty most everybody knows at a logical level that\r\nuncertainty can lead to a variety of outcomes\u00a0\u00a0 they can lead to positive outcomes they can lead\r\nto neutral outcomes they can lead to negative\u00a0\u00a0 outcomes that’s not an epiphany to people so\r\ntrying to convince yourself that uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 is going to be okay just based on logic probably\r\nisn’t going to be enough to help you become more\u00a0\u00a0 tolerant of uncertainty so the key is to start to\r\nbehave as if you’re more tolerant of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 to do exposure to uncertainty and see what happens\r\nand that’s how we build tolerance for uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 by essentially having experiences with uncertainty\r\nand seeing whether or not what i’m worrying about\u00a0\u00a0 actually happens but before we can we can\r\nget into that you need to know the various\u00a0\u00a0 different ways that intolerance of uncertainty\r\nis actually manifesting itself in your life\u00a0\u00a0 in your behavior in the various things that you do\r\nand that’s what i’m going to be focusing on today\u00a0\u00a0 what are the various manifestations of\r\nintolerance of uncertainty the various ways\u00a0\u00a0 that intolerance of uncertainty kind of sneaks up\r\non me sneaks into my life sneaks into my behavior\u00a0\u00a0 and is maintaining my worry even if i’m\r\nnot aware that that’s what’s going on\u00a0\u00a0 so the first three manifestations of intolerance\r\nof uncertainty that i’m going to be talking about\u00a0\u00a0 are essentially variants of the same\r\nthing avoiding doing certain things\u00a0\u00a0 finding imaginary obstacles or reasons not\r\nto do certain things and procrastinating\u00a0\u00a0 the idea of avoidance finding imaginary obstacles\r\nand procrastinating the idea behind this\u00a0\u00a0 is that it gives me a temporary state of\r\ncertainty so for example if a friend of\u00a0\u00a0 mine called me up a few weeks ago and i haven’t\r\nreturned that phone call and now i’m worrying\u00a0\u00a0 about uh whether or not my friend’s going to be\r\nupset with me for not having returned the phone\u00a0\u00a0 call as long as i’m not making the phone call\r\nif i avoid making the phone call to my friend\u00a0\u00a0 i have certainty that in this moment my friend\r\nisn’t yelling at me my friend isn’t upset with\u00a0\u00a0 me my friend isn’t telling me how disappointed\r\nthey are in me that i didn’t return the phone call\u00a0\u00a0 so it gives me this temporary state of\r\ncertainty that the bad thing that i’m afraid of\u00a0\u00a0 isn’t actually happening and that goes for finding\r\nthose imaginary obstacles or reasons not to do\u00a0\u00a0 certain things i can come up with all sorts of\r\nexplanations and rationale as to why i’m not\u00a0\u00a0 going to return that phone call to my friend today\r\ni can just put it off and say i’ll do it tomorrow\u00a0\u00a0 they’re all forms of avoidance they’re\r\nall forms of things i do to give myself\u00a0\u00a0 a temporary state of certainty that what\r\ni’m afraid of isn’t happening right now the next manifestation of intolerance of\r\nuncertainty is having to do everything yourself\u00a0\u00a0 not delegating tasks to anybody else the way\r\nthis works is that if i do everything myself\u00a0\u00a0 i know it’s been done right i know it’s been\r\ndone the way i think it should be done i know\u00a0\u00a0 it’s been done to my standards to my expectations\r\nthe moment i have to bring somebody else in or if\u00a0\u00a0 i have to rely on somebody else to do it well\r\nnow that brings up a whole bunch of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 what if they don’t do it what if they don’t do\r\nit as well as i would have done it what if they\u00a0\u00a0 mess it up and it becomes a big mess and they\r\nreally screw it up and then i have to go in and\u00a0\u00a0 fix it anyway you know what it’s just a lot easier\r\nif i do it myself so this idea of not delegating\u00a0\u00a0 tasks needing to be in control that’s another\r\nmanifestation of intolerance of uncertainty another manifestation of intolerance of\r\nuncertainty is not fully committing yourself to\u00a0\u00a0 a relationship a job a project the idea\r\nbehind this is that if i fully commit myself\u00a0\u00a0 to something if i fully give it a hundred\r\npercent and the thing doesn’t work out\u00a0\u00a0 then i’ll be devastated i’ll be really upset i\r\nwill have fully invested in it and it doesn’t\u00a0\u00a0 work out and so it’s almost like i’m hedging my\r\nbets kind of having one foot in one foot out not\u00a0\u00a0 fully committing to it that way if the negative\r\nthing happens or if the relationship doesn’t work\u00a0\u00a0 out or if the project doesn’t work out well i\r\nwasn’t fully committed to it anyway it’s not\u00a0\u00a0 that big of a deal so it’s like i’m hedging my\r\nbets anticipating that it’s not going to work out\u00a0\u00a0 now this can be uh really tragic i’ve seen this in\r\na lot of clients unfortunately especially around\u00a0\u00a0 the idea of relationships where they don’t fully\r\ncommit to the relationship because they’re not\u00a0\u00a0 sure if the relationship’s gonna turn out and so\r\nthey’re kind of in and out of the relationship and\u00a0\u00a0 they can never fully commit and they’re not sure\r\nif they can commit and eventually the relationship\u00a0\u00a0 falls apart because they were never able to\r\nfully give themselves over to the relationship\u00a0\u00a0 i also see this with students who don’t\r\nfully commit to their studies they don’t\u00a0\u00a0 fully put effort into doing their studies into\r\nstudying for the test and to doing the paper\u00a0\u00a0 that way if they don’t do well\u00a0\u00a0 well the reason why they didn’t do well is they\r\ndidn’t really fully commit themselves to it anyway\u00a0\u00a0 but if they were to fully commit themselves to it\r\nand they didn’t do well well the only answer is\u00a0\u00a0 then is that they’re not good enough so\r\nit’s almost like by not fully committing\u00a0\u00a0 themselves to the project to the assignment to the\r\nstudying for the test they’re hedging their bets\u00a0\u00a0 that if they if it doesn’t turn out well\r\nthen that’ll be okay because they didn’t\u00a0\u00a0 really commit to it anyway it’s almost like\r\na built-in excuse for why it didn’t go right the next manifestation of intolerance\r\nof uncertainty is spreading yourself out\u00a0\u00a0 really thin right wanting to sort\r\nof participate in a whole bunch of\u00a0\u00a0 different things keeping yourself really\r\nbusy but never fully committing to any\u00a0\u00a0 of those little things that you commit to\r\nor that you’re keeping yourself busy with\u00a0\u00a0 the idea behind this is that i don’t want to miss\r\nout on any opportunities so i don’t want to say no\u00a0\u00a0 to anything and then later find out that it would\r\nhave been a great opportunity so i want to keep\u00a0\u00a0 all of my options open as long as possible but i\r\nwon’t commit to any of them i just like to keep\u00a0\u00a0 the various options available so it’s like i’m\r\nspreading myself out really thin and keeping\u00a0\u00a0 busy doing a whole bunch of different things\r\nbut never actually committing to any of them\u00a0\u00a0 now this can lead to feelings of exhaustion\r\nbecause i’m spreading myself out really thin\u00a0\u00a0 all the time because i just don’t want to\r\nsay no to something and then regret it later the next manifestation of intolerance\r\nof uncertainty that i want to talk about\u00a0\u00a0 is looking for a lot of information\r\nbefore proceeding to do something\u00a0\u00a0 so for example if i’m going\r\nto buy a digital camera\u00a0\u00a0 i’m going to research the heck out of that digital\r\ncamera i’m going to read every review that has\u00a0\u00a0 ever been written about that digital camera i’m\r\ngoing to read every review about every other\u00a0\u00a0 digital camera i’m going to watch all the\r\nyoutube videos about all the features of the\u00a0\u00a0 camera it’s almost like i’m constantly looking\r\nfor that little holy grail piece of information\u00a0\u00a0 that’s going to give me certainty that this\r\nis the right decision to make so it’s this\u00a0\u00a0 excessive information gathering to try and give\r\nme reassurance and to give me certainty that i’m\u00a0\u00a0 making the right choice now think about how\r\nthis affects things like efficiency or making\u00a0\u00a0 decisions it just takes so much longer to make\r\na decision it makes me highly efficient because\u00a0\u00a0 i can’t ever just make a decision i have to think\r\nthrough it over and over and over and look up lots\u00a0\u00a0 of information before i can commit to making\r\na decision about which camera i’m going to buy and then the next manifestation of\r\nintolerance of uncertainty is that\u00a0\u00a0 once i’ve made a decision or i doubt myself and\r\nthen i check whether or not i made the right\u00a0\u00a0 decision so uh once i’ve bought that camera i\r\nfinally made a decision and i bought a camera\u00a0\u00a0 i spend the next six months reading reviews about\r\nall of the new cameras that came out since the\u00a0\u00a0 time i bought that camera almost like i’m trying\r\nto convince myself or to prove to myself that i\u00a0\u00a0 made the right choice that uh i should have you\r\nknow i should have bought the one that i bought\u00a0\u00a0 rather than you know waiting a little\r\nbit longer because a better camera\u00a0\u00a0 came out so it’s always like i’m second guessing\r\ndecisions that i’ve already made after i make them the next manifestation of intolerance of\r\nuncertainty is seeking reassurance from\u00a0\u00a0 other people this is essentially a variant of the\r\ninformation gathering manifestation of intolerance\u00a0\u00a0 of uncertainty except the way that you’re\r\ngathering information with reassurance seeking\u00a0\u00a0 is rather than doing your own research you’re\r\nasking other people for reassurance hey uh i was\u00a0\u00a0 gonna do this this and this what do you think\r\ndo you think i should be doing that um i uh\u00a0\u00a0 i was going to answer my friend in this way what\r\ndo you think do you think that’s what i should do\u00a0\u00a0 what do you think i should do this reassurance\r\nseeking is very insidious because what it does\u00a0\u00a0 is it really undermines a person’s confidence\r\nin their ability if you were confident in\u00a0\u00a0 what you were doing why would you have to seek\r\nreassurance and have to seek someone else’s input\u00a0\u00a0 before you go ahead and do something so the act of\r\nreassurance seeking actually undermines confidence\u00a0\u00a0 and that’s why a lot of people who worry a lot\r\nlack confidence is because they’re really worried\u00a0\u00a0 about making the wrong choices or making the wrong\r\ndecisions or upsetting someone and so they engage\u00a0\u00a0 in this reassurance seeking to try and give\r\nthem a sense of certainty that everything’s\u00a0\u00a0 going to be okay but in doing so it just\r\nundermines their confidence and their abilities\u00a0\u00a0 and it’s really tragic and it’s really um it’s\r\nreally one of the ways that this intolerance of\u00a0\u00a0 uncertainty chips away at a person and really\r\ncontributes to their worry and their anxiety the next manifestation of intolerance of\r\nuncertainty uh is one that when i bring it\u00a0\u00a0 up with clients they either relate to it or they\r\ndon’t relate to it at all um and the idea here is\u00a0\u00a0 try and explain everything away rationally or\r\nalways trying to imagine everything’s gonna turn\u00a0\u00a0 out well so it’s almost like creating a false\r\nsense of certainty so rather than going into\u00a0\u00a0 an uncertain situation and saying look i don’t\r\nreally know how it’s going to turn out let’s see this manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty\r\nis is kind of like always thinking the bright\u00a0\u00a0 side is going to happen and always telling\r\nyourself the bright side is going to happen\u00a0\u00a0 so it’s not so much i don’t know what’s going\r\nto happen it’s everything’s going to be fine\u00a0\u00a0 no no no everything’s going to be fine just\r\nthink positively it’s all going to be okay\u00a0\u00a0 well the thing is i i don’t know it’s all going to\r\nbe okay so by telling myself that i i kind of know\u00a0\u00a0 that i’m sort of trying to pull the wool over\r\nmy eyes it doesn’t really give me any sense of\u00a0\u00a0 comfort because i know it’s not true i know that i\r\ncan’t know for certain that it’s going to be okay\u00a0\u00a0 so this is well like i said this is one that\r\nsometimes people do sometimes they don’t or\u00a0\u00a0 they don’t relate to but it is surprising when\r\npeople will sometimes look at this manifestation\u00a0\u00a0 of intolerance of uncertainty say yeah no i don’t\r\ndo that but once they start paying attention to\u00a0\u00a0 their behavior they realize oh wow i actually\r\ndo that and i never realized that i was doing it the next manifestation of intolerance of\r\nuncertainty that i wanted to talk about\u00a0\u00a0 is double checking things or redoing them\r\nbecause i’m no longer certain that i did\u00a0\u00a0 them right in the first place so if i’m going\r\nto send an email i double and triple check that\u00a0\u00a0 email because i want to make sure there’s no\r\nspelling errors in it i want to make sure that\u00a0\u00a0 everything’s clear or there’s no way of\r\nmisinterpreting what i’m saying or i don’t want\u00a0\u00a0 to offend someone so i want to make sure that the\r\ntone is is right in that email so i’ll double and\u00a0\u00a0 triple check it i i won’t send it\r\ni’ll come back to it and read it over\u00a0\u00a0 again this kills efficiency because i can’t\r\njust send an email i have to read it over\u00a0\u00a0 and read it over and read it over and try to\r\nbe certain that there’s nothing wrong with it and the final manifestation of intolerance\r\nof uncertainty that i wanted to talk about\u00a0\u00a0 today is over protecting others\r\nuh taking care of other people\u00a0\u00a0 this is a big one with parents and this is kind of\r\nlike a variant of that earlier one that i talked\u00a0\u00a0 about which is not delegating tasks except in\r\nthis case the tasks that aren’t being delegated\u00a0\u00a0 are allowing the person the other\r\nperson to take care of themselves\u00a0\u00a0 so like i said this is a big one for parents who\r\nare overprotective or are over involved in their\u00a0\u00a0 children’s lives and their children’s behavior\r\nin their children’s relationships so uh they’re\u00a0\u00a0 the ones that are trying to uh fix or coordinate\r\nany sort of arguments or little fights between\u00a0\u00a0 their child and a friend or they do everything\r\nfor their child because they want to make sure\u00a0\u00a0 that the child is okay or that everything gets\r\ndone right for the child so what this does is it\u00a0\u00a0 it doesn’t really allow the person who’s being\r\nover protected from doing things on their own\u00a0\u00a0 from learning from their own mistakes so it’s like\r\ntrying to cocoon them in this in this protective\u00a0\u00a0 bubble wrap but it doesn’t actually protect the\r\nperson because ultimately they’re going to have\u00a0\u00a0 to learn to do these things on their own and so\r\nit really is about giving this person a giving\u00a0\u00a0 me a false sense of security and certainty that uh\r\nthis person that i care about is going to be okay so that’s a lot of manifestations of intolerance\r\nof uncertainty and there’s a lot of different\u00a0\u00a0 ways that this intolerance of uncertainty\r\ncan kind of weave its way into a person’s\u00a0\u00a0 life and this is one of the reasons why i\r\nreally like this concept of intolerance of\u00a0\u00a0 uncertainty because you can think of it kind\r\nof like an umbrella concept that helps explain\u00a0\u00a0 why all of these various seemingly different\r\nbehaviors are all serving or all attempting\u00a0\u00a0 to serve the same purpose so how is me avoiding\r\nreturning a phone call to a friend the same as\u00a0\u00a0 me spending hours and hours researching a digital\r\ncamera well because they’re both designed to try\u00a0\u00a0 and eliminate uncertainty in my world and in\r\ndoing so they’re both maintaining my worry\u00a0\u00a0 and my anxiety that things are going to turn out\r\nbadly or things are going to turn out negatively so may raise the the question of well so what\r\nwhat do i do with this information so i see\u00a0\u00a0 i’ve learned about all these manifestations of\r\nintolerance of uncertainty what now so the idea is\u00a0\u00a0 to spend some time observing your behavior and\r\nlooking for personal examples in your life of the\u00a0\u00a0 various ways in which intolerance of uncertainty\r\nmay have manifested itself in terms of your\u00a0\u00a0 behavior once you start looking for it what you\r\nmay recognize is that there’s all sorts of ways\u00a0\u00a0 in which you’ve been behaving that are designed\r\nto eliminate or reduce or avoid uncertainty in\u00a0\u00a0 your life and it’s that avoidance of uncertainty\r\nor that trying to eliminate uncertainty that may\u00a0\u00a0 be one of the big things that’s perpetuating\r\nor maintaining your worry and your anxiety\u00a0\u00a0 so one of the things i often encourage people to\r\ndo is you know keep a list of these manifestations\u00a0\u00a0 of intolerance of uncertainty and spend a week or\r\ntwo paying attention to your behavior and seeing\u00a0\u00a0 which of these do i do and what are personal\r\nexamples of each of these things that i do so the key to understanding building tolerance\r\nfor uncertainty is to understand that when we\u00a0\u00a0 talk about worries we’re talking about thoughts\r\nthat are predictions of something that’s going to\u00a0\u00a0 happen so the idea is to reconceptualize\r\nyour worry or think about your worries\u00a0\u00a0 not so much as worries or factual things\r\nthat are going to happen but essentially\u00a0\u00a0 predictions and hypotheses of what’s going\r\nto happen so the key way we build tolerance\u00a0\u00a0 for uncertainty is through behavioral exposure\r\nto uncertainty essentially doing what i call\u00a0\u00a0 tolerating uncertainty experiments so the idea\r\nwith these tolerating uncertainty experiments\u00a0\u00a0 is to put those predictions to the test and\r\nsee how accurate those predictions actually\u00a0\u00a0 are so for example if i’m avoiding returning\r\na phone call to a friend because i’m concerned\u00a0\u00a0 they might be upset with me i might come up with a\r\ntolerating uncertainty experiment that gets me to\u00a0\u00a0 call my friend so that’s the behavior\r\nthat’s the tolerating uncertainty experiment\u00a0\u00a0 behavior that i’m going to do\r\nreturn the phone call to my friend\u00a0\u00a0 the next thing to think about then is what\r\nis it that i’m worrying about what is my\u00a0\u00a0 worry telling me is going to happen\r\nwhen i return the phone call to a friend\u00a0\u00a0 so the idea is you’re setting up the experiment\r\nand you’re thinking about the hypothesis\u00a0\u00a0 the hypothesis or the prediction ahead of time and\r\nso what i’ll often give my clients is a worksheet\u00a0\u00a0 to help them organize these tolerating uncertainty\r\nexperiments in their mind and i’ll put a link to\u00a0\u00a0 the worksheet down below so that you can download\r\nit and see it for yourself so the first two\u00a0\u00a0 the first two parts of the worksheet you do\r\nbefore you actually engage in the experiment\u00a0\u00a0 come up with the chosen behavior and then you\r\nthink about what is it that i’m worrying is\u00a0\u00a0 going to happen what does my worry predict or\r\nwhat is my worry telling me is going to happen\u00a0\u00a0 now this is where worry awareness training\r\nbecomes really important we talked about\u00a0\u00a0 worry awareness training right at the beginning of\r\nthis series on worry management you need to know\u00a0\u00a0 what it is that you’re worrying about before\r\nyou can actually begin to manage the worry\u00a0\u00a0 so the worry becomes central in this\r\nexperiment this is what we’re testing\u00a0\u00a0 we’re testing whether or not the worry what\r\nwe worry about is actually going to happen\u00a0\u00a0 so now i’ve come up with my behavior i’ve come\r\nup with my hypothesis the worry prediction\u00a0\u00a0 then i go and do the experiment i actually pick\r\nup the phone and i call my friend this is the data\u00a0\u00a0 collection portion of the experiment and i write\r\ndown and i record what actually happened i called\u00a0\u00a0 my friend and they were really pleased to to hear\r\nfrom me they were surprised why i hadn’t returned\u00a0\u00a0 their call and uh they had some really exciting\r\nnews to tell me and it turned out really well or\u00a0\u00a0 i call my friend and they tell me that they’ve got\r\nsome bad news they just lost their job and they\u00a0\u00a0 were calling me up to get some support or\r\nto get some advice as to what they should do\u00a0\u00a0 or i call my friend and they are really angry with\r\nme and they’re really upset because i keep flaking\u00a0\u00a0 out on them and i’m never available for them\r\nwhen they call whatever the outcome i record it\u00a0\u00a0 and then i come up with my conclusion\r\nbased on the outcome was my worry accurate\u00a0\u00a0 was my worry prediction did it actually come true\u00a0\u00a0 so if you think about this if you do say a hundred\r\nof these tolerating uncertainty experiments\u00a0\u00a0 and 95 of the hundred tolerating uncertainty\r\nexperiments turn out negatively so they turn\u00a0\u00a0 out badly 95 percent of the time what\r\ndoes that tell you about uncertainty well what it tells you about\r\nuncertainty is that uncertainty is bad\u00a0\u00a0 that uncertainty is something to be afraid of that\r\nmost of the time the vast majority of the time\u00a0\u00a0 when i’m uncertain about something bad\r\nthings will happen and so what i should\u00a0\u00a0 do is get better at avoiding uncertainty get\r\nbetter at eliminating uncertainty in my life\u00a0\u00a0 if 95 of the time these tolerating\r\nuncertainty experiments turn out badly but what if 95 of the 100 experiments that i\r\ndo turn out either neutral or positively what\u00a0\u00a0 does that tell me about uncertainty well what it\r\ntells me about uncertainty is 19 times out of 20\u00a0\u00a0 the uncertainty is just fine nothing bad happens\r\nand so how do you think that’s going to change\u00a0\u00a0 how i orient myself towards uncertainty how\r\ndo you think that’s going to change how i\u00a0\u00a0 think about and feel about uncertainty well i’m\r\nprobably not going to be as afraid of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 if through a hundred experiences\r\nwith it it’s turned out just fine so the idea here isn’t to try and convince\r\nyourself through logic or just rational thinking\u00a0\u00a0 that uncertainty is okay the idea here is for you\r\nto determine how you should feel about uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 through experiences with uncertainty and\r\nby setting up these tolerating uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 experiments you’re giving yourself\r\nexplicit examples of times where you\u00a0\u00a0 did something you were uncertain about you\r\nwere worrying that this was going to happen\u00a0\u00a0 and what you were worrying\r\nabout didn’t actually happen\u00a0\u00a0 and the more you see to the more you sort of\r\nsee and the more you observe and the more you\u00a0\u00a0 demonstrate to yourself that the things that\r\nyou worry about don’t actually happen the less\u00a0\u00a0 weight the less uh importance the less\r\nvalue you’re going to put on your worries\u00a0\u00a0 it’s kind of like if every time the weatherman\r\nsaid that it was going to rain it was sunny\u00a0\u00a0 and every time the weatherman said it was going\r\nto be sunny it rained essentially the weatherman’s\u00a0\u00a0 terrible at predicting the weather so the next\r\ntime the weatherman says it’s going to rain\u00a0\u00a0 you’re not going to take your umbrella\r\nbecause you know it’s going to be sunny\u00a0\u00a0 if your predictions are not very good\r\nyou’re not going to put much weight\u00a0\u00a0 or much value in those predictions and\r\nthat’s all worry is it is a prediction\u00a0\u00a0 so that’s one way of building tolerance for\r\nuncertainty actually setting up these tolerating\u00a0\u00a0 uncertainty experiments using the worksheet that\r\nyou can download and fill out you fill out the\u00a0\u00a0 first two sections before you do the experiment\r\nwhat is the experiment and what is your prediction\u00a0\u00a0 then you do it you record the data\r\nand you record your conclusion\u00a0\u00a0 so it’s sort of forward thinking pre-planned\r\ntolerating uncertainty experiment\u00a0\u00a0 the second way of building tolerance for\r\nuncertainty is taking advantage of naturally\u00a0\u00a0 occurring opportunities in your life to do\r\nthings that you’re uncertain about the reality is\u00a0\u00a0 we’re faced with uncertainty every day multiple\r\ntimes a day and the vast majority of the time\u00a0\u00a0 that uncertainty is turning out fine we’re\r\njust not even really aware we’re not even\u00a0\u00a0 processing that the uncertainty is turning out\r\nfine so what i often encourage clients to do\u00a0\u00a0 to try and take advantage of naturally occurring\r\nopportunities to be more tolerant of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 is to imagine the following question\r\ntattooed to the frontal lobe of their brain\u00a0\u00a0 so essentially they’re filtering their world\r\nthrough this question and the question is\u00a0\u00a0 if i were more tolerant of uncertainty\r\nwhat would i do in this situation if i were more tolerant of uncertainty would\r\ni order the same thing i always order in this\u00a0\u00a0 restaurant or would i order something different\r\nif i were more tolerant of uncertainty would i ask\u00a0\u00a0 that person out for a date or would i stay in my\r\nseat and not say anything if i were more tolerant\u00a0\u00a0 for uncertainty would i answer the call even\r\nthough the i don’t recognize the number or would\u00a0\u00a0 i let it go to voicemail if i were more tolerant\r\nof uncertainty would i speak up and express my\u00a0\u00a0 opinion in this meeting at work or would i stay\r\nquiet and wait to see what everybody else says you have countless opportunities to tolerate\r\nuncertainty on a daily basis you just have to\u00a0\u00a0 look for those opportunities and take advantage of\r\nthose opportunities when they present themselves\u00a0\u00a0 i were more tolerant of uncertainty\r\nwhat would i do in this situation\u00a0\u00a0 you don’t have to do all of the tolerating\r\nuncertainties things but just be aware of it\u00a0\u00a0 just keep that question in mind help that orient\r\nyou towards uncertainty to look for uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 in your day-to-day life and every once in a\r\nwhile do the uncertain thing and see what happens because what you do by doing these\r\ntolerating uncertainty experiments either\u00a0\u00a0 the ones that are pre-planned or the ones\r\nthat are just taking advantage of naturally\u00a0\u00a0 occurring opportunities that come up you\r\ncan think of what you’re doing kind of like\u00a0\u00a0 putting money in a tolerating uncertainty\r\nbank account what you’re doing is you’re\u00a0\u00a0 having conscious explicit experiences with\r\nuncertainty where you think about what it\u00a0\u00a0 is that you are concerned is going to happen\r\nand then compare it to what actually happens\u00a0\u00a0 and by being aware of that and seeing that the\r\nuncertainty doesn’t turn out badly all the time\u00a0\u00a0 or rarely turns out badly what you’re doing\r\nis it’s almost like you’re making deposits\u00a0\u00a0 in this tolerating uncertainty bank account\r\neach time you do one of these experiments\u00a0\u00a0 and so through these ex through these experiences\r\nwith uncertainty the more and more of these\u00a0\u00a0 experiences that you have with uncertainty where\r\nuncertainty turns out well or fine or not negative\u00a0\u00a0 that tolerating uncertainty bank account gets\r\nbigger and bigger and so when you’re faced with\u00a0\u00a0 a bigger uncertainty in life what you can do\r\nis you can draw from this bank account you can\u00a0\u00a0 think about and reflect on all of the various\r\nexperiences you’ve had with uncertainty in your\u00a0\u00a0 life where it turned out fine and so if all\r\nof those uncertainties turned out fine there’s\u00a0\u00a0 a good chance this big uncertainty that i’m\r\nconcerned about is going to turn out fine as well so those are the two main ways of\r\nbuilding tolerance for uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 planning ahead and actually setting up\r\nexperiments and taking advantage of the\u00a0\u00a0 numerous opportunities you have in your\r\nday-to-day life to tolerate uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 if i were more tolerant of uncertainty\r\nwhat would i do in this situation so today we’re going to be talking about\r\nanother factor that perpetuates excessive worry\u00a0\u00a0 and that relates to this notion of beliefs about\r\nthe usefulness of worry one of the things that\u00a0\u00a0 we know about people who tend to worry a lot is\r\nthat they tend to hold beliefs that the worry is\u00a0\u00a0 actually serving some benefit for them so when\r\ni first bring this up with a lot of my clients\u00a0\u00a0 what they tend to do is kind of look at me\r\na little bit odd and say hold on a second\u00a0\u00a0 um i recognize that my worry is causing me\r\na lot of problems and now you’re telling me\u00a0\u00a0 that i have some underlying beliefs that worry\r\nis actually serving me some benefit or that i\u00a0\u00a0 think it’s doing something good for me so the\r\nway i like to sort of introduce this concept\u00a0\u00a0 of beliefs about the usefulness of worry is\r\nto use an example and the example is that\u00a0\u00a0 i change the oil in my car every 5 000\r\nkilometers because i believe that changing\u00a0\u00a0 the oil in my car every 5 000 kilometers\r\nis good for the long-term maintenance\u00a0\u00a0 of the vehicle it helps with the efficiency it\r\nhelps with preventing costly repairs down the line\u00a0\u00a0 and it’s just something that’s good to do\r\nbecause it helps my car run well and problem free\u00a0\u00a0 now suppose one day a friend of mine pulls me\r\naside and this friend knows everything there\u00a0\u00a0 is to know about cars and this friend\r\nsays to me hey ramy you know that whole\u00a0\u00a0 oil change every 5 000 kilometers thing it’s a bit\r\nof a scam by the oil companies all they’re really\u00a0\u00a0 trying to do is to get you to buy more oil nothing\r\nbad is happening to the engine oil it’s perfectly\u00a0\u00a0 fine you don’t need to change it at all now if i\r\nbelieved what my friend was telling me how would\u00a0\u00a0 that change my behavior would i continue to change\r\nthe oil in my car every five thousand kilometers\u00a0\u00a0 well probably not because the only reason i’m\r\nchanging oil in my car every five thousand\u00a0\u00a0 kilometers is because i believe that changing\r\noil in my car every five thousand kilometers\u00a0\u00a0 is serving me some benefit some usefulness the\r\nmoment i stop seeing any usefulness or benefit\u00a0\u00a0 to changing the oil every 5000 kilometers\r\nthen i’m going to stop doing it\u00a0\u00a0 so now relating this to excessive worry what we\r\nknow is that for people who tend to worry a lot\u00a0\u00a0 they tend to hold beliefs that worry is actually\r\nserving some benefit some usefulness for them so\u00a0\u00a0 the first belief is this notion that worry helps\r\nmotivate me the idea that uh when i’m worrying\u00a0\u00a0 about something it’s activating me to go and do\r\nsomething about it it’s activating me to engage\u00a0\u00a0 rather than just being really relaxed about it and\r\nif i’m not worrying about it i’m not really going\u00a0\u00a0 to be all that motivated to do anything to engage\r\nin an activity to try and change the situation at\u00a0\u00a0 all so the notion here is that worry in and\r\nof itself acts as a motivator to be that sort\u00a0\u00a0 of that spark under me or that kick in the pants\r\nthat i need to get going and uh and do something the second common belief about the usefulness of\r\nworry is that worry helps with problem solving\u00a0\u00a0 now the idea behind this is that\r\nif i’m worrying about a problem\u00a0\u00a0 it’s keeping the problem in my mind it’s helping\r\nme think about the problem a lot and by thinking\u00a0\u00a0 about the problem a lot what that’s doing is it’s\r\nhelping me potentially come up with solutions\u00a0\u00a0 uh or you know ways of addressing this\r\nproblem that i may not otherwise have\u00a0\u00a0 if i wasn’t worrying about it as much so\r\nthe idea here is that the worry benefits me\u00a0\u00a0 because it helps keep a problem in my mind and\r\nhelps me figure out ways to solve that problem the third common worry belief is it’s\r\ngot a bit of a superstitious flavor to it\u00a0\u00a0 and the idea here is that worry in and of\r\nitself can prevent bad things from happening\u00a0\u00a0 another way of thinking about it\r\nis if i don’t worry about something\u00a0\u00a0 then it’s almost like i’m jinxing myself\r\nit’s almost like uh if i don’t worry about\u00a0\u00a0 this presentation that i’m going to give then that\r\nwill be the time and that will be the presentation\u00a0\u00a0 that things go really badly it’s almost like the\r\nuniverse is giving me a smack on the backside\u00a0\u00a0 for not worrying enough or not being concerned\r\nenough about this presentation so the notion\u00a0\u00a0 here is that worry in and of itself can prevent\r\nbad things from happening related to this but\u00a0\u00a0 just a little bit differently is this notion that\r\nworry can protect me from future negative emotions\u00a0\u00a0 so if i’m worrying about something bad happening\r\nit’s almost like i’m emotionally preparing myself\u00a0\u00a0 just in case that bad thing were to happen so i\r\nwon’t be caught off guard i won’t be surprised i\u00a0\u00a0 won’t be blindsided by the negative thing because\r\ni’ve been worrying about it and i’ve been thinking\u00a0\u00a0 about it so the notion here is that if the bad\r\nthing were to happen well i’ve already kind of\u00a0\u00a0 pre-prepared myself for the negative\r\nthing and i’ve prepared myself emotionally\u00a0\u00a0 to deal with it so i’m not caught\r\noff guard and i’m not surprised\u00a0\u00a0 and the final worry belief is this notion\r\nthat ruri represents a positive personality\u00a0\u00a0 characteristic essentially what kind of person\r\nwould i be if i didn’t worry about my children\u00a0\u00a0 what kind of person would i be if i didn’t\r\nworry about my relationship what kind of\u00a0\u00a0 person would i be if i didn’t worry about my\r\nperformance at work it’s almost like worry\u00a0\u00a0 acts as this this measure of how much i care\r\nhow conscientious how responsible i am so by\u00a0\u00a0 worrying it demonstrates that i care about these\r\nthings that i’m responsible that i’m conscientious\u00a0\u00a0 and so that’s actually a really good thing it\r\ndemonstrates a really positive aspect or really\u00a0\u00a0 positive aspects of my personality so if you\r\nthink about these five worry beliefs if worry\u00a0\u00a0 actually did serve to motivate me help me solve\r\nproblems prevented bad things from happening\u00a0\u00a0 protected me from future negative emotions and\r\ndemonstrated a positive personality characteristic\u00a0\u00a0 well then that would seem to to be\r\nsomething that i should be doing\u00a0\u00a0 of course i should be worrying if it\r\nactually served all of these purposes but as you can probably guess worry doesn’t\r\nactually do any of these five things and\u00a0\u00a0 i’ll explain why it doesn’t in uh the next\r\nvideo uh but you may now raise the question\u00a0\u00a0 of okay well well so what what do i do with this\r\ninformation now you’ve you’ve told me about five\u00a0\u00a0 worry beliefs that promote anxiety and promote\r\nworry so what what can i do with this information\u00a0\u00a0 well the first thing to do is to use these worry\r\nbeliefs and notice them when you catch yourself\u00a0\u00a0 worrying the idea here is that for a lot\r\nof people this this concept of part of the\u00a0\u00a0 reason why i worry excessively is because i think\r\nthat the worry is doing something positive for me\u00a0\u00a0 this is a bit of a foreign concept people often\r\nwhen i work with my clients they’ve never thought\u00a0\u00a0 about any potential benefits that they may have\r\nperceived that worry is giving them and so the\u00a0\u00a0 first step is to just be aware of which of these\r\nworry beliefs actually play a role in my worry now\u00a0\u00a0 there may be some of these worry beliefs that\r\nyou’re sort of that we’re talking about that\u00a0\u00a0 right away you’re saying no that doesn’t that\r\ndoesn’t apply to me i don’t believe that at all\u00a0\u00a0 it’s not so much whether or not you believe\r\nthe worry belief to be 100 true all the time\u00a0\u00a0 but it’s more like you want to ask\r\nyourself the question am i behaving as if\u00a0\u00a0 i believe this worry belief to be true and so uh\r\nfor a week or two spend some time paying attention\u00a0\u00a0 to a what it is that you’re worrying about and\r\nthen when you notice what you’re worrying about\u00a0\u00a0 ask yourself are there any of these five worry\r\nbeliefs that may be playing a role in this worry\u00a0\u00a0 because once you’re aware of the common\r\nworry beliefs that you tend to use\u00a0\u00a0 then you can begin working on challenging those\r\nworry beliefs and evaluating whether or not those\u00a0\u00a0 worry beliefs are true but you can’t do that\r\nunless you’re aware of what the worry beliefs\u00a0\u00a0 actually are but once you identify the worry\r\nbeliefs the question then becomes okay well what\u00a0\u00a0 do i do with that information so if i know that\r\ni’m engaging in this worry in part because i hold\u00a0\u00a0 this worry belief how can i go about changing\r\nthat and that’s what we’re going to be talking\u00a0\u00a0 about today ways of challenging the validity\r\nof these beliefs and assumptions about worry so\u00a0\u00a0 what we’re going to do is go through each of the\r\nfive worry beliefs and talk about different ways\u00a0\u00a0 and different questions to ask yourself to help\r\nyou challenge the validity of the worry belief\u00a0\u00a0 because it’s important not only\r\nto recognize that the worry belief\u00a0\u00a0 isn’t true or that the worry belief is a\r\nmyth but also to understand why it’s not true\u00a0\u00a0 because that results in a much more compelling\r\nchallenge to the usefulness of the worry\u00a0\u00a0 so the first worry belief that we talked about\r\nis this notion that worry acts as a motivator\u00a0\u00a0 that worry is the kick in the pants that i need\r\nto get going to engage in in doing things that\u00a0\u00a0 if i didn’t worry i wouldn’t be particularly\r\nmotivated i wouldn’t be particularly successful\u00a0\u00a0 here are some questions to think about how you’d\r\ngo about challenging that belief so if you believe\u00a0\u00a0 that worry does actually motivate you well have\r\nyou ever met anyone or ever known anyone who was\u00a0\u00a0 really successful and was really able to motivate\r\nthemselves who didn’t seem to worry excessively\u00a0\u00a0 well if so then what that means is that\r\nworry isn’t a necessary component for success\u00a0\u00a0 or motivation another question to ask yourself is\r\ndoes worry dramatically improve your performance\u00a0\u00a0 or your ability if so by what percentage it does\r\nit make a big change so when you’re worrying a lot\u00a0\u00a0 do you find that you perform even better or do\r\nyou find that sometimes when you’re worrying a lot\u00a0\u00a0 it actually interferes with motivation it actually\r\ncauses problems that make you less motivated\u00a0\u00a0 to engage in activity or to do something\r\nso think about how you feel when you’re\u00a0\u00a0 worrying excessively what does that do to\r\nconcentration what does that do to energy level\u00a0\u00a0 so if you’re worrying a lot and it’s causing\r\nyou to lose focus or lose concentration\u00a0\u00a0 how exactly does that help motivate you if your\r\nworrying is so exhausting and wearing you out\u00a0\u00a0 so much how does that um how does that help you\r\nget things done if you don’t have as much energy\u00a0\u00a0 when you’re worrying a lot what does that do to\r\nyour tendency to want to engage in an activity\u00a0\u00a0 when we talked about intolerance of uncertainty\r\nwe talked about one of the manifestations of\u00a0\u00a0 intolerance of uncertainty is procrastination so\r\nif worrying is causing you to procrastinate a lot\u00a0\u00a0 how exactly can that be something that’s\r\nconsistent with something that helps motivate you\u00a0\u00a0 so these are some of the questions to ask yourself\r\nto challenge that belief that worry helps motivate\u00a0\u00a0 me so the next worry belief that we talked\r\nabout is that worry helps with problem solving\u00a0\u00a0 it’s this notion that by worrying a lot about\r\nthe problem it keeps the problem in my mind\u00a0\u00a0 and it helps me come up with solutions for that\r\nproblem so if we want to look at whether or not\u00a0\u00a0 this belief is true you want to ask yourself the\r\nquestion does worry actually solve the problem\u00a0\u00a0 is worrying the same as problem solving well\r\nworrying as we talked about in an earlier video\u00a0\u00a0 is essentially looping a feared negative outcome\r\nover and over and over again in your head it is\u00a0\u00a0 something that you’re doing cognitively it’s\r\nsomething that is just a bunch of thoughts\u00a0\u00a0 spinning in your head whereas problem solving\r\nis a much more active behavioral task you’re\u00a0\u00a0 defining problems you’re coming up with possible\r\nsolutions you’re implementing solutions you’re\u00a0\u00a0 doing something about it so what you want to be\r\nclear on is are you worrying or are you problem\u00a0\u00a0 solving and you don’t want to be mixing up the two\r\nbecause worrying isn’t the same as problem solving\u00a0\u00a0 worry doesn’t have any effect on the world worry\r\nis something that you’re doing in your head\u00a0\u00a0 it doesn’t actually solve a\r\nproblem so being very careful to\u00a0\u00a0 distinguish between worrying\r\nversus active problem solving\u00a0\u00a0 another question to ask yourself just like with\r\nthe the previous worry belief is do you know\u00a0\u00a0 anyone who’s really good at solving problems\r\nwho’s able to get things done who’s able to\u00a0\u00a0 figure out solutions to problems who doesn’t worry\r\nexcessively well if you’re able to identify at\u00a0\u00a0 least one person in your life who doesn’t worry\r\nexcessively but is still able to solve problems\u00a0\u00a0 what that suggests is maybe you don’t need to\r\nworry excessively to be good at solving problems and tying back to another question that we\r\nasked earlier think about what worry does to\u00a0\u00a0 your anxiety levels and think about when you’re\r\nfeeling really anxious what does that do to how\u00a0\u00a0 well you’re able to think clearly how well you’re\r\nable to concentrate how well you’re able to\u00a0\u00a0 think creatively well we know that worry\r\nand anxiety interfere in all of these things\u00a0\u00a0 so by worrying what you’re doing is you’re making\r\nit more difficult to concentrate you’re making it\u00a0\u00a0 more difficult to think clearly through situations\r\nand you’re making it more difficult to think more\u00a0\u00a0 clearly or more creatively so by worrying\r\nwhat you’re doing is actually interfering in\u00a0\u00a0 the cognitive skills and the tools that you need\r\nfor effective problem solving so these are some\u00a0\u00a0 questions to ask yourself if you believe and if\r\nyou think that worry helps you solve your problems now the third worry belief we talked about has\r\na bit of a superstitious flavor to it and it’s\u00a0\u00a0 this notion that worry can prevent bad things\r\nfrom happening just the act of worrying can\u00a0\u00a0 uh help prevent me from being jinxed uh or\r\ncan prevent the bad thing from occurring well\u00a0\u00a0 to challenge this belief you want to ask yourself\r\nsome questions based on experience have you ever\u00a0\u00a0 worried about something bad happening\r\nand the bad thing actually did happen\u00a0\u00a0 well if we were to able to prevent bad things\r\nfrom happening then every time you worried\u00a0\u00a0 the bad thing shouldn’t happen\r\nthink about potentially setting up a\u00a0\u00a0 an experiment one thing i i’ll often get people\r\nwho hold this worry belief to do is to go out and\u00a0\u00a0 buy a lottery ticket and then for one week to\r\nspend five to ten minutes every day worrying\u00a0\u00a0 excessively worrying as hard as they can about\r\nhaving wasted their money on that lottery ticket think about what should happen then if worry can\r\nprevent bad things from happening what should\u00a0\u00a0 happen well they should win the lottery because\r\nby worrying about having wasted their money on\u00a0\u00a0 the ticket if worry can prevent the bad thing from\r\ntaking place can prevent the negative outcome then\u00a0\u00a0 the person shouldn’t experience a negative outcome\r\nwhich means that they should win the lottery\u00a0\u00a0 not once in all my years of doing this has a\r\nclient come back and said hey guess what i won the\u00a0\u00a0 lottery so that’s another way of challenging this\r\nnotion that worry can in and of itself have some\u00a0\u00a0 impact on the outcome you also want to think about\r\nis it the worry that’s preventing the negative\u00a0\u00a0 outcome or is it things that you’re doing that are\r\npreventing the negative outcome so for example if\u00a0\u00a0 i’m worrying about a presentation that i’m going\r\nto give and that presentation turned out fine\u00a0\u00a0 after i worried excessively was it the worry\r\nthat ensured that the presentation went well\u00a0\u00a0 or was it the fact that i prepared really\r\nwell for the presentation that ensured that\u00a0\u00a0 the presentation went well is it maybe the fact\r\nthat i kind of knew what i was talking about\u00a0\u00a0 that ensured that the presentation went well\r\nmaybe it has nothing to do with the worry\u00a0\u00a0 a fourth common worry belief is this notion\r\nthat by worrying about something bad happening\u00a0\u00a0 it almost protects me from future negative\r\nemotions by uh preparing me emotionally just\u00a0\u00a0 in case the bad thing were to happen so if the\r\nbad thing were to take place uh by worrying about\u00a0\u00a0 it what i’ve done is kind of prepared myself\r\nfor that bad thing so i’m not caught off guard\u00a0\u00a0 i’m not surprised and in some ways then that that\r\ncan help reduce the impact of the negative emotion\u00a0\u00a0 well have you ever worried\r\nabout something bad happening\u00a0\u00a0 and the bad thing actually happened how did\r\nyou feel afterwards did you say to yourself\u00a0\u00a0 yeah you know i don’t feel so bad because i’ve\r\nbeen worrying about it for the last three weeks\u00a0\u00a0 probably not another way i get people to think\r\nabout this is it’s a bit abstract and it’s a bit\u00a0\u00a0 of a silly math uh puzzle but i like it because\r\nit it helps explain uh how to really get at this\u00a0\u00a0 notion or really challenge this notion that worry\r\nprevents me from feeling bad in case something bad\u00a0\u00a0 happens so i want you to think about\r\nsort of negative emotion in terms of\u00a0\u00a0 pieces of suck how much it would suck if this\r\nthing happened so suppose one of my big worries\u00a0\u00a0 is that my family is going to be killed in a motor\r\nvehicle accident and i worry about this a lot\u00a0\u00a0 well think about what that worry does in\r\nterms of how it makes me feel well it’s\u00a0\u00a0 probably going to suck to be worrying about this\r\nall the time and to be thinking about this all\u00a0\u00a0 the time so maybe that’s a hundred pieces of suck\r\nnow imagine tragically one day my family is killed\u00a0\u00a0 in a motor vehicle accident say that is a thousand\r\npieces of suck well do you think the moment i\u00a0\u00a0 pick up the phone and uh hear the message that my\r\nfamily’s been killed in a motor vehicle accident\u00a0\u00a0 do you think that moment when i hear that news\r\nthat i’m going to be saying to myself wow it’s\u00a0\u00a0 a good thing that i’ve been worrying about\r\nthis for so long i don’t feel so bad right now\u00a0\u00a0 no it’s gonna suck it’s gonna suck that thousand\r\npieces of sock whether or not i’ve been worrying\u00a0\u00a0 about it or not so if you do the math i worry\r\nexcessively about my family being killed\u00a0\u00a0 in an accident that’s a hundred pieces of suck\r\nmy family is killed in a motor vehicle accident\u00a0\u00a0 that adds a thousand pieces of suck to the\r\nequation so what am i left with i’m left with\u00a0\u00a0 1100 pieces of suck well suppose i don’t worry\r\nexcessively about it well i have zero pieces\u00a0\u00a0 of suck and then if the bad thing were to actually\r\nhappen i have a thousand pieces of sock so the net\u00a0\u00a0 result is i end up with a thousand pieces of sock\r\nit’s still better than the 1100 pieces of sock\u00a0\u00a0 now suppose my family never gets killed in\r\na motor vehicle accident well i’m worrying\u00a0\u00a0 about it happening so that’s a hundred pieces\r\nof suck it doesn’t happen that’s zero pieces of\u00a0\u00a0 sock i’m left with a hundred pieces of sock but\r\nif i don’t worry about it it’s zero pieces of\u00a0\u00a0 sock if it never happens that’s zero pieces\r\nof sock i end up with zero pieces of sock\u00a0\u00a0 so um it’s a bit of a a sort of a strange or silly\r\nmath puzzle but what i find is that for a lot of\u00a0\u00a0 my clients it really resonates with them you know\r\njust do the math how many pieces of suck are you\u00a0\u00a0 actually saving by worrying about this probably\r\nnot any and you’re probably actually making\u00a0\u00a0 the situation worse so the final worry belief\r\ni want to talk about challenging is this notion\u00a0\u00a0 that worry represents a positive personality\r\ncharacteristic that by worrying excessively\u00a0\u00a0 it demonstrates a sense of caring a sense of\r\nresponsibility a sense of conscientiousness\u00a0\u00a0 this is a big worry belief for parents especially\r\nmoms who who often tell me what kind of person\u00a0\u00a0 would i be if what kind of mother would\r\ni be if i didn’t worry about my children\u00a0\u00a0 and so i asked the question well what are some\r\nof the other characteristics that make you a\u00a0\u00a0 good mother aside from worrying can you think of\r\nany other characteristics that are important to be\u00a0\u00a0 a good mother another way of thinking about it is\r\ndoes the worry ever interfere in you being able to\u00a0\u00a0 be your best does it ever interfere in terms of\r\nhow well you’re able to engage in relationships\u00a0\u00a0 how well you’re able to be present in situations\r\ndoes the worry ever interfere in those things\u00a0\u00a0 well if so then how can it be a positive\r\npersonality characteristic how can it be\u00a0\u00a0 a positive personality characteristic if\r\nit interferes in your relationships if\u00a0\u00a0 none of your friends or people close to you\r\nthink that your tendency to worry is a good thing\u00a0\u00a0 do you know conscientious responsible caring\r\nloving people who don’t worry excessively\u00a0\u00a0 if so then worry probably isn’t necessary to\r\nbe conscientious to be caring to be responsible so these are the five worry beliefs and\r\nthese are some questions to help you\u00a0\u00a0 challenge each of those worry beliefs\r\nand so you might be thinking now okay\u00a0\u00a0 well so what what can i do with this how do i\r\nactually use this information to help me worry\u00a0\u00a0 less so the way you do it is through something\r\nwe call cognitive therapy and this is essentially\u00a0\u00a0 thinking about your thinking now this is a bit\r\nof a challenging task because we’re not typically\u00a0\u00a0 used to thinking about what we’re thinking and\r\nwe’re definitely not used to thinking about\u00a0\u00a0 our thoughts about what we’re thinking and that’s\r\nkind of what we’re doing here so you have to be\u00a0\u00a0 aware of what your worry is that’s cognitive layer\r\none then you have to be aware of your worry belief\u00a0\u00a0 that’s cognitive layer two and now we’re\r\nchallenging the beliefs about the usefulness\u00a0\u00a0 of worry that’s cognitive layer three so this is\r\na bit of a challenging task if you’re trying to\u00a0\u00a0 do it all in your head and so to help uh to help\r\nbe better able to challenge these worry beliefs\u00a0\u00a0 i’ve come up with a series of questions\r\nto help you work through this and i\u00a0\u00a0 have a worksheet that i give my clients and i’ll\r\nbe linking to it in the description down below\u00a0\u00a0 so you can download and take a look at this but it\r\nhelps you organize your thoughts to help challenge\u00a0\u00a0 the beliefs that you have about the usefulness\r\nof the worry so the way it works is the first\u00a0\u00a0 thing you need to do is identify what it is that\r\nyou’re worrying about this again goes back to that\u00a0\u00a0 foundational skill i talked about in the very\r\nfirst video which is worry awareness training\u00a0\u00a0 being aware of what it is that you’re\r\nworrying about so you identify your worry\u00a0\u00a0 then the next question to ask yourself is what\r\nare the beliefs about the usefulness of this worry\u00a0\u00a0 that may be playing a role in this worry\r\ndo i think this worry is helping motivate\u00a0\u00a0 me do i think this worry is helping me solve\r\nproblems do i think this worry shows that i’m\u00a0\u00a0 a caring person do i think that this worry is\r\ngoing to prevent something bad from happening\u00a0\u00a0 do i think this worry is going to protect me\r\nfrom negative emotions in case something bad\u00a0\u00a0 does happen so you identify which of the worry\r\nbeliefs might be playing a role in this worry the\u00a0\u00a0 third question then to ask is if i had to prove\r\nto myself that these beliefs may not be true\u00a0\u00a0 what are some of the things what is some\r\nof the evidence that i would point out\u00a0\u00a0 so essentially using some of those questions\r\ni talked about earlier and challenging each of\u00a0\u00a0 these worry beliefs so if i think that this worry\r\nabout my child shows that i’m a caring parent i\u00a0\u00a0 may want to start asking myself some questions\r\nof well does does my worry ever interfere with\u00a0\u00a0 me being a good parent does my worry ever make\r\nit more difficult for me to be present in these\u00a0\u00a0 situations and moments with my child well if\r\nso then how can that make me a good parent\u00a0\u00a0 so you’re using some of those questions\r\nto help challenge the worry belief then the fourth question you want to ask yourself\r\nis what’s the benefit for me continuing to worry\u00a0\u00a0 about this issue right now and it’s not uncommon\r\nfor the answer to this question to be none\u00a0\u00a0 once you identified the worry belief and you’ve\r\nchallenged the validity of the worry belief\u00a0\u00a0 oftentimes it’s easy for a person to see well\r\nthere’s there’s no real benefit for me to continue\u00a0\u00a0 worrying about it that takes us to the fifth\r\nquestion which is okay if there’s no benefit\u00a0\u00a0 of continuing to worry about it what are the\r\ncosts associated with worrying about it so when\u00a0\u00a0 you’re thinking about the costs associated with\r\nworry what you want to think about is things like\u00a0\u00a0 how does this worry or your tendency to worry\r\ninterfere with your productivity your performance\u00a0\u00a0 um how does it make you feel how does it what\r\nis the impact that it has on your relationships\u00a0\u00a0 with other people what are the negative impacts\r\nthat worrying excessively about this topic are\u00a0\u00a0 having on you and having on uh other people are\r\nthere other people who seem to get similar results\u00a0\u00a0 as you without the same costs\r\nassociated with this worry\u00a0\u00a0 so really thinking about what are the negatives\r\nassociated with the worry what are the\u00a0\u00a0 negative impacts that this worry is having\r\non you because you want to think about that\u00a0\u00a0 in the context of this equation that we’re looking\r\nat which is asking kind of the ultimate question\u00a0\u00a0 of should i continue to worry about this is\r\nthere value in continuing to worry about this\u00a0\u00a0 so you’ve gone through these five questions\r\nwhat’s the worry what’s the benefits associated\u00a0\u00a0 with the perceived benefits associated with this\r\nworry what are some of the challenges uh to those\u00a0\u00a0 perceived benefits what is the potential\r\nbenefit of continuing to worry about this\u00a0\u00a0 what is the cost of continuing to worry about this\r\nand based on all of that information you come up\u00a0\u00a0 with a conclusion a conclusion about now that\r\ni’ve thought through all of these things should\u00a0\u00a0 i continue to worry about this topic is there\r\nvalue in continuing to worry about this topic\u00a0\u00a0 and what you end up with is a much more compelling\r\nchallenge a much more compelling challenge to\u00a0\u00a0 the purpose or the utility of that worry\r\nthan what people typically do which is\u00a0\u00a0 just stop worrying about it it’s silly\r\nyou shouldn’t be worrying about it well\u00a0\u00a0 this goes beyond that it’s not so dismissive of\r\nthe worry it’s more about i know i should stop\u00a0\u00a0 worrying about it because of this this and this\r\nreason and because of this this and this cost\u00a0\u00a0 so it’s a much more compelling uh more rounded\r\nchallenge to the validity of this worry\u00a0\u00a0 so this is a challenging skill it’s challenging\r\nbecause for the most part we’re not used to\u00a0\u00a0 thinking about our thinking so it takes a fair bit\r\nof practice and so i hope if you’re interested in\u00a0\u00a0 trying this out or using some of these skills\r\nplease download that worksheet that’s in the\u00a0\u00a0 description section below and try it out uh don’t\r\nworry if you’re not getting it right off the bat\u00a0\u00a0 it is a challenging task but with practice\r\nwhat i find is that people get a lot better at\u00a0\u00a0 identifying and challenging some of the benefits\r\nthey perceive that they’re getting from a worry what we’re going to be focusing on now is\r\ntools and skills specifically to address\u00a0\u00a0 type 1 worries so worries about actual problems\r\nso it may not become as much of a surprise that\u00a0\u00a0 the primary way we deal with type 1 worries is to\r\nsolve the problem that’s contributing to the worry\u00a0\u00a0 and so that leads us to a question about you know\r\nwhy is it that people who worry a lot tend not to\u00a0\u00a0 have very effective or tend not to engage in\r\nvery effective problem solving so uh there was\u00a0\u00a0 some studies that were done that looked at\r\nhow is it that people who worry a lot how\u00a0\u00a0 how good are their problem solving skills\r\ncompared to people who don’t worry a lot\u00a0\u00a0 and you might be surprised by the findings\r\nand what they found was that there’s actually\u00a0\u00a0 no difference in the problem-solving\r\nabilities of people who worry a lot\u00a0\u00a0 versus people who don’t worry a lot but what is\r\ndifferent is that people who tend to worry a lot\u00a0\u00a0 tend not to use the problem-solving skills that\r\nthey have whereas people who don’t worry a lot\u00a0\u00a0 tend to be able to use their problem-solving\r\nskills more frequently and more effectively\u00a0\u00a0 so you can think of this kind of like the way\r\ni like to think of it is it’s kind of like\u00a0\u00a0 a garage door where it doesn’t matter if you\r\nhave the best problem solving skills in the world\u00a0\u00a0 you can have the ferrari of problem solving skills\r\nbut if that garage door is down it doesn’t matter\u00a0\u00a0 if you have a ferrari in the garage or if you\r\nhave a tricycle in the garage neither of those\u00a0\u00a0 problem solving skills are going to be able to\r\nget out of the garage and so this garage door is\u00a0\u00a0 something that we refer to as negative problem\r\norientation it’s a tendency to view problems\u00a0\u00a0 in an overly negative way seeing problems as\r\nthreatening as dangerous viewing myself as not\u00a0\u00a0 being very good at solving problems or addressing\r\nproblems and so if i don’t think i’m very good at\u00a0\u00a0 solving problems if i don’t think that i\r\nshould be having problems if i don’t think that\u00a0\u00a0 problems are are good or that every time i have\r\na problem it means that there’s something wrong\u00a0\u00a0 i’m not going to be all that motivated to actually\r\nwant to engage or do something about a problem\u00a0\u00a0 and so if i’m not actually engaging in a problem\r\nif if i procrastinate or i avoid dealing with\u00a0\u00a0 a problem what tends to happen to the problem\r\nwell typically problems that you don’t deal with\u00a0\u00a0 don’t go away by themselves and they tend to\r\nfester and grow and mushroom until they become\u00a0\u00a0 a crisis and now it’s a crisis that you have\r\nto deal with and so you go into the situation\u00a0\u00a0 and now i’m dealing with a crisis situation and i\r\ndeal with that crisis situation by spontaneously\u00a0\u00a0 coming up with the first thing that comes to\r\nmind to try and deal with this problem that\u00a0\u00a0 is not a very good recipe for effective problem\r\nsolving a crisis situation and me spontaneously\u00a0\u00a0 coming up with a solution right off the top\r\nof my head to address this crisis situation\u00a0\u00a0 and so what that ends up happening is what ends\r\nup happening is i don’t really address the problem\u00a0\u00a0 very well and then that reinforces my negative\r\nbeliefs and my negative views about problems\u00a0\u00a0 that problems are bad uh problems i shouldn’t have\r\nproblems and i’m terrible at dealing with problems\u00a0\u00a0 and so as long as i hold those views and i don’t\r\nengage in problem solving that’s just going to\u00a0\u00a0 maintain the problems and it’s just going to\r\nmaintain my worry about those problems so if we\u00a0\u00a0 want to improve worry management skills if we want\r\nto worry less about problems we need to get better\u00a0\u00a0 at solving problems and in order to get better\r\nat solving problems we have to be able to\u00a0\u00a0 use the problem-solving skills we have and\r\nin order to use those problem solving skills\u00a0\u00a0 we need to address this negative problem\r\norientation we need to get the garage door\u00a0\u00a0 to move up and then to be able to let our\r\nproblem solving skills out of the garage so\u00a0\u00a0 negative problem orientation tends\r\nto have sort of three components\u00a0\u00a0 to it and the first component of negative problem\r\norientation is this tendency to see problems as\u00a0\u00a0 abnormal or that there’s something wrong\r\nwith me that i have problems that uh other\u00a0\u00a0 people don’t seem to have the same problems\r\nthat i do related to this is the idea that\u00a0\u00a0 problems should be solved quickly and easily\r\nand that if i’m not able to solve a problem\u00a0\u00a0 really quickly or if i’m not able to solve a\r\nproblem the first time i try to solve the problem\u00a0\u00a0 then that means that there’s something wrong\r\nthat i should be able to solve a problem quickly\u00a0\u00a0 and easily and if i can’t then that just\r\ngoes to show that there’s something wrong\u00a0\u00a0 with this problem or there’s something wrong\r\nwith me for having problems like this so that’s\u00a0\u00a0 one sort of manifestation of this negative problem\r\norientation second manifestation of this negative\u00a0\u00a0 problem orientation is a tendency to focus\r\nentirely on the threat components of the problem\u00a0\u00a0 so when faced with a problem all i think\r\nabout is all the things that could go wrong\u00a0\u00a0 so if you think about uh if you think about the\r\npossible outcomes of a problem on a continuum\u00a0\u00a0 where one end of the continuum is opportunity or\r\nchallenge opportunities for things to work out\u00a0\u00a0 and the other end of the continuum are uh\r\ni see it as entirely threatening 100 threat\u00a0\u00a0 well what we know is that with people with\r\nthis negative problem orientation for with\u00a0\u00a0 people who worry a lot they tend to gravitate more\r\ntowards focusing on the threat aspect of a problem\u00a0\u00a0 and so if all you think about when\r\nyou think about solving a problem\u00a0\u00a0 is all the things that could go wrong\r\nand how badly it can turn out that’s not\u00a0\u00a0 particularly motivating it’s not particularly\r\ngood as a motivator to get me to do something\u00a0\u00a0 about that problem so i end up in this paralysis\r\nzone where all i’m really doing is focusing on the\u00a0\u00a0 negative potential outcomes and i’m\r\nparalyzed to do anything about it\u00a0\u00a0 so uh what ends up happening is i don’t really\r\nengage in trying to solve the problem or trying\u00a0\u00a0 to deal with the problem because i don’t really\r\nsee many opportunities for things to work out well\u00a0\u00a0 and that leads to the third component of negative\r\nproblem orientation is that sometimes people can\u00a0\u00a0 get so good at avoiding problems that they fail\r\nto recognize when a problem’s actually there\u00a0\u00a0 they get so good at being avoidant to problems\r\nthat they don’t recognize that a problem exists\u00a0\u00a0 until it’s too late until it becomes a crisis\r\nlike i talked about before so if i’m not even\u00a0\u00a0 aware or if i’m not even recognizing that a\r\nproblem’s there i’m not going to be able to engage\u00a0\u00a0 in trying to solve the problem so i have these\r\nthree components of negative problem orientation\u00a0\u00a0 i see problems as abnormal that there’s something\r\nwrong with me for having problems i focus entirely\u00a0\u00a0 on the potential threat or danger associated with\r\nthe problem and i get so good at avoiding problems\u00a0\u00a0 that i fail to even recognize when problems\r\nexist if i have those three things going on\u00a0\u00a0 i’m not going to be particularly good at actually\r\nengaging or doing anything with regards to problem\u00a0\u00a0 solving so the question becomes okay well what\r\ndo i do with this if i if i recognize that i’m\u00a0\u00a0 i’m i have this negative problem orientation\r\ni don’t deal well with problems what do i do\u00a0\u00a0 so let’s talk about how you challenge each of\r\nthese components of negative problem orientation\u00a0\u00a0 so if you find that you tend to view problems\r\nas abnormal or is there something wrong with me\u00a0\u00a0 for that i have problems or problems should\r\nbe solved quickly and easily first thing i\u00a0\u00a0 typically ask my clients is well do you know\r\nanyone who doesn’t have problems or is the\u00a0\u00a0 presence of problems indicative\r\nof there’s something being wrong\u00a0\u00a0 or is it the case that just everybody has problems\r\nand that there’s nothing really wrong with\u00a0\u00a0 the fact that you actually have problems because\r\nhaving problems is just a natural state of being\u00a0\u00a0 everybody has problems so it’s really about\r\nnormalizing the occurrence of problems\u00a0\u00a0 beautiful people in hollywood have problems\r\npeople who are down and out have problems\u00a0\u00a0 rich or rich and powerful politicians\r\nhave problems everybody’s got problems\u00a0\u00a0 so the fact that you have a problem or the fact\r\nthat you have problems doesn’t necessarily mean\u00a0\u00a0 that there’s something wrong with you it\r\njust means that you’re like everybody else\u00a0\u00a0 we all have problems and no one ever said that\r\nproblems should be solved quickly and easily\u00a0\u00a0 i sort of think of it as kind of like the the\r\nsitcom approach to viewing problems where people\u00a0\u00a0 hold this attitude that uh problems should be\r\nresolved just like they are on tv sitcoms where\u00a0\u00a0 a problem arises in the first five minutes of\r\nthe show there’s then 20 minutes of zany hijinx\u00a0\u00a0 and then everything gets wrapped up nicely in the\r\nlast five minutes problem solved everyone goes on\u00a0\u00a0 with their life while that works really well\r\nin tv sitcoms no one ever said that real world\u00a0\u00a0 or real life problems are actually like that\r\nso if you’re having problems that you find are\u00a0\u00a0 challenging or difficult to overcome well welcome\r\nto the club everybody has those types of problems\u00a0\u00a0 and no one ever said that problems should be\r\nsolved quickly or easily so really challenging\u00a0\u00a0 this component of negative problem orientation\r\nis really about normalizing the occurrence of\u00a0\u00a0 problems and normalizing the fact that some\r\nproblems are just really difficult to address the second component of negative problem\r\norientation this tendency to focus on the threat\u00a0\u00a0 component of the problem well if you think back\u00a0\u00a0 if you think about our our continuum and i’m\r\nstuck in the paralysis zone where all i’m\u00a0\u00a0 thinking about is all of the potential threat\r\nor danger that is associated with this problem\u00a0\u00a0 all of the things that could go wrong with this\r\nproblem well you know part of this has to do with\u00a0\u00a0 intolerance of uncertainty and we talked about\r\nthat in a prior video intolerance of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 goes very well and hand in hand with this fear\r\nof addressing problems or this viewing problems\u00a0\u00a0 as threats because problems at their core by\r\ndefinition are things that we’re uncertain about\u00a0\u00a0 the solution to the problem if we knew exactly\r\nwhat we needed to do to solve a particular problem\u00a0\u00a0 then it wouldn’t be a problem it would just\r\nbe a series of steps that i need to engage in\u00a0\u00a0 what makes it a problem is the uncertainty and\r\nthe unknown of what it is that i need to do to\u00a0\u00a0 solve this problem or how i solve this problem\r\nand so this intolerance of uncertainty can get\u00a0\u00a0 a person to really focus on all of the the\r\npotential threat or danger associated with\u00a0\u00a0 potentially trying to address this problem\r\nso the idea here is to try and reframe\u00a0\u00a0 the problem as an opportunity and try and get\r\nit out of this paralysis zone where all you’re\u00a0\u00a0 focusing on is the potential threat so it’s just\r\na reframe uh thinking about the problem in a bit\u00a0\u00a0 of a different way you don’t have to see the\r\nproblem as entirely good or it’s going to be\u00a0\u00a0 really wonderful to try and solve this problem but\r\nyou just need to get out of this paralysis zone\u00a0\u00a0 so you just need to reframe or shift the problem\r\nor shift your perception of the problem just\u00a0\u00a0 a little bit to get out of that paralysis zone\r\nso that you can see a little bit of opportunity\u00a0\u00a0 and with that little bit of opportunity now\r\nyou might be more motivated to actually engage\u00a0\u00a0 in this problem and solving the problem\r\nso so how exactly do you do this well\u00a0\u00a0 let’s think about an example suppose i have a\r\njob interview coming up and one of my things is\u00a0\u00a0 that i’m terrible at job interviews um i always\r\nget really nervous and anxious hands get sweaty\u00a0\u00a0 and uh and i just my voice tends to tends to quake\r\nand i tend to ramble and all this sort of thing\u00a0\u00a0 and i’m really concerned about this job interview\r\nand i see it as a real problem of how i’m going to\u00a0\u00a0 go about dealing with this job interview so\r\none way of reframing this as an opportunity\u00a0\u00a0 is to look at it and say okay yeah i’m i haven’t\r\nhad really good experiences at job interviews\u00a0\u00a0 in the past but the opportunity in this is\r\nfor me to practice the skill of interviewing\u00a0\u00a0 for a job so even if i don’t get this job the\r\nopportunity here is that i get some practice\u00a0\u00a0 engaging in a job interview and in doing so i’m\r\ngoing to potentially get better so that for my\u00a0\u00a0 next job interview i’ll have some experiences\r\nthat i can learn from and that will help me\u00a0\u00a0 in the next job interview so it’s again it’s\r\nnot sort of making it entirely pollyanna\u00a0\u00a0 this job interview is going to turn out great i\r\nreally love job interviews that’s not realistic\u00a0\u00a0 thinking but it’s more about just reframing it\r\na little bit to get out of that paralysis zone\u00a0\u00a0 and to look for even just a little bit of\r\nopportunity with this problem um if you’re ever\u00a0\u00a0 struggling to find an opportunity and a problem a\r\ngood default is always this is an opportunity for\u00a0\u00a0 me to tolerate uncertainty like i said problems by\r\ndefinition are uncertain and so if you’re looking\u00a0\u00a0 for an opportunity the opportunity is this gives\r\nme a chance to work on my tolerating uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 which if you’ve seen previous videos you know\r\nthat’s a key to cutting off the murray fuel supply\u00a0\u00a0 so to help with this sort of challenging\r\nor reframing problems as opportunities\u00a0\u00a0 i have a worksheet that i’ll link to in the\r\ndescription below you can download the worksheet\u00a0\u00a0 and it sort of walks you through how to take a a\r\ntype one worry or worry about an actual problem\u00a0\u00a0 and then to reframe it as an opportunity or a\r\nchallenge so the third component of this negative\u00a0\u00a0 problem orientation this tendency not to recognize\r\nor not to be aware of problems until it’s too late\u00a0\u00a0 so there’s a couple ways of addressing this the\r\nfirst is these problems or problems that a person\u00a0\u00a0 doesn’t deal with very well they tend not to\r\nbe one and done types of problems these are\u00a0\u00a0 problems that tend to come up again and again\r\nand again they tend to recur for a person\u00a0\u00a0 so one way of becoming better at recognizing\r\nproblems early on is to actually keep a list of\u00a0\u00a0 what are problems that tend to recur\r\nfor me again and again and again\u00a0\u00a0 because by keeping this list what it does is\r\nit it keeps your mind or keeps you alert to\u00a0\u00a0 potential problems that may come up that you\r\nwouldn’t necessarily recognize unless you were\u00a0\u00a0 looking for them so for example um one of my\r\nrecurring problems is that i’m always terrible\u00a0\u00a0 at um at school projects that involve a working\r\nin groups and every time that’s happened to me\u00a0\u00a0 in the past it’s been a real mess where uh i have\r\neither difficulty trying to take control of the\u00a0\u00a0 situation or i just become incredibly passive\r\nin this situation and it doesn’t work out very\u00a0\u00a0 well so that’s something that i can keep track of\r\nthat’s a recurring problem that comes up again and\u00a0\u00a0 again for me so i just have it on this on my list\r\nof recurring problems just as a way of keeping it\u00a0\u00a0 in the forefront of my mind another way of being\r\nmore aware or recognizing problems earlier on\u00a0\u00a0 is to use your emotion as a bit of a red flag a\r\nbit of a cue to stop and to look around and to\u00a0\u00a0 ask yourself is there a problem here that i’m not\r\naddressing so you notice yourself feeling really\u00a0\u00a0 anxious in a situation that’s a moment to stop and\r\nsay okay i’m feeling really anxious what’s going\u00a0\u00a0 on here is there a problem that i’m not dealing\r\nwith is there a problem that i’m not addressing\u00a0\u00a0 i had this uh a good example of this with a client\r\na few years ago and this client found that he was\u00a0\u00a0 just really really anxious whenever he was at work\r\nand so we got to this part of the worry management\u00a0\u00a0 program where we talked about negative problem\r\norientation and he used his anxiety at work as a\u00a0\u00a0 cue and he stopped and asked himself one day okay\r\nwhat’s going on here why am i always so anxious\u00a0\u00a0 at work and as obvious as this may\r\nsound as simple as this may sound\u00a0\u00a0 what he realized by sort of stopping and\r\nasking himself that question was that\u00a0\u00a0 he hated his job he hated everything about\r\nit it was going nowhere it wasn’t really that\u00a0\u00a0 reinforcing for him he didn’t like the people that\r\nhe was working with and so once he was able to\u00a0\u00a0 recognize and identify that the problem was that\r\nhe hated his job and that’s why he was so anxious\u00a0\u00a0 whenever he was at work he was then able to engage\r\nin some problem solving so what he did is he\u00a0\u00a0 worked on his resume and he submitted his resume\r\napplied for a bunch of jobs and he got a new job\u00a0\u00a0 and lo and behold he was no longer anxious\r\nat work so it was using his anxiety at work\u00a0\u00a0 as that red flag of that that caused him to stop\r\nand ask is there something that’s going on here\u00a0\u00a0 that’s making me anxious or that’s that i’m\r\nworrying about is there a problem here that\u00a0\u00a0 i’m not dealing with and once he did he was then\r\nable to take some steps and deal with the problem\u00a0\u00a0 so those are the manifestations of this negative\r\nproblem orientation and those are some tips\u00a0\u00a0 to try and improve your orientation towards\r\nproblems like i said this is this is the garage\u00a0\u00a0 door and until you deal with negative problem\r\norientation as long as you tend to view problems\u00a0\u00a0 in a really negative way as threats and that you\r\navoid dealing with you’re not going to be able\u00a0\u00a0 to deal with the problems and you’re probably\r\ngoing to continue worrying about the problems\u00a0\u00a0 excessively by addressing this negative problem\r\norientation by normalizing the occurrence of\u00a0\u00a0 problems by reframing problems as opportunity\r\ninstead of threat and by recognizing problems\u00a0\u00a0 earlier on what you’re doing is you’re raising\r\nthat garage door and you’re allowing yourself to\u00a0\u00a0 use your problem solving skills that you already\r\nhave and to use them in a really effective way so what we’re going to be talking about is six\r\nsteps in problem solving and these six steps\u00a0\u00a0 like i said it’s kind of like a recipe and if you\r\nfollow the recipe what you’ll find is that you’re\u00a0\u00a0 a lot more effective or it gives you a framework\r\nto be more effective in terms of solving problems\u00a0\u00a0 so the very first step in problem solving this\r\none you probably already know and probably pretty\u00a0\u00a0 obvious to you is that you need to define the\r\nproblem and the way i like to think about defining\u00a0\u00a0 the problem is to sort of ask yourself three\r\nquestions what is the situation that currently is\u00a0\u00a0 what would i like the situation to be and what\r\nis the barrier or the obstacle between what is\u00a0\u00a0 and what should be because then you can\r\nreframe the problem is a question about\u00a0\u00a0 how you address or remove the barrier to\r\nget the situation to what you want it to be\u00a0\u00a0 so the first step is defining what your problem\r\nis so let’s use an example as we go along here\u00a0\u00a0 suppose my problem is that i’m feeling like\r\ni’m overweight that i need to lose some weight\u00a0\u00a0 and the barrier i’ve discovered is that i\r\nreally just don’t have a very healthy lifestyle\u00a0\u00a0 my lifestyle is one that it doesn’t allow me to uh\r\nbe particularly healthy with regards to diet with\u00a0\u00a0 regards to exercise and so the problem is that my\r\nlifestyle is preventing me from being more healthy\u00a0\u00a0 and helping me lose weight so step one define the\r\nproblem step two comes directly from step one and\u00a0\u00a0 it’s defining what the goal is so i’ve defined the\r\nproblem but what is it that i want what is my goal\u00a0\u00a0 and to try to be as kind of specific and clear and\r\nbehavioral as possible with regards to the goal so\u00a0\u00a0 in my example the goal may be that i\r\nwant to lose 15 pounds so that’s my goal\u00a0\u00a0 so that leads us to the third step which is what\r\ni call the brainstorming step coming up with\u00a0\u00a0 alternative possible solutions to address\r\nthis problem now i find that with a lot of\u00a0\u00a0 the clients i work with this is the part of the\r\nproblem solving that they tend to rush through\u00a0\u00a0 the idea with brainstorming is you want to try and\r\ngenerate possible solutions to help you address\u00a0\u00a0 this problem and those possible solutions need\r\nto meet sort of three principles for effective\u00a0\u00a0 or good brainstorming the first principle\r\nis what i call the quantity principle\u00a0\u00a0 and what that means is you want to generate a\r\nlot of possible solutions what people often do\u00a0\u00a0 when they’re engaging in problem solving\r\nthey just come up with the first one or\u00a0\u00a0 two uh ideas or solutions that come to mind\r\nand that’s what they go with brainstorming\u00a0\u00a0 takes it beyond just those one or two possible\r\nsolutions and gets you to think about lots of\u00a0\u00a0 different possible solutions so when you’re\r\nthinking about brainstorming i like to tell people\u00a0\u00a0 rough rule of thumb 10 to 15 possible solutions\r\nto this problem so that’s the quantity principle\u00a0\u00a0 the second principle of effective brainstorming\r\nis the um the diversity or different types of\u00a0\u00a0 possible solutions so if for example i’m going\r\nthrough my brainstorming and i’m coming up with\u00a0\u00a0 possible solutions like uh my my possible solution\r\nis to go to the gym and run on the treadmill\u00a0\u00a0 another possible solution is to go to the gym and\r\nride the exercise bike another possible solution\u00a0\u00a0 is to go to the gym and go on the elliptical\r\ntrainer now these are all different solutions\u00a0\u00a0 but they’re all kind of the same solution so you\r\nwant uh some diversity in the possible solutions\u00a0\u00a0 that you’re coming up with so it’s not just the\r\nsame thing over and over again you want some\u00a0\u00a0 uh variety in the possible solutions you’re\r\ncoming up with so one of my possible solutions\u00a0\u00a0 could be going to the gym and running on the\r\ntreadmill or it could be eating more salad or\u00a0\u00a0 hiring a personal trainer or taking up hiking\r\nor going on a low carb diet or packing my own\u00a0\u00a0 lunch for lunch rather than getting something at a\r\nrestaurant so i’m coming up with lots of different\u00a0\u00a0 possible solutions to help solve the problem\r\nor that could potentially solve the problem\u00a0\u00a0 the third principle of brainstorming is\r\none that i find that people really struggle\u00a0\u00a0 with and this principle refers to deferring\r\njudgment in other words when you’re brainstorming\u00a0\u00a0 you’re not actually judging the possible solutions\r\nthat you’re coming up with you’re just coming\u00a0\u00a0 up with the solutions it’s not about evaluating\r\nwhether or not the solutions will work the idea is\u00a0\u00a0 you want to be as creative as possible with your\r\nsolutions you want to get out of the typical box\u00a0\u00a0 that you usually think of when it comes to solving\r\nproblems and think a little bit outside of that\u00a0\u00a0 box so when you’re doing the brainstorming some of\r\nthe solutions you come up with should be a bit out\u00a0\u00a0 there they should be a bit ridiculous and bizarre\r\nbecause what that means is that you’re allowing\u00a0\u00a0 yourself to think outside how you typically think\r\ni once had this experience with a client this was\u00a0\u00a0 a mom of two kids she loved her kids dearly but\r\nshe just wasn’t getting enough time away from\u00a0\u00a0 the kids where she could do things to recharge her\r\nbatteries and so she tried all of the things like\u00a0\u00a0 babysitting swaps with other moms or having\r\nher parents look after the kids but she just\u00a0\u00a0 wasn’t getting a big enough chunk of time away\r\nfrom her kids and so one of the things that she\u00a0\u00a0 came up with as she was doing the brainstorming\r\nwas putting her kids on a rocket and sending\u00a0\u00a0 them to the moon and so she thought well that’s\r\nkind of a ridiculous idea i could never do that\u00a0\u00a0 but it got her thinking okay well i can’t send\r\nmy kids to the moon but i can send them to summer\u00a0\u00a0 camp and so she got the idea to register them for\r\na summer camp and they went away to a sleepover\u00a0\u00a0 camp she had a week away from them really\r\nrecharged her batteries and she felt really great\u00a0\u00a0 because it had helped solve the problem of\r\nhaving some time away from her kids where\u00a0\u00a0 she could really charge her batteries and so she\r\nwouldn’t have got there if she hadn’t allowed her\u00a0\u00a0 mind to go into kind of really out there possible\r\nsolutions like sending the kids to the moon so\u00a0\u00a0 you want to defer your judgment allow yourself to\r\nbe creative allow yourself to be a bit out there\u00a0\u00a0 with the possible solutions it’s not about judging\r\nthe solutions at this point so after brainstorming\u00a0\u00a0 then you want to evaluate the possible solutions\r\nthis is where you determine whether or not\u00a0\u00a0 those solutions could potentially work so in order\r\nto evaluate the solutions i like to get people to\u00a0\u00a0 think of a few questions so first of all will\r\nthis possible solution likely solve my problem\u00a0\u00a0 so for example if one of the solutions i came\r\nup with while i was doing my brainstorming\u00a0\u00a0 to help me lose weight is to to\r\ngo and and do an all donut diet\u00a0\u00a0 well it’s kind of an out there solution but\r\nit’s probably not going to solve my problem\u00a0\u00a0 it’s probably not going to help me lose that 15\r\npounds so right there i can dismiss that solution\u00a0\u00a0 as one that’s probably not going to be all that\r\neffective another question i want to ask is how\u00a0\u00a0 much time and effort is going to be involved in\r\nthis solution so if i come up with a solution of\u00a0\u00a0 going to the gym seven days a week and working\r\nout eight hours a day well chances are that’s\u00a0\u00a0 gonna help me get into really good shape but it’s\r\nnot really all that realistic and it’s probably\u00a0\u00a0 way more time and way more effort than i’m\r\nwilling to do so i’m unlikely to do that solution\u00a0\u00a0 i’m going to want to think about what will be the\r\nimpact on myself how will i feel about myself for\u00a0\u00a0 coming up with the solution or implementing the\r\nsolution and what will be the impact on other\u00a0\u00a0 people if i implement this solution so for example\r\nif one of the potential solutions i came up with\u00a0\u00a0 is to steal my best friend’s girlfriend who\r\nhappens to be a personal trainer so i can get\u00a0\u00a0 free personal training lessons well that might\r\nhelp me get into better shape because she’ll\u00a0\u00a0 give me free personal training lessons but i’m\r\nprobably not going to feel very good about myself\u00a0\u00a0 for having done that and my friend probably isn’t\r\ngoing to be too pleased with me for having done\u00a0\u00a0 that either so that’s not a very good solution\r\neither so you you have this list of possible\u00a0\u00a0 solutions that you’ve brainstormed so the idea\r\nis to try and evaluate these solutions based on\u00a0\u00a0 these questions and to try to come up with the\r\nbest possible solution not the perfect solution\u00a0\u00a0 there likely will be no perfect solution and\r\nso it’s at this stage where you have to really\u00a0\u00a0 tolerate some uncertainty because you’re not\r\ngoing to know exactly what the best solution is\u00a0\u00a0 you’re just going to have to pick one\r\nthat seems like it’s the best solution\u00a0\u00a0 and go with it tolerating the uncertainty\r\nof that so once you’ve decided on a solution\u00a0\u00a0 the fifth step is to actually come up\r\nwith a plan and implement the solution so\u00a0\u00a0 if i come up with uh if one of my solutions\r\nis to eat more salad i need to come up\u00a0\u00a0 with a plan for how i’m going to actually\r\nimplement solution of eating more salads so\u00a0\u00a0 i’m going to make sure to add salad to my grocery\r\nlist i’m going to make an effort to buy the salad\u00a0\u00a0 the salad mix so salad dressing all of the\r\nfixings for the salad and i may pick a day\u00a0\u00a0 of the week um maybe tuesday or thursday will\r\nbe my salad days and so i’ll make a plan to\u00a0\u00a0 implement uh eating more salad on those days so i\r\ncome up with a plan and then i implement the plan and then the final step step six is one that\r\npeople often don’t think about but it’s actually\u00a0\u00a0 pretty critical in terms of problem solving\r\nand step six is to verify whether or not the\u00a0\u00a0 solution has worked so to have sort of a set date\r\nor set time that you’re going to look back and say\u00a0\u00a0 okay i’ve been doing the solution i’ve been\r\nimplementing my plan has it helped so maybe i\u00a0\u00a0 give myself a month of eating salad every tuesday\r\nand thursday and so what i do is i weigh myself at\u00a0\u00a0 the end of the month and see whether or not it’s\r\nworked if it has worked that’s great i can reward\u00a0\u00a0 myself give myself a pat on the back for coming\r\nup with the solution and implementing it and\u00a0\u00a0 uh and it working so i can feel good about myself\r\nfor having taken some steps to solve this problem\u00a0\u00a0 but if it hasn’t worked if i in the solution\r\nverification stage i realize i actually haven’t\u00a0\u00a0 lost any weight i’ve actually gained a few\r\npounds then this is an opportunity for me to\u00a0\u00a0 look back on my problem-solving approach and to\r\nask myself where might things have gone wrong\u00a0\u00a0 well maybe i didn’t define the problem correctly\r\num maybe when i look back on my brainstorming i\u00a0\u00a0 only came up with one or two solutions i didn’t\r\nactually do the brainstorming that well maybe when\u00a0\u00a0 it comes to evaluating the possible solutions\r\ni look back on it and realize you know what\u00a0\u00a0 the one that i picked seemed like it was going to\r\nwork but it didn’t maybe i should try one of the\u00a0\u00a0 other possible solutions that i came up with or i\r\ncould look at it and say hey you know what maybe\u00a0\u00a0 the solution that i picked would have worked if\r\ni’d actually done it and so looking back on it\u00a0\u00a0 i realized i didn’t actually do a very good job\r\nof implementing the solution that i came up with\u00a0\u00a0 so the idea of the solution verification step\r\nis to help you to look back and figure out\u00a0\u00a0 where it went wrong if it did go wrong and\r\nthen to problem solve or then to try different\u00a0\u00a0 different approaches or different tweaks to your\r\nsolution to try to get at a solution that works\u00a0\u00a0 so the process is self-correcting if you allow it\r\nto be self-correcting and if you allow yourself\u00a0\u00a0 the opportunity to reflect on whether or not it’s\r\nworking so those are six steps to a recipe of six\u00a0\u00a0 steps to help you solve problems more efficiently\r\nso you might be wondering okay well that’s all\u00a0\u00a0 great and interesting and all but how does that\r\nhelp me worry less well the idea is with these\u00a0\u00a0 type 1 worries if you’re able to more effectively\r\nsolve the problem that you’re worrying about\u00a0\u00a0 then you’re not going to be\r\nworrying about it anymore\u00a0\u00a0 understanding these problem-solving steps can\r\nalso help you recognize what problem-solving is\u00a0\u00a0 versus what it isn’t right so when we talked about\r\nworry beliefs one of the common worry beliefs\u00a0\u00a0 is that worry helps me solve problems well by\r\nunderstanding what problem solving looks like\u00a0\u00a0 defining the problem defining a goal brainstorming\r\nevaluating possible solutions implementing a\u00a0\u00a0 plan and then verifying whether or not the plan\r\nworked that’s much different than worrying about\u00a0\u00a0 negative things happening from this problem\r\nso understanding these steps to problem\u00a0\u00a0 solving also helps you understand a little bit\r\nbetter what problem solving looks like what\u00a0\u00a0 effective active problem solving looks\r\nlike versus worrying about a problem\u00a0\u00a0 now obviously these problem-solving steps that\r\ni’m talking about aren’t going to be applicable\u00a0\u00a0 to every problem now there are some problems that\r\nare just pretty simple to solve right so if i take\u00a0\u00a0 my lunch to work every day and one day i forgot\r\nmy lunch at home well i’m not necessarily going\u00a0\u00a0 to have to go through these six steps of problem\r\nsolving to figure out what it is that i need to do\u00a0\u00a0 i’ll just go down to the food court and buy\r\nmyself lunch but these problem-solving steps\u00a0\u00a0 can be really helpful for some of those more\r\ndifficult problems some of those problems\u00a0\u00a0 that you find that you’re struggling with or\r\nthat you’ve been struggling with for a while\u00a0\u00a0 and so if you can break down the problems and use\r\nthese problem solving this problem-solving recipe\u00a0\u00a0 it might be able to help you get to a more\r\neffective solution to the problem and to\u00a0\u00a0 assist with that i’m going to link to a problem\r\nsolving worksheet down in the description below\u00a0\u00a0 so you can download that worksheet and it\r\ncan help you walk through these six steps\u00a0\u00a0 of problem solving just as a way of of writing\r\ndown how you’re going to approach the problem type 2 worries are worries about future or\r\npotential problems problems that haven’t happened\u00a0\u00a0 problems that may never happen but still a person\r\nworries about them now the thing about these type\u00a0\u00a0 2 worries is that they tend to tap into the core\r\nfears that a person often has so these type 2\u00a0\u00a0 worries tend to be about the most scary things\r\nthat we fear or that we dread happening worries\u00a0\u00a0 about failure failure academically failure\r\nin life more generally worries about losing\u00a0\u00a0 a job or a relationship breakup worries about\r\nyou or someone you care about becoming very sick\u00a0\u00a0 or a family member dying in a motor vehicle\r\naccident these types of things so these type two\u00a0\u00a0 worries tend to be quite scary and quite upsetting\r\nwhen they come up so if you think about it if uh\u00a0\u00a0 if you catch yourself worrying about one of\r\nthese really sort of scary core fears what’s\u00a0\u00a0 the most natural thing the most natural reaction\r\nto do with those worries well for a lot of people\u00a0\u00a0 who worry a lot and for a lot of people who don’t\r\nworry a lot the most natural thing when these\u00a0\u00a0 unpleasant worries these unpleasant thoughts about\r\nfuture negative events come up the most natural\u00a0\u00a0 thing to do is to try and push those thoughts\r\nout of your mind try not to think about them\u00a0\u00a0 and it makes sense if if these thoughts\r\nbring up you know sort of images or or\u00a0\u00a0 thoughts about things that are really distressing\r\nor really upsetting to think about it’s natural\u00a0\u00a0 to just want to avoid thinking about that in\r\ngeneral it’s something we call cognitive avoidance\u00a0\u00a0 so pushing these thoughts suppressing these\r\nthoughts from my mind so that i don’t have to\u00a0\u00a0 think about the thing that’s so upsetting\r\nthat obviously i don’t want to think about now this cognitive avoidance may make sense\u00a0\u00a0 on the surface and it’s kind of the most\r\nnatural response to these upsetting thoughts\u00a0\u00a0 but one experiment one little exercise i do with\r\nmy clients to sort of explain how this cognitive\u00a0\u00a0 avoidance works is to get them to for one minute\r\nto think about anything they want to think about\u00a0\u00a0 anything at all but in that one minute i get\r\nthem to try really hard not to think about\u00a0\u00a0 a pink elephant so they can think about anything\r\nthey want to think about just not a pink elephant\u00a0\u00a0 and so i start a timer and i get them to\r\nthink about whatever they want just not the\u00a0\u00a0 pink elephant but if they happen to think\r\nabout a pink elephant i ask them to make a\u00a0\u00a0 a mark on a piece of paper each time the thought\r\nor image of a pink elephant comes to mind\u00a0\u00a0 and usually what happens is uh in that one\r\nminute i see them really start to struggle\u00a0\u00a0 either they start to kind of laugh or they\r\nstart to roll their eyes or they but they’re\u00a0\u00a0 making marks on that sheet of paper and what\r\nends up happening at the end of that minute is\u00a0\u00a0 they’ve thought about the pink elephant a lot\r\nand so i often ask them a few follow-up questions\u00a0\u00a0 like uh how many times in the past week\r\nhave you thought about a pink elephant and\u00a0\u00a0 usually the answer to this question is well i\r\nhaven’t thought about a pink elephant at all and\u00a0\u00a0 then i asked them okay well in the past week how\r\nmuch effort did you put into trying not to think\u00a0\u00a0 about a pink elephant they tell me well i wasn’t\r\ntrying not to think about a pink elephant at all\u00a0\u00a0 and so i point out well isn’t it interesting\r\nthat in one week of putting no effort into\u00a0\u00a0 trying not to think about a pink elephant\r\nyou didn’t think about a pink elephant at all\u00a0\u00a0 but in one minute of trying not\r\nto think about a pink elephant\u00a0\u00a0 you thought about a pink elephant multiple\r\nmultiple times we call this the paradox of thought\u00a0\u00a0 suppression the more you try not to think about\r\nsomething the more you end up thinking about it\u00a0\u00a0 so relating this to type 2 worries if i’m\r\navoiding thinking about these type 2 worries\u00a0\u00a0 because they’re really upsetting to think about\r\nand i don’t want to think about them and so\u00a0\u00a0 if i’m trying to deal with these type 2\r\nworries by pushing the worries and by pushing\u00a0\u00a0 the thoughts out of my mind it’s essentially\r\nme doing a pink elephant with these worries\u00a0\u00a0 i’m trying not to think about it and by trying\r\nnot to think about it all that really does is it\u00a0\u00a0 causes the worry to come up over and over and over\r\nand over again and each time it comes up i try and\u00a0\u00a0 push it out of my mind which means it’s just going\r\nto come up again and then i’m going to push it out\u00a0\u00a0 of my mind and it’s going to come up again so the\r\nreason why these type 2 worries keep coming up\u00a0\u00a0 is often because a person’s trying not to think\r\nabout it and the harder you try not to think about\u00a0\u00a0 it the more the worry is going to keep coming up\r\nso it’s this uh really kind of self-destructive\u00a0\u00a0 uh self-fueling cycle um i liken it to trying to\r\nhold a beach ball underwater the more pressure\u00a0\u00a0 you put to hold that beach ball underwater\r\nthe more pressure there is for the beach ball\u00a0\u00a0 to keep popping up and then you grab it and you\r\npush it back down again it pops up and you grab it\u00a0\u00a0 and you push it back down again but it just keeps\r\ncoming up and so while this cognitive avoidance\u00a0\u00a0 on the surface seems like the most natural\r\nthing to do when these type 2 worries come up\u00a0\u00a0 it’s actually one of the factors\r\nthat’s maintaining the type 2 worries\u00a0\u00a0 so that leaves us with the question okay if trying\r\nnot to think about the type two worries is what’s\u00a0\u00a0 causing the type two worries to come up over\r\nand over and over again what can i do about it\u00a0\u00a0 well the answer to that question is\r\nsomething we call cognitive exposure\u00a0\u00a0 and i’ll be talking about that in the next video if trying not to think about the type 2 worry\r\nis what’s causing the worry to come up over and\u00a0\u00a0 over and over again the solution the tip or the\r\ntool for managing these types of worries may seem\u00a0\u00a0 very counter-intuitive and the idea is rather than\r\ntrying not to think about the worry rather it’s to\u00a0\u00a0 think about the worry over and over and over and\r\nover and over again until you essentially drain\u00a0\u00a0 the emotion out of the worry thought so again\r\nremember that worries are they’re just thoughts\u00a0\u00a0 they’re predictions about the future and with\r\nthese type two worries what can happen is you have\u00a0\u00a0 this anxiety and this emotion connected with the\r\nworry and the worry thought so every time the\u00a0\u00a0 worry thought comes up the anxiety comes up and\r\nif you feel really anxious every time this thought\u00a0\u00a0 comes up it makes sense to want to try and get the\r\nthought out of your mind because the anxiety is\u00a0\u00a0 really uncomfortable so the way around this is by\r\nthinking about the worry again and again and again\u00a0\u00a0 the the metaphor i like to use to explain\r\nthis is to imagine that you’re watching tv and\u00a0\u00a0 one day there’s this weird satellite glitch that\r\nhappens and whatever it is that you’re watching on\u00a0\u00a0 tv disappears and what ends up happening is this\r\nreally grotesque horrible horror film comes on the\u00a0\u00a0 tv it’s really upsetting and it’s really gross and\r\nand distressing and so you just turn off the tv\u00a0\u00a0 but the next time you turn on your tv lo\r\nand behold the same thing happens the same\u00a0\u00a0 movie interrupts what you’re watching and it gets\r\nreally distressing for you and you turn off the tv you do it again and it just keeps happening well\r\nimagine what would happen and how you’d feel\u00a0\u00a0 if you watched if you allowed yourself to\r\nwatch that horror movie all the way from the\u00a0\u00a0 beginning to the end well you’d probably find it\r\nreally distressing you’d probably find it really\u00a0\u00a0 uncomfortable and really unpleasant and you feel\r\nreally distressed watching that movie but then you\u00a0\u00a0 force yourself to watch it a second time well the\r\nsecond time you watch it you may find it even more\u00a0\u00a0 distressing and even more upsetting because you\r\nkind of know what to expect and you kind of know\u00a0\u00a0 the horrors that are that are awaiting but then\r\nyou force yourself to watch it a third time and\u00a0\u00a0 a fourth time and a fifth time and a sixth time\r\nby the hundredth time you’ve watched the horror\u00a0\u00a0 movie by the thousandth time you’ve watched\r\nthe horror movie what do you think is going\u00a0\u00a0 to happen to your emotional reaction to it well\r\nyou’re you’re probably going to be pretty bored\u00a0\u00a0 uh you’re probably going to be like oh yeah\r\nguy jim’s out of the shower with a big knife\u00a0\u00a0 big deal the movie hasn’t changed one bit what’s\r\nchanged is your emotional reaction to the movie\u00a0\u00a0 essentially it’s drained any emotion out of the\r\nmovie and so it’s no longer all that distressing\u00a0\u00a0 and so um you’re watching the same movie\r\nit’s the exact same movie that you saw\u00a0\u00a0 the first time you saw it when it was really\r\nupsetting for you but it’s no longer upsetting\u00a0\u00a0 it’s the same process with this idea of\r\ncognitive exposure you essentially want to\u00a0\u00a0 take these type 2 worries and think about them\r\nover and over and over again to their their\u00a0\u00a0 really horrible hand the most distressing parts\r\nof it that you don’t let yourself think about\u00a0\u00a0 with these type two worries what often happens\r\nwith people is their their mind will go to a\u00a0\u00a0 certain point in the worry and they say okay you\r\nknow what it’s too much i i can’t take anymore and\u00a0\u00a0 they they stop thinking about it and so it’s\r\nalmost like one of those old-fashioned record\u00a0\u00a0 players and it just keeps skipping so it plays\r\nthe same part of the song and just keeps skipping\u00a0\u00a0 over and over and over again so it’s not playing\r\nthe song all the way through that’s what happens\u00a0\u00a0 with these type 2 worries a person doesn’t allow\r\nthemselves to think about the type 2 worries\u00a0\u00a0 all the way through to the the horrible end\r\nthat they imagine but by doing this and by\u00a0\u00a0 doing this repeatedly essentially what you’re\r\ndoing is you’re giving the worries the air time\u00a0\u00a0 so it’s almost like these worries want their\r\nair time they want you to think about them\u00a0\u00a0 and so you give the worries their air time and\r\nyou think about them in concentrated ways until\u00a0\u00a0 the emotion essentially drains from the worry\r\nand if the emotion drains from the worry it’s\u00a0\u00a0 not going to be so upsetting when it comes up\r\nand if it’s not so upsetting when it comes up\u00a0\u00a0 you’re probably not going to try and push the\r\nthoughts out of your mind so it’s a bit of a\u00a0\u00a0 strange concept to wrap your head around but\r\nit works and in fact this is the exact same\u00a0\u00a0 treatment approach that we use for people\r\nwith post-traumatic stress disorder\u00a0\u00a0 the difference with between post-traumatic stress\r\ndisorder and this is that in post-traumatic stress\u00a0\u00a0 disorder the traumatic event has happened to the\r\nperson it’s happened to the person in their past\u00a0\u00a0 whereas in generalized anxiety disorder and\r\nexcessive worry the traumatic event is something\u00a0\u00a0 that a person imagines happening in the future\r\nbut it’s the same process to drain the emotion\u00a0\u00a0 out of the thought so how do you go about doing\r\nthis cognitive exposure how do you how do you\u00a0\u00a0 do it well cognitive exposure is different than\r\nworrying about the worry with cognitive exposure\u00a0\u00a0 the idea is you sit down and you write\r\nout a script imagining your type 2 worry\u00a0\u00a0 in all of the graphic horrific upsetting detail\r\nthat you can imagine all the way to the end to\u00a0\u00a0 those darkest parts that you don’t even allow\r\nyour mind to go to that you don’t let yourself\u00a0\u00a0 go to and you take your mind there you write out\r\nthis script detailing what you imagine happening\u00a0\u00a0 and i encourage person to write out the script\r\nin the first person present tense so like it’s\u00a0\u00a0 actually happening to them because what that can\r\ndo is it it puts you in the worry scene it puts\u00a0\u00a0 you in that scenario and it allows you to sort of\r\nmore closely imagine yourself in that situation\u00a0\u00a0 and so you write out the script it should\r\nbe anywhere from like one to three or five\u00a0\u00a0 minutes long it doesn’t have to be any longer\r\nthan that but you want to include as much\u00a0\u00a0 a detail as possible as much sensory\r\ndetail as much thought detail as you can\u00a0\u00a0 so i’ll give you an example of a script um\r\nnow this is a script for someone imagining\u00a0\u00a0 uh that they’re going to die of cancer so\r\nthe script may go something like this um\u00a0\u00a0 i was diagnosed with or i was diagnosed with my\r\ncancer a few weeks ago and it is spread rapidly\u00a0\u00a0 through my body uh the cancer is my fault because\r\ni didn’t take care of myself i had a unhealthy\u00a0\u00a0 lifestyle i ate poorly um i spend too much time\r\nin the sun without sunscreen so it’s all my fault\u00a0\u00a0 that this is happening to me i’ve gone through\r\na series of upsetting and painful procedures\u00a0\u00a0 the treatments have caused me to lose my hair\r\ni’ve lost weight i’m fatigued i’m exhausted all\u00a0\u00a0 the time i’m now coughing up blood and it makes\r\nme sick every time i see myself in the mirror\u00a0\u00a0 i know now that i’m on my deathbed i can feel\r\nmy life draining from me this was all my fault\u00a0\u00a0 i did this to myself and now here i am in\r\nthis hospital bed having just soiled myself\u00a0\u00a0 and i can smell how awful it smells and i feel\r\nexhausted and weak i can’t even call out for help\u00a0\u00a0 i’m in this darkened hospital room in this\r\ndarkened ward and i see only shadows in the\u00a0\u00a0 background i know my death is coming soon and\r\nit’s going to be a bleak emptiness that i’m\u00a0\u00a0 going to face for eternity so now notice that\r\nthat may not be something that you worry about\u00a0\u00a0 but that type of script it’s descriptive enough\r\nthat it’s like this kick in the gut it it should\u00a0\u00a0 make you uncomfortable and so the idea is you\r\nwrite out this script about this really horrific\u00a0\u00a0 type 2 worry whatever your type 2 worry is\r\nwhatever the the worry that you’re struggling with\u00a0\u00a0 is you write out a script as detailed as possible\r\nand once you have that script the idea is to take\u00a0\u00a0 30 45 minutes an hour a day and read that script\r\nover and over and over again so you read the\u00a0\u00a0 script all the way through and i encourage people\r\nto make a note of how upsetting or distressing it\u00a0\u00a0 was on a scale from zero to ten where zero is not\r\ndistressing at all ten is uh extremely distressing\u00a0\u00a0 extremely upsetting so after every time you read\r\nthe script you make a rating from zero to 10.\r\n\r\nThen\u00a0\u00a0 immediately you read it again from 0 to 10 make\r\na rating and again and again at least 10 or 15\u00a0\u00a0 times in that 30 to 45 minutes to an hour chunk\r\nof time that you’re setting aside to do this\u00a0\u00a0 you want to do this at a time when you’re not\r\ngoing to be distracted so turn off your cell phone\u00a0\u00a0 sort of get away so that people aren’t going to\r\nbe distracting you now it’s key to understand this\u00a0\u00a0 is going to be very distressing it’s going to be\r\nvery very difficult to do it’s going to make you\u00a0\u00a0 feel very uncomfortable and so if you’re feeling\r\nuncomfortable even at the thought of doing it\u00a0\u00a0 that’s normal this isn’t something that anyone\r\nshould look forward to doing because the whole\u00a0\u00a0 idea is to bring up the emotion to bring up\r\nthe distress and to learn to cope with it and\u00a0\u00a0 to let it just go away on its own like watching\r\nthat horror movie over and over and over again\u00a0\u00a0 so you do these ratings and\r\nwhat you should find is that\u00a0\u00a0 uh within a session of doing this so from\r\nthe beginning where you start with a rating\u00a0\u00a0 the first time you read it maybe a 9 out of 10 or\r\na 10 out of 10.\r\n\r\nAnd then you read it over 15 times\u00a0\u00a0 what you should find is that at the end of that\r\n15th time of reading it your rating should be\u00a0\u00a0 lower right the first time you do it maybe your\r\nrating at the 15th time is a five or a six out of\u00a0\u00a0 ten and then you do it again the next day and\r\nthe day after that and i encourage people to\u00a0\u00a0 do this for a week or two and what they find\r\nis that over the course of that week or two\u00a0\u00a0 the ratings both within each session tend to\r\ndecline and between each session they tend to\u00a0\u00a0 decline so after a couple of weeks of doing this\r\nthe distress at the you know 10th or you know 15th\u00a0\u00a0 day that you’ve done this those distress scores\r\nare a lot lower than they were in the first day\u00a0\u00a0 so this is like i said a very challenging exercise\r\nthis isn’t something that you want to do with\u00a0\u00a0 every worry because it takes a lot of time and\r\nit’s quite distressing so you want to use this\u00a0\u00a0 on those worries that are particularly problematic\r\nthose worries that come up again and again that\u00a0\u00a0 you’re really struggling with because this works\r\nit’s it’s not pleasant but it works so i’d liken\u00a0\u00a0 it a lot to that buckley’s cough syrup commercial\r\nyou know it tastes awful but it works that’s kind\u00a0\u00a0 of what what this cognitive exposure is all about\r\nas well it tastes awful but it does work as we’ve\u00a0\u00a0 gone along we’ve talked about lots of different\r\ntools for managing these various uh factors that\u00a0\u00a0 maintain worry we’ve talked about worry awareness\r\ntraining and categorizing worries as type one or\u00a0\u00a0 type 2 worries we’ve talked about the importance\r\nof building tolerance for uncertainty through\u00a0\u00a0 behavioral experiments with uncertainty we’ve\r\ntalked about ways of challenging worry beliefs\u00a0\u00a0 we’ve talked about improving problem orientation\r\nby recognizing problems earlier on by normalizing\u00a0\u00a0 the occurrence of problems and by reframing\r\nproblems as opportunities instead of threats\u00a0\u00a0 we’ve talked about cognitive exposure and how\r\nthat can be used to help address and deal with\u00a0\u00a0 type 2 worries so we’ve talked about a\r\nwhole bunch of skills a whole bunch of tools\u00a0\u00a0 and for a lot of my clients when we get to\r\nthis point of therapy they’ve learned a lot but\u00a0\u00a0 there’s a little bit of confusion in terms of like\r\nall of these skills seem a little bit disconnected\u00a0\u00a0 and they don’t really understand how they all come\r\ntogether and how to use all of them to effectively\u00a0\u00a0 manage worry and that’s what i want to talk\r\nabout in this video exactly how we put together\u00a0\u00a0 these tools and skills the order in which to use\r\nthem kind of like a recipe to best manage worry\u00a0\u00a0 so the very first step in terms\r\nof this worry management recipe\u00a0\u00a0 goes back to the very first tool we talked about\r\nwhich is worry awareness training you have to\u00a0\u00a0 be aware and you have to know what it is that\r\nyou’re worrying about and then you categorize\u00a0\u00a0 the worries once you’ve identified the word you\r\nthink about it and categorize it is this a type\u00a0\u00a0 1 worry or is this a type 2 worry so let’s start\r\nwith type 1 worries what would be the formula or\u00a0\u00a0 the recipe for dealing with type 1 worries and\r\nas a review type 1 worries are worries about\u00a0\u00a0 actual current real problems problems that\r\nyou’re actually experiencing in this moment\u00a0\u00a0 so the first step with type 1 worries is you’ve\r\nidentified it as a type one worry well the next\u00a0\u00a0 thing to do is to think about are there any ways\r\nin which i’m being intolerant of uncertainty in\u00a0\u00a0 this situation are there various things that i’m\r\ndoing that may be avoiding or trying to eliminate\u00a0\u00a0 uncertainty with this problem so for example\r\nlet’s imagine that i have a problem like i’ve just\u00a0\u00a0 gotten into an argument with my friend and uh me\r\nand my friend haven’t spoken in a couple of weeks\u00a0\u00a0 so it’s a current problem that i’m dealing with\r\nwell what are some of the ways in which i might be\u00a0\u00a0 intolerant of uncertainty in this situation well i\r\nmay be avoiding reaching out to my friend because\u00a0\u00a0 i’m concerned that they’re still upset with me and\r\nso i’m engaging in avoidance or i may be checking\u00a0\u00a0 in with other friends and seeking reassurance\r\nabout you know what i did was it was it wrong\u00a0\u00a0 would they be upset with me how would they react\r\nhave they heard anything from my friend about it\u00a0\u00a0 so thinking about all of the things that i might\r\nbe doing that are intolerant of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 and thinking about what is the opposite that\r\ni could be doing what are things that i can be\u00a0\u00a0 doing to tolerate uncertainty in that situation so\r\nthat’s the the step looking for opportunities to\u00a0\u00a0 be more tolerant of uncertainty or to be tolerant\r\nof uncertainty with this problem after that after\u00a0\u00a0 i’ve worked on tolerating uncertainty the next\r\nthing i want to do is to think about which of the\u00a0\u00a0 worry beliefs might be playing a role in this\r\nworry so i might hold some worry beliefs that\u00a0\u00a0 maybe me worrying about you know my relationship\r\nwith my friend it demonstrates that i’m caring\u00a0\u00a0 it demonstrates that i’m conscientious it\r\ndemonstrates that i’m a responsible person\u00a0\u00a0 who cares about his relationships that’s why\r\ni’m worrying about it so once i’ve identified\u00a0\u00a0 that worry belief that’s continuing to have me\r\nworry about this i can begin to challenge that\u00a0\u00a0 worry belief using some of those challenging\r\nquestions i talked about in a previous video\u00a0\u00a0 so i’ve engaged in trying to tolerate uncertainty\r\ni’ve identified and challenged my worry beliefs\u00a0\u00a0 the next step is to deal with\r\nthat negative problem orientation\u00a0\u00a0 so recognizing the problem earlier on well\r\ni’ve identified the worry so that’s good\u00a0\u00a0 now i want to normalize that\r\nproblems are normal it’s not um\u00a0\u00a0 it’s not that there’s something wrong with me that\r\ni’m having this problem with my friend it’s that\u00a0\u00a0 these things kind of happen um and then i want to\r\ntry and reframe this problem as an opportunity so\u00a0\u00a0 i can look at this as this is terrible me and my\r\nfriend are never going to get back together if i\u00a0\u00a0 try to reach out to my friend they’re going to be\r\nreally upset with me and it’s going to lead to an\u00a0\u00a0 even worse outcome so i’m thinking about all\r\nof the threat associated with this worry but\u00a0\u00a0 the goal here is for me to try to reframe that\r\nas what’s the opportunity or the challenge here\u00a0\u00a0 well maybe the opportunity in this is for\r\nme and my friend to be able to work out this\u00a0\u00a0 problem and by doing so we actually get closer\r\nbecause we’ve gone through it we’ve worked out\u00a0\u00a0 our difficulties and now we’re at a at a better\r\nplace than we were even before the problem came up\u00a0\u00a0 so then i can engage in the problem-solving\r\nsteps because i’ve now looked i’ve identified the\u00a0\u00a0 the problem i’ve reframed it i’ve normalized\r\nit that negative problem orientation is out\u00a0\u00a0 of the way and now i can actually engage\r\nin some of those problem-solving steps\u00a0\u00a0 that we talked about in a previous video so\r\nidentifying the problem identifying the goal\u00a0\u00a0 brainstorming possible solutions of how i\r\ncan fix this relationship with my friend\u00a0\u00a0 evaluating those possible solutions and picking\r\none developing a plan for what i’m going to do\u00a0\u00a0 and actually utilizing the plan or implementing\r\nthe plan and then seeing whether or not it’s\u00a0\u00a0 helped seeing whether or not me and my\r\nfriend have resolved our difficulties\u00a0\u00a0 so that if i do all of those things and if i\r\nsolve the problem at the end i’m no longer going\u00a0\u00a0 to be worrying about this issue so that’s the\r\nrecipe for how you deal with type 1 worries you\u00a0\u00a0 identify it and label it as a type one worry you\r\nlook for tolerating uncertainty opportunities as\u00a0\u00a0 a type one worry you challenge the worry beliefs\r\nthat are contributing to this type one worry you\u00a0\u00a0 address the negative problem orientation and you\r\nengage in problem solving so um it’s actually\u00a0\u00a0 pretty similar to the order in which i presented\r\nthese tools as we were going through the videos\u00a0\u00a0 and that was for a reason because that’s kind of\r\nthe order in which you want to use these tools\u00a0\u00a0 so that’s a type 1 worry well how do you deal with\r\ntype 2 worries well if you remember type 2 worries\u00a0\u00a0 are worries about future or potential problems\r\nproblems that haven’t happened yet problems that\u00a0\u00a0 may never happen and so what’s the approach\r\nfor dealing with these type 2 worries well\u00a0\u00a0 the first few steps are actually identical for\r\ndealing with type 1 worries so you’ve identified\u00a0\u00a0 the worry you’ve labeled as a type 2 worry the\r\nfirst thing to do is to look for opportunities to\u00a0\u00a0 tolerate uncertainty so for example if my type\r\n2 worry is i’ve planned my one vacation a year\u00a0\u00a0 to be a sunny a warm weather destination\r\nvacation and i’m starting to worry about\u00a0\u00a0 the weather and that the weather is going\r\nto be terrible and that it’s going to rain\u00a0\u00a0 the whole time and my vacation is going to\r\nbe ruined and this is something that really\u00a0\u00a0 sort of bothers me or is really concerning\r\nfor me and that i’m worrying about it a lot\u00a0\u00a0 well thinking about what are some of the things\r\nthat i might be doing to be more what are some\u00a0\u00a0 of the things that i could do to be more\r\ntolerant of uncertainty in this situation\u00a0\u00a0 well maybe i shouldn’t be checking the\r\nweather and the weather forecast for my\u00a0\u00a0 hot weather destination maybe i shouldn’t\r\nbe checking uh the farmer’s almanac to see\u00a0\u00a0 historically what the weather was like at that\r\ndestination over the time that i’m gonna be\u00a0\u00a0 traveling there maybe i shouldn’t be looking\r\ninto all of the possible things i could do\u00a0\u00a0 if the weather is not great or if it is raining\r\nthe whole time because those are all things that\u00a0\u00a0 are designed to eliminate uncertainty and so\r\nwhat i want to do is to try to be just more\u00a0\u00a0 tolerant of uncertainty in this situation and\r\nnot do those intolerant of uncertainty behaviors\u00a0\u00a0 so once i’ve worked through the things that\r\ni can do to be more tolerant of uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 i may want to challenge uh some of the beliefs\r\nabout the usefulness of this worry so maybe i’ll\u00a0\u00a0 hold i hold a belief that worrying about this\r\nmeans that i’m kind of preparing myself so that\u00a0\u00a0 if i worry about it ahead of time if when i get\r\nto my vacation it is raining i’ll kind of have\u00a0\u00a0 prepared myself emotionally for it and so i won’t\r\nbe so upset well identifying that worry belief and\u00a0\u00a0 challenging that worry belief as we talked about\r\nin the challenging worry beliefs video so now\u00a0\u00a0 i’ve i’ve gone through i’m tolerating uncertainty\r\ni’ve identified and challenged the worry beliefs\u00a0\u00a0 the next step i want to do if i’m still worrying\r\nabout this is to engage in that cognitive exposure\u00a0\u00a0 exercise that i talked about which is essentially\r\nto write out a script imagining that worst case\u00a0\u00a0 scenario imagining that i end up on this\r\nvacation and it’s pouring the whole time\u00a0\u00a0 and imagining how bad it would be to its very end\r\nand then reviewing that script over and over and\u00a0\u00a0 over again to essentially drain the emotion out of\r\nit so that’s the process for type 2 worries and if\u00a0\u00a0 you notice the first few steps are identical to\r\nthe steps in type 1 worries all that differs is\u00a0\u00a0 what you do at the end whether it’s cognitive\r\nexposure or whether or not it’s problem solving\u00a0\u00a0 so those are the recipes that’s the order in which\r\nyou want to use these tools and that’s how these\u00a0\u00a0 tools sort of fit together to work together for\r\nthe most effective worry management now one of the\u00a0\u00a0 things that can come up is sometimes my clients\r\nwill say okay i understand this and i understand\u00a0\u00a0 it makes sense what i do with type 1 where is\r\nit makes sense what i do with type 2 worries\u00a0\u00a0 but what if i make a mistake at that very first\r\nstep what if i label a type 1 worry as a type 2\u00a0\u00a0 worry so for example it’s a worry about an actual\r\nproblem but i mislabel it as a type 2 worry so\u00a0\u00a0 i think it’s a worry about a future or potential\r\nproblem well whenever clients bring this up i say\u00a0\u00a0 okay well let’s walk through what would happen\r\nthen well so it’s a type one worry in actuality\u00a0\u00a0 but i imagine it a type two worry so what i’m\r\ngonna do with dealing with the type two worry\u00a0\u00a0 is i’m going to be tolerating uncertainty well\r\ni’d be doing that for a type 1 worry anyway\u00a0\u00a0 i’d be identifying and challenging worry beliefs\r\nwell be doing that for a type 1 worry anyway\u00a0\u00a0 then i’d engage in cognitive exposure so i write\r\nout a script and start working on a script about\u00a0\u00a0 the worst case scenario that i can imagine in\r\nthis well that wouldn’t really work for a type\u00a0\u00a0 one worry because the type one worries about an\r\nactual problem but what will happen and this has\u00a0\u00a0 happened with some of my clients before is they\r\nstart working on a worry script and they start\u00a0\u00a0 reviewing the worry script and what they find\r\nis that they start to get really frustrated\u00a0\u00a0 because they’re reviewing a wordy script\r\nabout something they have control over\u00a0\u00a0 and then once they identify that no wait\r\nthis is something i have control over\u00a0\u00a0 then they can recognize you know what this isn’t\r\nactually a type two worry this is a type one worry\u00a0\u00a0 and at that point they then shift to dealing with\r\nit in terms of addressing the negative problem\u00a0\u00a0 orientation and engaging in problem solving so\r\nthere’s nothing really wrong with misclassifying\u00a0\u00a0 a type 1 worry as a type 2 worry because once\r\nyou get to the cognitive exposure part of the\u00a0\u00a0 the recipe you’ll recognize that this cognitive\r\nexposure isn’t working because i can do something\u00a0\u00a0 about it and once i recognize i can do something\r\nabout it i can then shift over to addressing it\u00a0\u00a0 like a type one word so think about what would\r\nhappen if it’s actually a type two worry but i\u00a0\u00a0 misclassify it as a type one worry so to worry\r\nabout a future or potential problem but i deal\u00a0\u00a0 with it like it’s a worry about a current problem\r\nwell the first few steps are going to be identical\u00a0\u00a0 i’m going to be tolerating uncertainty i’m going\r\nto be identifying and challenging worry beliefs\u00a0\u00a0 the only difference is now i’m going to start\r\nto engage in problem solving or i’m going to try\u00a0\u00a0 to engage in problem solving for a problem that\r\ndoesn’t exist well as soon as i start to try and\u00a0\u00a0 engage in problem solving i’m going to recognize\r\nthat the problem doesn’t currently exist and once\u00a0\u00a0 i’m aware that the problem doesn’t currently exist\r\nthat’s my cue that this is actually a type 2 worry\u00a0\u00a0 and so then i can shift to working on a cognitive\r\nexposure script if i need to so the idea here is\u00a0\u00a0 not to worry about or not to get too preoccupied\r\nwith having to have it perfectly clear is this a\u00a0\u00a0 type 1 worry is this a type 2 worry like i said\r\nfrom the very beginning just do your best just\u00a0\u00a0 sort of do your best to try and figure out if this\r\nis type 1 or type 2 and just go with it because\u00a0\u00a0 the process is self-correcting the first few steps\r\nare going to be identical whether or not it’s type\u00a0\u00a0 1 or a type 2 worry and if you misclassify the\r\nworries it’s ok because you’ll recognize that\u00a0\u00a0 as soon as you start doing either the cognitive\r\nexposure or the problem solving and you’ll\u00a0\u00a0 recognize that it’s not working which means\r\nthat you’ve probably misclassified the worry\u00a0\u00a0 and so you just need to shift to whatever tool\r\nyou need to use for the other type of work for some people they find that some of their\r\nworries don’t really fit nicely into this type\u00a0\u00a0 1 type 2 categorization that there seems to be\r\na bit of type 1 component to the worry but also\u00a0\u00a0 a type 2 component to the worry so the worry is\r\nis kind of more complex there’s kind of this mix\u00a0\u00a0 of type 1 and type 2 worries so the question\r\nbecomes how exactly do i deal with this how do\u00a0\u00a0 i deal with these complex worries and so what i\r\nwanted to talk about is kind of a formula recipe\u00a0\u00a0 for these type these complex worries that actually\r\nfollows quite nicely from the previous video\u00a0\u00a0 so if you think about the very first step in worry\r\nmanagement we identify it as recognizing what it\u00a0\u00a0 is that you’re worrying about and labeling\r\nthe worry is it type one or is it type two\u00a0\u00a0 well in this situation what you’re doing is you’re\r\nrecognizing and you’re identifying the worry\u00a0\u00a0 and recognizing that it’s both type one and type\r\ntwo it’s a mixed worry so i’ll give you an example\u00a0\u00a0 of a mixed worry suppose i have a business and\r\nduring the busiest time of the year i have a\u00a0\u00a0 whole bunch of staff members quit or get sick and\r\nso i don’t have enough staff to be able to fill\u00a0\u00a0 all of the orders that i have and so then i start\r\nto worry well this is going to really upset a lot\u00a0\u00a0 of my customers and what if those customers decide\r\nthat they’re going to go shop somewhere else and\u00a0\u00a0 then this will have a real negative impact on\r\nmy business and my business is going to decline\u00a0\u00a0 and maybe shut down in the future because i’m\r\nnot going to be able to recover from this setback\u00a0\u00a0 so it’s got a bit of a type one component to\r\nit that i’m dealing with a problem right now\u00a0\u00a0 of my staff all either quitting or getting sick\r\nand not having enough staff to uh complete all\u00a0\u00a0 of the orders so that’s the type one component of\r\nthe worry but the type two component of the worry\u00a0\u00a0 is my business suffering in the future because\r\nof this and ultimately me losing my business\u00a0\u00a0 because all of my customers have gone somewhere\r\nelse that’s the type two component of this worry\u00a0\u00a0 so we’ve got a little bit of a mix our type\r\none worry has spiraled into a type two worry so\u00a0\u00a0 what do you do with this i’ve identified it as a\r\ncomplex worry i’ve identified it as a mixed worry\u00a0\u00a0 what’s what do i do to manage this worry well\r\nvery first step as we talked about in the previous\u00a0\u00a0 video is to look for ways in which i can be more\r\ntolerant of uncertainty in this situation how do i\u00a0\u00a0 tolerate uncertainty or another way of thinking\r\nabout it is what are the ways in which i’m being\u00a0\u00a0 intolerant of uncertainty in this situation so\r\nmaybe what i’m doing is i’m avoiding notifying my\u00a0\u00a0 customers that their shipment is going to be\r\ndelayed because i’m concerned that if i notify\u00a0\u00a0 them they’re going to cancel the order well all\r\nthat’s really doing is maintaining my worry about\u00a0\u00a0 you know what my customers are thinking so\r\nmore tolerating uncertainty thing to do in\u00a0\u00a0 that situation is to notify them call them explain\r\nto them what’s going on and see what happens so\u00a0\u00a0 thinking about what are the ways in which i can\r\nbe more tolerant of uncertainty in this situation\u00a0\u00a0 second thing you do like with all worries\r\nis to identify and challenge worry beliefs\u00a0\u00a0 to think about what are the worry\r\nbeliefs that might be playing a role\u00a0\u00a0 in me worrying about these series of events\r\nand the future series of events do i think\u00a0\u00a0 that worrying about this situation worrying about\r\nnot having enough staff to fulfill these orders\u00a0\u00a0 is worrying about it going to help me solve that\r\nproblem well then i can think about the tools\u00a0\u00a0 that i’ve learned to help me challenge that belief\r\nthat worry aids in problem solving so i identify\u00a0\u00a0 and challenge the worry beliefs that might be\r\ncontributing to my worry so i’ve gone through\u00a0\u00a0 those steps and those are the same steps we use\r\nregardless of the worry regardless of whether\u00a0\u00a0 it’s a type 1 or a type 2 worry but now what do\r\ni do it’s still there maybe i’m still worrying\u00a0\u00a0 about it and it’s this mixed word it’s still got\r\ntype 1 and it’s still got type 2 components to it\u00a0\u00a0 well what i recommend for clients in this type\r\nof situation is to focus on it like it’s a type 1\u00a0\u00a0 worry so look at the negative problem orientation\r\nthat may be contributing to the worry so\u00a0\u00a0 uh trying to reframe the problem as an opportunity\r\nwhat’s the opportunity in this situation for me\u00a0\u00a0 well maybe the opportunity is for me to figure out\r\nways of becoming more streamlined in how i get my\u00a0\u00a0 product out to my customers maybe i can figure out\r\nmore efficient ways of fulfilling the orders with\u00a0\u00a0 fewer staff which will help me grow my business\r\nin the future so there’s opportunities in this and\u00a0\u00a0 so if i can reframe those offer reframe the the\r\nproblem rather than just seeing it as a threat i\u00a0\u00a0 reframe it as an opportunity then i’m more likely\r\nto then be able to engage in some problem solving\u00a0\u00a0 with this so i then engage in those problem\r\nsolving steps to try and address the problem of\u00a0\u00a0 not having enough staff to fulfill these orders so\r\ni engage in those six problem solving steps that\u00a0\u00a0 i talked about in an earlier video so now i’ve\r\nengaged in effective problem solving suppose i’ve\u00a0\u00a0 i’ve solved the problem so i’ve i figured out ways\r\nof either hiring new temporary staff or being more\u00a0\u00a0 efficient and being able to fulfill these orders\r\nwith the staff that i have so i’ve solved that\u00a0\u00a0 problem well there’s a good chance that by solving\r\nthe problem i’ve now eliminated the type 2 worry\u00a0\u00a0 part of this worry as well so i’ve eliminated\r\nthe type 1 because i’ve addressed the problem\u00a0\u00a0 but now that i’ve addressed the problem maybe i’m\r\nnot going to worry about losing all my customers\u00a0\u00a0 anymore and maybe i’m not going to worry\r\nabout becoming bankrupt and losing my company\u00a0\u00a0 so by addressing it as a type one worry i\r\nmay fully solve the type two worry part of\u00a0\u00a0 this and fully address the complex worry by\r\njust treating it like it’s a type one worry\u00a0\u00a0 but suppose that i solved the problem i’ve\r\naddressed the type one worry part of it\u00a0\u00a0 but there’s still this mingling worry that i have\r\nabout yeah that was close what if in the future\u00a0\u00a0 my business falls apart and i start to keep\r\nworrying about that type two part of the worry\u00a0\u00a0 well if i’m still worrying about the type two part\r\nof the worry then i can engage in the cognitive\u00a0\u00a0 exposure we’ve talked about so write out a script\r\nimagining that worst case scenario and then\u00a0\u00a0 reviewing that script over and over and over again\r\nto essentially drain the emotion out of that worry\u00a0\u00a0 so these complex worries even though they\r\nseem more complex they’re actually pretty\u00a0\u00a0 straightforward in terms of the steps you\r\nneed to use in the order you need to use them\u00a0\u00a0 and they’re very similar to how we deal with\r\nbe it a type 1 worry or be it a type 2 worry\u00a0\u00a0 so you essentially treat it like it’s a type 1\r\nworry you identify the worry tolerate uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 challenge worry beliefs address the negative\r\nproblem orientation and engage in problem solving\u00a0\u00a0 at that point if there’s any type\r\n2 part of the worry left over\u00a0\u00a0 then you engage in the cognitive exposure so what\r\ni like about this is that it flows nicely with\u00a0\u00a0 what we talked about in the previous video about\r\nour recipe for managing worries and that complex\u00a0\u00a0 worries are actually not all that complex in\r\nterms of what you need to do to address the worry so what we’ve done over the last 14 videos\r\nis talk about a number of worry management\u00a0\u00a0 skills and tools we started out with our basic\r\nengine of worry we talked about the role that\u00a0\u00a0 intolerance of uncertainty plays as the fuel\r\nthat drives the worry engine we’ve talked about\u00a0\u00a0 the role of beliefs about the usefulness of\r\nworry and how that those beliefs can maintain\u00a0\u00a0 excessive difficult to control worry we’ve talked\r\nabout the role of negative problem orientation\u00a0\u00a0 and ineffective problem solving in keeping\r\nworry about current problems going we’ve talked\u00a0\u00a0 about how cognitive avoidance can maintain\r\nworries about future or potential problems\u00a0\u00a0 we’ve also talked about a flow chart for\r\nand recipe for how you go about managing\u00a0\u00a0 different types of worries including type 1\r\nworries type 2 worries and mix or complex worries\u00a0\u00a0 so we have talked about a lot of tools we’ve\r\ntalked about a lot of skills and you may have\u00a0\u00a0 learned a lot by watching all of these videos so\r\nthe question becomes okay well what do i do with\u00a0\u00a0 this now moving forward now one of the things i\r\nwant to point out is that this isn’t this model\u00a0\u00a0 of worry that i’m talking about here isn’t just\r\nsomething that i’ve imagined it’s actually based\u00a0\u00a0 in a lot of scientific research that has backed\r\nthis model of worry and back this treatment\u00a0\u00a0 protocol that i’ve been walking you through this\r\ntreatment protocol is based on the research and\u00a0\u00a0 work of a really brilliant psychologist named\r\nmichelle duga who’s at concordia university\u00a0\u00a0 in montreal and what duga and his colleagues did\r\nwas they developed this protocol and then they\u00a0\u00a0 administered it to a number of people who worried\r\nexcessively people with generalized anxiety\u00a0\u00a0 disorder and what they found was that at the end\r\nof treatment not surprisingly the vast majority of\u00a0\u00a0 people who went through this treatment showed\r\nsignificant improvements in their worry levels\u00a0\u00a0 in terms of their anxiety levels so it showed that\r\nat the end of treatment the treatment had actually\u00a0\u00a0 worked it actually been really effective in\r\nterms of helping people better manage their worry\u00a0\u00a0 but what they did was they took the research\r\neven a step further and they followed up\u00a0\u00a0 the people two years later and\r\nwhat they found was actually quite\u00a0\u00a0 encouraging they found that the majority of\r\npeople who went through this treatment protocol\u00a0\u00a0 at two years later we’re still showing the\r\nsame gains and the same improvement that\u00a0\u00a0 they had demonstrated at the end of treatment\r\nand so what that means is that the treatment\u00a0\u00a0 wasn’t just effective as long as the person was\r\nin the treatment or was receiving the therapy\u00a0\u00a0 but that they maintained the progress two years\r\nlater and so there are lasting improvements and\u00a0\u00a0 lasting gains from this treatment but what they\r\nalso found was that there was a subset of people\u00a0\u00a0 who actually showed even further improvements\r\nat the two-year mark that they demonstrated\u00a0\u00a0 even lower levels of worry and even lower levels\r\nof anxiety two years later than they did when they\u00a0\u00a0 stopped the therapy so what this demonstrates is\r\nthat for the most of the people the vast majority\u00a0\u00a0 of people who go through this treatment\r\nand who go through the treatment protocol\u00a0\u00a0 actually maintain their gains or show even further\r\nimprovement two years later and that’s great to\u00a0\u00a0 know so what it means is that this treatment isn’t\r\njust something that you do and then the benefits\u00a0\u00a0 go away it’s something in which the benefits are\r\nmaintained for at least two years likely beyond\u00a0\u00a0 but in the research what they also found\r\nwas that there was a small subset of people\u00a0\u00a0 who experienced a recurrence of symptoms so at two\r\nyears later they are actually demonstrating higher\u00a0\u00a0 levels of worry and higher levels of anxiety\r\nthan they were when they stopped treatment\u00a0\u00a0 and so what dugon his colleagues looked at was\r\nwhat was the difference between these groups\u00a0\u00a0 of people what was it about the people who\r\nshowed a recurrence of symptoms who showed\u00a0\u00a0 a deterioration in their\r\nlevel of worry and anxiety\u00a0\u00a0 at two years compared to the people who maintained\r\ntheir gains for who even got better at two years\u00a0\u00a0 and not surprisingly what they found was that the\r\npeople who maintained their gains or who continued\u00a0\u00a0 to get better at two years those were the people\r\nwho were still using the worry management skills\u00a0\u00a0 whereas the people who showed a worsening in\r\ntheir symptoms at two years they were people who\u00a0\u00a0 at the end of treatment had felt better and\r\nthen they were just happy to be done with\u00a0\u00a0 excessive worry they were happy to be over\r\nit and they just wanted to move on with their\u00a0\u00a0 lives and so they stopped using the skills and\r\nthis is one of the things about this type of\u00a0\u00a0 treatment or this approach for worry management\r\nit’s a skills-based form of treatment it is not\u00a0\u00a0 a worry cure it’s worry management\r\nbecause the reality is everyone worries\u00a0\u00a0 and everyone will always worry but this\r\ntreatment isn’t about preventing worry\u00a0\u00a0 it’s about helping a person control and manage\r\nthe worry so it’s not so excessive or interfering\u00a0\u00a0 in a person’s life and so if you stop using the\r\ntools then they’re going to stop being of benefit\u00a0\u00a0 and you’re likely going to fall back into old\r\nhabits of excessive worry and high anxiety\u00a0\u00a0 and so it really is about what can you do to make\r\nsure that you’re continuing to use your tools what\u00a0\u00a0 can you do to ensure that you’re maintaining the\r\ngains and using these worry management skills on\u00a0\u00a0 an ongoing basis and i want to give a few tips\r\nabout how to do that uh in this video so the\u00a0\u00a0 first thing to realize and the first thing that’s\r\nreally important to understand is that there will\u00a0\u00a0 be times when you will experience a resurgence\r\nin worry there will be times in your life moving\u00a0\u00a0 forward where you will experience higher levels\r\nof worry because life stressors will come up\u00a0\u00a0 things will come up and we know that life stress\r\ntends to exacerbate and increase worry for people\u00a0\u00a0 now there’s a difference between a temporary\r\nincrease in worry and a full relapse of worry\u00a0\u00a0 so what you want to do is to\r\ntake these life stressors and\u00a0\u00a0 to take these uh the increase in worry\r\nthat comes with these life stressors\u00a0\u00a0 and really apply the worry management tools to\r\naddress the worries as they come up and help you\u00a0\u00a0 get through those life stressors and get through\r\nthe worries associated with those life stressors\u00a0\u00a0 now sometimes life stressors are unexpected\r\nthey come out of the blue i suddenly lose my job\u00a0\u00a0 someone in my family suddenly gets sick and i\r\ndidn’t anticipate it there was no way i could\u00a0\u00a0 have anticipated it it’s not really much you can\r\ndo about those types of stressors however there\u00a0\u00a0 are some life stressors that are predictable and\r\nso what you want to do one of the first things you\u00a0\u00a0 can do and to ensure that you’re maintaining\r\nuh your use of these worry management skills\u00a0\u00a0 is to plan ahead for future stressors so for\r\nexample some predictable life stressors are\u00a0\u00a0 the holiday season christmas and new year’s\r\na lot of people find that time of year to be\u00a0\u00a0 extremely stressful well that’s an example of\r\na predictable stressor so if you know that the\u00a0\u00a0 holiday season’s coming up the idea is to plan\r\nahead for what it is that you’re going to do\u00a0\u00a0 to better manage your worry or to manage your\r\nworry that comes up with that stress so it may\u00a0\u00a0 be that you plan to do more formal tolerating\r\nuncertainty experiments during that time it may\u00a0\u00a0 be that you’re more hyper aware and hyper tuned to\r\nthose problems that tend to come up for you over\u00a0\u00a0 and over again and so you can identify those\r\nproblems earlier on during the holiday season\u00a0\u00a0 and then be able to kick into your reframing and\r\nproblem solving so you want to plan ahead and if\u00a0\u00a0 you can plan ahead for foreseeable futures and to\r\ndevelop a plan for what you’re going to be doing\u00a0\u00a0 to manage your worry during that time that can go\r\na long way in preventing you from spiraling into\u00a0\u00a0 excessive worry and high levels of anxiety during\r\nthose stressful times second thing you can do to\u00a0\u00a0 maintain your worry is to think about what are\r\nsome early warning signs that you may want to\u00a0\u00a0 pay attention to that would indicate to you that\r\nyou’re starting to slip back into old excessive\u00a0\u00a0 worry habits now the thing is people don’t\r\njust tend to start worrying excessively one day\u00a0\u00a0 it’s for a lot of people it’s something that\r\nthey’ve done their whole life so you may have\u00a0\u00a0 gone through these worry management videos you’ve\r\nlearned a lot of skills and you’re using them and\u00a0\u00a0 you’re able to really manage your worry quite\r\nwell but it’s important to remember that you’ve\u00a0\u00a0 only been managing your worry quite well for a\r\nfew weeks now compared to maybe a lifetime of\u00a0\u00a0 excessive worry so that lifetime of excessive\r\nworry is kind of like an old habit and so\u00a0\u00a0 it’s really easy to fall back and slip back\r\ninto those old worry excessive worry habits\u00a0\u00a0 so the idea is to think about what are some clear\r\nsigns for me that are going to be like early\u00a0\u00a0 warning signs that tell me that i’m starting to\r\nslide down an old familiar path of excessive worry\u00a0\u00a0 you want to try to make these as specific as\r\npossible so that they can be your early alarm\u00a0\u00a0 or your early warning sign that something bad or\r\nsomething wrong is going on in terms of worrying\u00a0\u00a0 excessively so things like noticing that you’ve\r\nbeen having trouble sleeping for the last four\u00a0\u00a0 nights in a row things like noticing that you\r\nhaven’t been doing any tolerating uncertainty\u00a0\u00a0 experiments for a couple of weeks noticing\r\nthat maybe you’ve been avoiding some social\u00a0\u00a0 interactions because you’ve been a little bit more\r\nuncomfortable or or experiencing a bit more stress\u00a0\u00a0 those behavioral indicators those behavioral\r\nsigns that maybe you’re sliding back into old\u00a0\u00a0 habits because once you recognize that maybe\r\nyou’re starting that slide back into old habits\u00a0\u00a0 you can then kick into using your worry management\r\nskills again and really focusing on those worry\u00a0\u00a0 management skills to get back on track and to\r\nensure that that little lapse doesn’t lead to\u00a0\u00a0 a full relapse in terms of high levels of worry\r\nhigh levels of anxiety because it’s a lot easier\u00a0\u00a0 to make a course correction earlier on than it is\r\nwhen you find yourself worrying excessively again and the third tip for ensuring that you’re\r\nmaintaining your progress is to have a plan for\u00a0\u00a0 what you would do if you ever did find yourself\r\nworrying excessively again now i know for a lot\u00a0\u00a0 of people they don’t like to think about this\r\nthey want to to be positive and optimistic about\u00a0\u00a0 being able to manage their worry moving forward\r\nand that it’s not going to be a problem for them\u00a0\u00a0 again but i like to think of this\r\nmore like an insurance policy\u00a0\u00a0 so the idea is to sit down and spend some\r\ntime writing out a recipe or a formula for\u00a0\u00a0 exactly what it is that you would\r\ndo what are the various steps\u00a0\u00a0 that you would need you would go through if you\r\nnoticed yourself worrying excessively again so it\u00a0\u00a0 may be uh bookmarking or uh or highlighting some\r\nof these videos and going back to watching some\u00a0\u00a0 of these videos it may be that you’ve taken some\r\nnotes from these videos so it’s about reviewing\u00a0\u00a0 your notes and having a plan for what is it what\r\nit is that i’m going to do if i catch myself\u00a0\u00a0 worrying excessively again and you can have this\r\nthis instruction manual and you can fold it up put\u00a0\u00a0 it in an envelope and then right on the outside\r\nof the envelope open in case of worry emergency\u00a0\u00a0 because if you ever catch yourself worrying\r\nexcessively again at some point in the future\u00a0\u00a0 it’s really difficult in that moment to remember\r\nexactly what it is that you need to do to better\u00a0\u00a0 manage or better control your worry so what you\r\ncan do if you ever find yourself in that situation\u00a0\u00a0 is you go to this envelope you open it up and then\r\nyou just read the instructions that you have come\u00a0\u00a0 up with for you and so it can be a nice insurance\r\npolicy and hopefully you never need it because\u00a0\u00a0 you’ve been planning for stressors you’ve been\r\ncatching yourself in those early warning signs\u00a0\u00a0 that you might be falling back into old habits\r\nand you’re continuing to use the worry management\u00a0\u00a0 skills that you’ve learned on an ongoing\r\nbasis maybe you never need to open that letter\u00a0\u00a0 but it’s there for you just in case you need it so\r\nthose are some tips for maintaining the progress\u00a0\u00a0 that you’ve made uh through using these worry\r\nmanagement tools that i’ve been talking about\u00a0\u00a0 and that’s the end of our 14-part series on worry\r\nmanagement you’ve learned a lot if you’ve watched\u00a0\u00a0 all of the videos you’ve learned a lot about\r\nworry you’ve learned a lot about the factors\u00a0\u00a0 that maintain worry and all of the tools\r\nthat you can use to manage worry this is not\u00a0\u00a0 five simple steps to overcome worry i’ve never\r\nbelieved in that sort of approach because\u00a0\u00a0 i think it tends to invalidate and minimize\r\nworry if it was as easy as five simple steps\u00a0\u00a0 nobody would be worrying excessively worry\r\nmanagement is a lot of work that’s a lot\u00a0\u00a0 of hard work but if you understand the skills\r\nand you understand the tools and you use them\u00a0\u00a0 these skills and tools work and you can better\r\ncontrol and better manage your worry so i would\u00a0\u00a0 love to hear your thoughts and comments about\r\nthis so please leave me some comments down below\u00a0\u00a0 uh if you like this video if you found\r\nit helpful please hit the like button\u00a0\u00a0 and if you’d like to see more of my videos please\r\nhit the subscribe button and the notification bell\u00a0\u00a0 and you’ll be alerted every thursday when i post\r\na new video so thank you for making it all the way\u00a0\u00a0 to the end of this video and all the way to the\r\nend of this 14 part series on worry management\u00a0\u00a0 it’s been a lot but i hope it’s been helpful\r\nso thank you and i will see you in the next one\r\n<h3 style=\"color: blue;\"><strong><em><em>m<sup><strong>R<\/strong><\/sup><\/em>. <strong>M<\/strong><sub>\u2205<\/sub>c<sup>\u2205<\/sup>!<\/em><\/strong><strong><em>,<\/em><\/strong> (<a href=\"http:\/\/on.fb.me\/1bBcgfu\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Courier New; font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #0000cc;\">http:\/\/<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Comic Sans MS;\"><span style=\"color: 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Wow, Paul &amp; Todd, this is a competition killer. “<a href=\"https:\/\/jvz4.com\/c\/335985\/306929\"><strong>Animation Studio<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/jvz4.com\/c\/335985\/306929\"><strong>Animation<\/strong><\/a> Creator That You Have Been Waiting For Has Finally Arrived… …..”\r\n\r\n<a href=\"https:\/\/jvz4.com\/c\/335985\/306988\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ibb.co\/fFnLP9N\/OIP-f3.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/flywait.pythsys.hop.clickbank.net\">Pythagorean Betting System<\/a> <strong>\ua19b\u30b7\u27ab<\/strong> The <a href=\"http:\/\/flywait.pythsys.hop.clickbank.net\">Pythagorean Betting System<\/a> is my ultimate way to find out which team is undervalued and overvalued in all the major professional leagues, including NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL. 8 months later, the user says: “The <a href=\"http:\/\/flywait.pythsys.hop.clickbank.net\">Pythagorean Betting System<\/a> is … 18:07 The latest testimonial from Anders in Norway. He says: “The Pythagorean Betting System is amazing!… Every day you’re not inside, you’re losing money! God bless you Champ. It’s been an amazing ride!”\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/flywait.pythsys.hop.clickbank.net\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ibb.co\/crJG4S1\/th-2023-11-28-T104713-743.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>do you worry a lot do you know somebody who does worry a lot\u00a0\u00a0 well this is the ultimate guide for understanding managing and better controlling worries\u00a0\u00a0 hi everyone welcome to the ultimate video guide for managing worry this video is going to be a\u00a0\u00a0 long video that puts together a number of other videos &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/152078\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">3 HOURS of Worry Management Skills: The Ultimate Generalized Anxiety Disorder Guide | Dr. Rami Nader<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1013,"featured_media":152079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[101,5,6],"tags":[61246,61252,37013,42241,58677,37009,61245,61254,61253,61248,61249,61247,61251,61250,34597],"class_list":["post-152078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment-events","category-causes-and-prevention","category-reducing-triggers","tag-cbt-for-generalized-anxiety-disorder","tag-cbt-therapy-for-generalized-anxiety-disorder","tag-gad","tag-gad-what-it-is-and-how-to-treat-it","tag-generalised-anxiety-disorder","tag-generalized-anxiety-disorder","tag-generalized-anxiety-disorder-treatment","tag-generalized-anxiety-disorder-treatment-without-medication","tag-generalized-anxiety-disorder-treatment-without-medications","tag-how-to-manage-worry","tag-how-to-stop-worrying","tag-intolerance-of-uncertainty","tag-treatment-for-gad","tag-treatment-for-generalized-anxiety-disorder","tag-worry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/152078_maxresdefault.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152078"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152120,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152078\/revisions\/152120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}