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Challenging the value of worry
chrisworfolkfoundation
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16/06/2024
Category
📚
Learning
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
A good question to ask ourselves is, why do we worry?
00:04
Now sometimes people kind of dismissively say,
00:06
oh, what's the point in worrying about it?
00:09
As if that's kind of magically supposed to make it go away.
00:12
And of course it doesn't.
00:13
It's not that simple, but it's still useful
00:17
to understand the kind of worry process
00:19
and what's going on there.
00:21
Because our emotions tell us stuff.
00:24
Like they're really useful in motion focused therapy.
00:26
We talk about the message that our feelings
00:29
are giving us.
00:30
Worry is often a tool to motivate ourselves
00:33
to get to safety, to study harder,
00:35
to not mouth off at our boss.
00:39
Every time we think about maybe punching our boss
00:42
because we're really angry about them,
00:43
we worry, oh no, I would lose my job.
00:45
That's a really healthy level of worry there
00:48
because actually if you mouth off or you hit your boss,
00:51
you almost certainly will lose your job
00:53
in a lot of situations.
00:55
So it's good in that sense
00:57
that it's telling us something important.
00:59
But with anxiety, we often get trapped in these cycles
01:03
where we know the worry isn't telling us anything important,
01:06
but we just can't make it go away.
01:09
So what do we do in these situations?
01:11
Well, there's a couple of things we could do here.
01:15
So we could say to ourselves,
01:17
okay, what's the benefit of worrying about this?
01:20
Like, can I actually do something about it?
01:23
Because if I can, then maybe that's a call to action.
01:27
If I'm worried that there's some mold growing in my bathroom,
01:35
then maybe I should worry a bit about that
01:37
and speak to the landlord or get it taken care of.
01:40
That's something I can actually, I can do it about.
01:44
But let's say I'm waiting on some test results
01:47
from my doctor and I'm really worrying about that.
01:51
There's nothing I can do in that situation.
01:54
I've just got to wait for the test results to come back.
01:56
So that's a good example of saying to myself,
01:59
okay, well, there's nothing I can do about this,
02:02
but I'm still feeling really worried about this.
02:06
And what can be really useful here
02:07
is rather than just saying, well, I'll stop worrying about it
02:10
is to bring some compassion to ourselves to say,
02:13
ah, yeah, like I really am scared
02:16
about what these test results might say.
02:18
So no wonder I'm constantly worrying about it.
02:21
But I know there's nothing I can do
02:23
when I just have to sit with these uncomfortable worries
02:26
about what's gonna happen in the future.
02:28
And I'm doing that because I'm scared
02:30
and bringing some of that compassion to ourselves
02:33
can be really useful.
02:35
Another good question here is to ask ourselves,
02:38
is there any new information?
02:40
Because again, like if we're worried
02:43
about those test results,
02:44
we might find ourselves hooked over and over again
02:47
into thinking about the worry again.
02:49
But if we can respond,
02:50
actually, I know that there's no new information
02:54
from when I'm worried about this an hour ago.
02:56
And so I don't need to do any more problem solving.
02:59
Again, if we think about that, what's worry telling us
03:02
is often telling us, okay, spend more time
03:05
so you can find the answer,
03:06
so you can troubleshoot this problem.
03:08
But when we know that there's nothing more we can do,
03:11
there's no new information.
03:13
When that worry pops into our head,
03:15
we can say, aha, I have done all of the worrying
03:19
I need to on this.
03:19
Thank you for telling me
03:21
to try and troubleshoot this problem,
03:23
but I know there's no new information,
03:25
so I'm not gonna spend any more time on it.
Anxiety Leeds
3:30
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