Anxiety Leeds by chrisworfolkfoundation - Dailymotion

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00:00A good question to ask ourselves is, why do we worry?

00:04Now sometimes people kind of dismissively say,

00:06oh, what's the point in worrying about it?

00:09As if that's kind of magically supposed to make it go away.

00:12And of course it doesn't.

00:13It's not that simple, but it's still useful

00:17to understand the kind of worry process

00:19and what's going on there.

00:21Because our emotions tell us stuff.

00:24Like they're really useful in motion focused therapy.

00:26We talk about the message that our feelings

00:29are giving us.

00:30Worry is often a tool to motivate ourselves

00:33to get to safety, to study harder,

00:35to not mouth off at our boss.

00:39Every time we think about maybe punching our boss

00:42because we're really angry about them,

00:43we worry, oh no, I would lose my job.

00:45That's a really healthy level of worry there

00:48because actually if you mouth off or you hit your boss,

00:51you almost certainly will lose your job

00:53in a lot of situations.

00:55So it's good in that sense

00:57that it's telling us something important.

00:59But with anxiety, we often get trapped in these cycles

01:03where we know the worry isn't telling us anything important,

01:06but we just can't make it go away.

01:09So what do we do in these situations?

01:11Well, there's a couple of things we could do here.

01:15So we could say to ourselves,

01:17okay, what's the benefit of worrying about this?

01:20Like, can I actually do something about it?

01:23Because if I can, then maybe that's a call to action.

01:27If I'm worried that there's some mold growing in my bathroom,

01:35then maybe I should worry a bit about that

01:37and speak to the landlord or get it taken care of.

01:40That's something I can actually, I can do it about.

01:44But let's say I'm waiting on some test results

01:47from my doctor and I'm really worrying about that.

01:51There's nothing I can do in that situation.

01:54I've just got to wait for the test results to come back.

01:56So that's a good example of saying to myself,

01:59okay, well, there's nothing I can do about this,

02:02but I'm still feeling really worried about this.

02:06And what can be really useful here

02:07is rather than just saying, well, I'll stop worrying about it

02:10is to bring some compassion to ourselves to say,

02:13ah, yeah, like I really am scared

02:16about what these test results might say.

02:18So no wonder I'm constantly worrying about it.

02:21But I know there's nothing I can do

02:23when I just have to sit with these uncomfortable worries

02:26about what's gonna happen in the future.

02:28And I'm doing that because I'm scared

02:30and bringing some of that compassion to ourselves

02:33can be really useful.

02:35Another good question here is to ask ourselves,

02:38is there any new information?

02:40Because again, like if we're worried

02:43about those test results,

02:44we might find ourselves hooked over and over again

02:47into thinking about the worry again.

02:49But if we can respond,

02:50actually, I know that there's no new information

02:54from when I'm worried about this an hour ago.

02:56And so I don't need to do any more problem solving.

02:59Again, if we think about that, what's worry telling us

03:02is often telling us, okay, spend more time

03:05so you can find the answer,

03:06so you can troubleshoot this problem.

03:08But when we know that there's nothing more we can do,

03:11there's no new information.

03:13When that worry pops into our head,

03:15we can say, aha, I have done all of the worrying

03:19I need to on this.

03:19Thank you for telling me

03:21to try and troubleshoot this problem,

03:23but I know there's no new information,

03:25so I'm not gonna spend any more time on it.

Challenging the value of worry

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Anxiety Leeds

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