HOW TO MANAGE 'WHAT IF' WORRIES

I’ve recently been trying a new daily practice to help me manage my worries called a thought download. The basic idea of this is spending fifteen minutes, every day if possible, literally downloading all of my thoughts onto a piece of paper until my mind is empty. It’s early days, but I do find this process empties my mind of all the clutter, and then depending on how much time I have I will pick one or two of the thoughts and work them through in WorryTree.

One thing I’ve noticed since I began practicing this technique is that a large number of my downloaded thoughts tend to begin with ‘what if’.

What if my daughter has a rough time in High School?

What if I don’t earn any money next month?

What if the plane crashes?

(All genuine thoughts by the way).

WHAT IF MY HYPOTHETICAL WORRIES GET COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL?

Many people split worry into two kinds of worried thoughts: hypothetical and practical (also known as real-life worries). Where practical worries tend to be about real-life current problems that can be dealt with through some kind of action, hypothetical worries are sneakier and tend to be about situations that might or could happen but which haven’t happened yet. Hypothetical worries will often start along the lines of ‘what if…?’

For me, hypothetical worries are the thoughts I find most difficult to deal with because in my mind there is a chance, even if small, that the event could happen. We’ll get to how to deal with hypothetical worry in a moment.

PRACTICAL WORRIES CAN USUALLY BE RESOLVED

Practical, or real-life, worries on the other hand tend to have solutions. They’re generally about real or current events which you can work through and problem solve. A practical worry might be something like worrying about your cat’s limp (solution = book a vets appointment and get her checked) or worrying about a difficult call you have to make at work tomorrow (solutions = plan the call in advance, get some advice, find a quiet area to take it etc).

With a bit of problem-solving you can work through most practical worries to some kind of resolution or at least a plan of action to help deal with it.

CAN YOU DO ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR WORRY?

For those worries that really don’t have a solution because they’re about events that haven’t happened yet (and in all likelihood probably never will) we have to use a different approach. Problem-solving isn’t going to work here because there isn’t really a problem to be solved. Whilst possibly I could create an action plan around managing my anxiety when I travel on a plane (what if the plane crashes?) I can’t problem solve the plane crash because that’s pretty much out of my hands and in those of the pilot.

Likewise, whilst I could put some plans in place and think through how I might help my daughter if she has a rough time in High School, she’s not even in High School yet so this isn’t a problem that I can solve. It may not even happen!

These are therefore some of the most difficult worries because we can’t sort them out and move them on. Here’s where our minds can spiral into a ‘what if’ chorus one after the other ending only in a day lost to rumination and anxiety.

HOW DO WE MANAGE HYPOTHETICAL WORRIES?

This is where we need to mindfully refocus our attention so that we can break the chain of worried thoughts and carry on with our day. In WorryTree, we call this technique distraction and it’s where we change the track of our mind onto another path.

There are so many ways we can do this, and sometimes it only takes a couple of minutes to free ourselves of the hypothetical worry. Different techniques will work for different people, but here are a few I like to use myself to break the chain of hypothetical worry:

  • Finding ten blue things around me to count

  • Going for a short walk outside in the fresh air

  • Lighting a candle

  • Watching an episode of Friends

  • Making a cuppa and reading a magazine for ten minutes

  • Doing some exercise.

Anything that encourages your mind to look away for five minutes or so can be enough to refocus your attention onto something more positive and that’s often enough to move you away from that particular worry for good.

For some, worry time also works well for hypothetical worries because you are parking the thought for later on and then setting boundaries around how long you’re allowed to worry about it for. You can read more about using the worry time technique here.

So, next time you’re worrying about something, try asking yourself if the worry is hypothetical or practical and taking it from there. I’d love to know how you get on and also what kind of things you use to mindfully refocus your attention or distract yourself from worry? Let me know in the comments or get in touch on instagram!

Louise x

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