Maybe worrying is a new phenomenon for you, or perhaps you’ve been worrying since second grade. Either way, worrying is a behavior that not only costs precious minutes in your day but also contributes to a higher stress response in the body and is associated with anxiety, depression, and insomnia. We know worrying is worrying you, and we want to offer a couple of key tools to aid in managing worry and reducing stress.

People often ask how they can possibly reduce worrying because the things they worry about are genuinely concerning. Health problems, financial issues, relationship troubles—these are all painful challenges in life that require brainpower to solve. It is crucial to understand that when working with worry, we aren’t trying to eliminate it—that would be impossible. Instead, we aim to match the appropriate amount of time spent thinking about a problem to the problem itself.

Why We Worry

When working with clients who have a worry habit (yes, it is a habit), it is important to acknowledge the distinction between problem-solving and worrying. Worrying tends to yield low, unreliable results in terms of solutions. Occasionally, you might stumble upon a novel idea while worrying and feel rewarded like a slot machine winner, increasing your likelihood of worrying more in the future. However, like a slot machine, the cost of that jackpot is often far more than the value of the new idea. It’s not uncommon for people to spend dozens of hours per week worrying for very little reward.

Additionally, newer research on worry, primarily from Michelle Newman’s lab at Penn State, shows that people who worry sometimes feel less bad when a rare negative event happens. Unfortunately, this is because they were already feeling bad from worrying so much, which buffered the distinct change from positive to negative. The brain does more of what it is rewarded for, and while in the short term, worrying can feel protective like vigilance, it comes at a high cost to cognitive functioning, the body, and life.

Distinguish Between Worrying and Problem-Solving

The gold standard treatment for worry and Generalized Anxiety Disorder is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This treatment works with thoughts, behaviors, and physiology to reduce worrying and its high cost of time and energy. A key distinction CBT makes is knowing the difference between worrying and problem-solving.

Challenging life problems require effective problem-solving. This includes defining a problem, considering multiple solutions, and choosing the best path forward. So how does this differ from worrying? The straightforward answer is that it’s not so straightforward. It takes time to distinguish, but there are two principles that most clients find helpful in their process of reducing worry:

1. Problem-solving is an active process involving problem definition, solution generation, choosing a solution, then implementing and evaluating the solution. If someone is thinking about a situation ruminatively and not actively engaged in these processes, it is probably not time well-spent.
2. Most people find that thinking about any problem for more than 10 minutes starts to veer into worrying. Limiting oneself to a 10-minute thinking limit can be a helpful starting point.

At first, when someone tries this method, they don’t catch themselves until they’ve been worrying for 45 minutes. Over time, with additional practice and without a lot of judgement on yourself, you will begin to catch worrying earlier. We all have the ability to redirect our attention towards something else, though don’t expect your mood to change immediately. Again, with practice, your attention, thinking and emotions will become more flexible. Just like in the gym, these strengths take reps.

Mindfulness - The Secret Weapon Against Worry

Pivoting your attention away from worry, changing sleep patterns, and reducing stress all require a common ingredient: awareness. To alter a pattern of thinking or behavior, you’ve got to catch it to change it. Present-moment awareness helps you catch yourself worrying and then choose if you want to pivot to problem-solving for a few more minutes or direct your attention back to the new recipe you are trying out. Working with a therapist not only strengthens your ability to catch unhelpful patterns in the act but also helps you become more agile at changing them. 

The term we use for present-moment awareness without judgment is called mindfulness. Mindfulness is a skill that builds over time with practice. Sometimes that practice includes meditation, sometimes it does not. Often, just working with a therapist on patterns you would like to change creates a major boost in mindfulness.

fMRI scans reveal that folks who practice mindfulness consistently have stronger activity in a part of the brain that manages attention, thoughts and behaviors. By fostering a non-judgmental awareness of the present moment, mindfulness helps individuals break free from the repetitive and often negative thought patterns that characterize worry and rumination.

Further, studies have shown that practicing mindfulness can lead to reductions in worry and its associated stress, anxiety, and depression. This is because mindfulness trains the brain to observe thoughts and feelings without getting entangled in them, allowing for a greater sense of control and a decrease in the automatic reactivity that fuels worry. As a result, clients we work with can redirect their focus to more productive and enjoyable activities, significantly reducing time and stress spent on worrying.

At Catalyst, we incorporate present-moment awareness as an important component of CBT. Reach out to us today to schedule your free phone consultation. Let's discuss how we can help you decrease worrying and amplify resilience, success and happiness.

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