Five Steps to Stop Worrying and Take Positive Action

My favourite technique to help me stop worrying

I have suffered from anxiety for many years. Through a great deal of reading, therapy, and writing, I have found that the technique that best helps me stop worrying is to notice that I’m telling myself stories. Then I can work to replace the worry with more productive thought patterns.

This article will explain what this looks like in practice and give you a technique you can use to challenge these stories and address your own anxiety.

What is worrying, and why do we do it?

The dictionary defines “worry” as “to feel or cause to feel anxious or troubled about actual or potential problems “. Whilst accurate, I don’t feel that this definition portrays the essence of worrying. I believe that at its root, to worry is to tell yourself stories and believe the stories you tell.

I like to define “worrying” as “unproductive storytelling .”

The human mind does not, in general, deal well with uncertainty. When we do not know what will happen (nearly all the time), our brain tends to make up stories to fill in the gaps.

Some of these stories are extrapolations based on historical outcomes from what it perceives to be similar scenarios from the past (either our history or other real or fictional scenarios we may have heard about). Other stories are pure speculative fiction.

An example of what it means to tell yourself stories

So let’s say you decide to allow your teenage daughter to go to her first unsupervised party. Your brain immediately begins to create a multitude of possible scenarios:

• she is offered (and maybe accepts) drugs;
• she has consensual unprotected sex;
• someone assaults her at the party;
• she gets mugged on her way home;
• she overdoses on drink or drugs and ends up in the hospital.

I could go on, but you get the picture. See how easy it is to think up stories where “bad” things happen?

These scenarios are all stories that your mind tells you about what will happen to your daughter at the party.

Of course, there are just as many stories we could tell ourselves about the party scenario, which have positive or neutral outcomes:

• she has a fabulous time;
• she gains respect among her peers for her witty comebacks while refusing drugs;
• or for playing a badass game of Fortnite and thrashing her class rival;
• she meets her future life partner;
• she drinks one can of cider and falls asleep on the sofa until her friends call her a taxi;
• or she gets bored and calls you to pick her up early.

Was it harder or easier to think up “good” stories?

Of all these stories, which seemed most believable to you? Which made you most anxious? Which did you spend the most time worrying about?

How do we decide which stories to tell ourselves and which to believe?

The nature of the stories we tell ourselves, and the weight we give to them in our minds, is influenced by several things:

1. Our personal experience. We might remember a party we attended as a teenager where any of these things happened to us or someone we knew. We are likely to give featured coverage to the stories that reflect something we have experienced. More so if those personal stories have strong emotions attaching to them (fear, excitement, shame).
2. Second-hand experience. Stories told to us by people we trust, including from media sources that we consider reliable, are also likely to feature highly in the worry reel.
3. Fictional experience. Scenarios we have come across in fiction, movies etc., and also those which we completely fabricate, are added to the list of things that might theoretically happen. But unless there are powerful emotions attached to them, we tend to give these fictional stories less weight than those based on “evidence”.
4. Our general outlook. We are more likely to focus on the stories with harmful outcomes if we have a generally negative outlook on life and expect bad things to happen. Or if we have very low self-esteem and don’t believe that we deserve good things to happen to us. And, of course, vice versa.
5. People love drama. Dramatic or scary stories are more compelling than stories where nothing much happens, and everyone goes home. Our mind naturally gives more attention to exciting stories.

Of course, the thoughts to which we give the most attention are those that stick around. We often end up stuck in a loop with these stories going round and round in our heads. The more we tell ourselves the stories, the more convinced we become that these are likely outcomes to the real-life scenario we face, rather than the fabricated speculations that they are.

Many of the stories about what might happen to your daughter at the party are scary. But until your daughter actually goes to the party, they are only stories. And none of them will help in any way to keep your daughter safe, no matter how many times you think about them.

So how do you stop worrying?

James Donovan: Do you never worry? Rudolf Abel: Would it help?

Bridge of Spies [Motion Picture] 2015

I recently watched the movie Bridge of Spies. One main character, who was accused and then convicted of being a Russian spy, always remained calm and composed, despite being faced with scenarios that many would find extremely stressful and distressing. On several occasions throughout the film, his lawyer (Tom Hanks), surprised by his lack of visible distress, asks, “aren’t you worried?”. Each time he replies, “would it help?”.

The line made me smile every time it came up. Because I believe he’s right. There are very few, if any, scenarios in which worrying would help.

You can become more like Rudolf Abel by following the below five steps:

1. Notice when you are telling yourself stories

The first step to stopping yourself from worrying is to notice when you’re doing it.

So next time you realise that you are feeling anxious or getting stuck in a loop of worrying, congratulations! You’ve completed the first step and noticed what’s going on.

2. Write down your stories

You don’t have to actually write them down if you don’t want to, of course. But this is a writing site, and I love to write. So when I notice that I’m telling myself stories, I grab my notebook and pen and start writing.

Write down all the stories you are telling yourself. All the bad things that you’re worried might happen. Get them all down and out in the open.

3. Read your stories

When you’ve finished writing down all the stories, stop and read them back to yourself, one at a time.

Sit with them and acknowledge that these are stories that you are telling yourself. Notice how you feel when you read the stories and when you believe them. Don’t try to fight or suppress your feelings. And don’t beat yourself up for having them.

Tell yourself it’s OK to feel this way. It’s not stupid or silly to be anxious or scared about this. Write it down as many times as you need. Cry if you need to. And remember to breathe.

4. Challenge the stories

When you’re ready, you can start gently challenging the stories you’ve written down.

Let’s go back to our example above. Perhaps you’ve written: “she might drink too much and end up in hospital”.

Take a moment to think about how true that story really is. Based on what you know about your daughter and her friends. Notice where it is on the scale of things that might happen. Yes, she might drink some alcohol (quite likely). But how likely is she to drink so much it puts her in the hospital?

Also, ask yourself — so what? Maybe she does have a few too many drinks (but not enough to land in the ER). So what? Hopefully, she wakes up with a killer hangover and some embarrassing memories and decides to be more careful next time. Is that really the worst thing in the world?

Then ask yourself what, if anything, you can do that would help.

In some situations, there is nothing you can do that would help. You can’t ever change things that have happened in the past, and you can’t often change what other people do or think or feel.

In this case, there are several approaches you could take. You can talk to your daughter and make sure she is well educated on all relevant matters and risks. Ensure that she knows that she can call you to pick her up if she is uncomfortable, no matter the time, no questions asked. Set up a system for her to text you a code word if she feels unable to call. Know precisely where she is going and who will be there.

Notice the difference here between “worrying” and “planning”. Both are thinking about things that might happen in the future. One is unproductive storytelling, whereas the other is taking action, where possible, to take control of the situation.

5. Write some new stories

Take some time and write out some different stories about what might happen in the situation. Imagine some happy endings. How do you feel when you believe those? Is there not as much chance that those are true as the first ones you thought of? At least some chance?

Conclusion

I have used this technique, or variations on it, many times to shift myself out of unhelpful anxious thoughts and looping stories. My journals are full of stories I have noticed myself telling and brought out into the open. It’s not always easy to accept your emotions and acknowledge the stories you have been holding onto. But if you can allow yourself to go fully into the process, it can be truly transformational.

You might not be able to stop worrying completely, but you can definitely go some way to reducing the frequency and impact.

I’d love to hear if it works for you too!

Originally published at https://slaythestatic.com on February 23, 2021.

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