OVERVIEW OF WORRYING PART 2

POSITIVE BELIEFS ABOUT WORRYING



While worriers may hold negative beliefs about worrying (i.e. that worrying is uncontrollable and harmful), they also often hold positive beliefs that worrying is beneficial and "good." It is these positive beliefs about the usefulness of worrying that can keep worriers worrying. Some positive beliefs may be:

• Worrying motivates me to do things
• Worrying helps me find solutions to problems
• Worrying prepares me for the worst
• Worrying helps me avoid bad things
• Worrying prevents bad things

UNHELPFUL STRATEGIES

In an attempt to decrease or stop worrying in the short term, people often use certain strategies. However, in the long term, these strategies actually keep worrying going, making such strategies "unhelpful". There are two main types of unhelpful strategies.

The first type of unhelpful strategy is avoidance. This may take form of avoidance of a feared outcome or avoidance of worrying itself. For example, if someone was given the oppurtunity to take on a new and important project at work, a person with generalised anxiety may worry "What if I can't go the job? What if i fail?" In order to avoid this feared negative outcome, they may pass the opportunity on to another colleague. An example of avoiding the act of worrying may be avoiding the television news because you know that the news tends to trigger episodes of worrying, or constantly contacting a loved one to allay fears that something bad has happened to them. This last example is known as reassurance seeking.

The problem with avoidance is that people limit their opportunity to be exposed to their worrying, and learn that the outcome isn't as bad at they thought, that worrying isn't uncontrollable or dangerous, and that there are other ways of coping besides worrying. Avoidance limits a person's opportunity to have experiences that disconfirm their worries and their beliefs about woryring. This keeps worrying going because their worries go unchallenged.

The second type of unhelpful strategy is thought control. People with generalised anxiety often attempt unsuccessfully to control their worrisome thoughts in a number of ways. These may include trying to suppress their worries (i.e. telling themselves to "Stop worring"), trying to reason with their worrisome thoughts (i.e. "The likelihood of these things happening is so small"), distracting themselves (i.e. focusing attention on another task) or thinking positively (i.e. "Everything will be ok"). These attempts at controlling their worries often do not work for various reasons.

For example, it is widely known that trying to suppress a thought has the opposite effect of making that thought occur more. For example, try not to think of a pink elephant for the next 60 seconds and see how well you do.

Again, trying to reason with your worries is often useless, because no matter how small the chance is of something happening your need for certainty will not be able to tolerate this small chance, and the answer to all your reasoning attempts will always be, "But it still could happen!" These ineffective thought control strategies not only keep the worrying going becuase they are not good at stopping the worrisome thoughts, more importantly they fuel one of your negative beliefs about worrying - that worrying is uncontrollable.