Here are three things you can try to help control your worry:
Pay attention to when you’re worrying, and try to classify it as either problem solving or worrying.
Worrying and problem solving look the same at the beginning because worrying is about risk management – the first stage of problem solving. You have to recognize there’s a problem before you can focus on problem solving. (Like ‘What ifs?’)
So, you can think of people with worry problems as being “stuck” in the first stage, endlessly looping around on the ‘What Ifs.’
You can tell the difference because problem solving feels productive and actually results in active coping, solutions and reduced anxiety. Worrying just keeps looping. It’s non-productive and increases anxiety.
Recognize one as being useful and the other as being a waste of your time.
The more you check, the more you worry. Checking the news constantly may help you feel more in control. It may give you some immediate relief, but it only reinforces your anxiety and your need to check more in the longer-run.
One way to reduce anxiety and worry is to reduce your safety behaviours. For example, just try checking a little less often. At first it will be hard and make you more anxious, but then it will get easier.
Another way to think about this is that you are choosing to increase your tolerance of uncertainty.
If you’re worrying all the time and your worrying is like a compulsion – something you do over and over again to try to prevent something bad from happening – then you can treat it like a compulsion and try delaying it. Delaying a compulsion is one of the very best and established clinical methods when it comes to addressing them.
Set one or more times a day aside for worrying. Just five minutes can work. And if you find yourself worrying outside of that ‘Worry Time,’ tell yourself you have to stop because it’s not Worry Time. Say to yourself: “I’m going to worry about this – but not right now.”
You can even write down the worry if you want so that you don’t forget it before Worry Time. And if you forget it by Worry Time, was it really a worry…?