today i'm going to be talking about five common beliefs that cause a person
to worry excessively hi everyone today what i'm going to be talking about is the five common
beliefs about worry that tend to promote and cause a person to worry
excessively but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers i am a registered
psychologist in british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not
intended as a replacement or substitute for advice from your doctor or mental health professional now
with those two things out of the way let's start talking about worry beliefs so so far in our
series on worry i've talked about a model of worry our basic engine of worry we spent a lot
of time talking about intolerance of uncertainty and the role that intolerance of uncertainty plays
in terms of maintaining excessive worry acting is the fuel that drives the worry engine
so today we're going to be talking about another factor that perpetuates excessive worry
and that relates to this notion of beliefs about the usefulness of worry one of the things that
we know about people who tend to worry a lot is that they tend to hold beliefs that the worry is
actually serving some benefit for them so when i first bring this up with a lot of my clients
what they tend to do is kind of look at me a little bit odd and say hold on a second
i recognize that my worry is causing me a lot of problems and now you're telling me that i
have some underlying beliefs that worry is actually serving me some benefit or that i
think it's doing something good for me so the way i like to sort of introduce this concept
of beliefs about the usefulness of worry is to use an example and the example is that i change
the oil in my car every five thousand kilometers because i believe that changing the oil in my car
every 5000 kilometers is good for the long term maintenance of the vehicle it helps with the
efficiency it helps with preventing costly repairs down the line and it's just something that's good
to do because it helps my car run well and problem free now suppose one day a friend of mine pulls me
aside and this friend knows everything there is to know about cars and this friend says to me
hey rammy you know that whole oil change every five thousand kilometers thing it's a bit of a
scam by the oil companies all they're really trying to do is to get you to buy more oil
nothing bad is happening to the engine oil it's perfectly fine you don't need to change it at all
now if i believed what my friend was telling me
how would that change my behavior would i continue to change the oil in my car every 5 000 kilometers
well probably not because the only reason i'm changing oil in my car every 5 000 kilometers
is because i believe that changing oil in my car every 5 000 kilometers
is serving me some benefit some usefulness the moment i stop seeing any usefulness or benefit
to changing the oil every 5000 kilometers then i'm going to stop doing it so now relating this to
excessive worry what we know is that for people who tend to worry a lot they tend to hold beliefs
that worry is actually serving some benefit some usefulness for them so the first belief
is this notion that worry helps motivate me the idea that uh when i'm worrying about something
it's activating me to go and do something about it it's activating me to engage rather than just
being really relaxed about it and if i'm not worrying about it i'm not really going to be
all that motivated to do anything to engage in an activity to try and change the situation at all so
the notion here is that worry in and of itself acts as a motivator to be that sort of that
spark under me or that kick in the pants that i need to get going and uh and do something
the second common belief about the usefulness of worry is that worry helps with problem solving
now the idea behind this is that if i'm worrying about a problem
it's keeping the problem in my mind it's helping me think about the problem a lot and by thinking
about the problem a lot what that's doing is it's helping me potentially come up with solutions
uh or you know ways of addressing this problem that i may not otherwise have
if i wasn't worrying about it as much so the idea here is that the worry benefits me
because it helps keep a problem in my mind and helps me figure out ways to solve that problem
the third common worry belief is it's got a bit of a superstitious flavor to it
and the idea here is that worry in and of itself can prevent bad things from happening
another way of thinking about it is if i don't worry about something
then it's almost like i'm jinxing myself it's almost like uh if i don't worry about
this presentation that i'm going to give then that will be the time and that will be the presentation
that things go really badly it's almost like the universe is giving me a smack on the backside
for um not worrying enough or not being concerned enough about this presentation
so the notion here is that worry in and of itself can prevent bad things from
happening uh related to this but just a little bit differently is this notion that worry can
protect me from future negative emotions so if i'm worrying about something bad happening
it's almost like i'm emotionally preparing myself just in case that bad thing were to happen
so i won't be caught off guard i won't be surprised i won't be
blindsided by the negative thing because i've been worrying about it and i've been thinking about it
so the notion here is that if the bad thing were to happen well i've already kind of
pre-prepared myself for the negative thing and i've prepared myself emotionally
to deal with it so i'm not caught off guard and i'm not surprised
and the final worry belief is this notion that worry represents a positive personality
characteristic essentially what kind of person would i be if i didn't worry about my children
what kind of person would i be if i didn't worry about my relationship what kind of
person would i be if i didn't worry about my performance at work it's almost like worry
acts as this this measure of how much i care uh how conscientious how responsible i am
so by worrying it demonstrates that i care about these things that i'm responsible that
i'm conscientious and so that's actually a really good thing it demonstrates
a really positive aspect or really positive aspects of my personality
so if you think about these five worry beliefs if worry actually did serve to motivate me
help me solve problems prevented bad things from happening
protected me from future negative emotions and demonstrated a positive personality characteristic
well then that would seem to be something that i should be doing
of course i should be worrying if it actually served all of these purposes
but as you can probably guess worry doesn't actually do any of these five things and i'll
explain why it doesn't in uh the next video uh but you may now raise the question of okay well well
so what what do i do with this information now you've you've told me about five worry beliefs
that promote anxiety and promote worry so what what can i do with this information
well the first thing to do is to use these worry beliefs and notice them when you catch yourself
worrying the idea here is that for a lot of people this this concept of part of the
reason why i worry excessively is because i think that the worry is doing something positive for me
this is a bit of a foreign concept people often when i work with my clients they've
never thought about any potential benefits that they may have perceived that worry is giving them
and so the first step is to just be aware of which of these worry beliefs actually play a role in my
worry now there may be some of these worry beliefs that you're sort of that we're talking about that
right away you're saying no that doesn't that doesn't apply to me i don't believe that at all
it's not so much whether or not you believe the worry belief to be 100 true all the time
but it's more like you want to ask yourself the question am i behaving as if
i believe this worry belief to be true and so uh for a week or two spend some time paying attention
to a what it is that you're worrying about and then when you notice what you're worrying about
ask yourself are there any of these five worry beliefs that may be playing a role in this worry
because once you're aware of the common worry beliefs that you tend to use then you can begin
working on challenging those worry beliefs and evaluating whether or not those worry beliefs
are true but you can't do that unless you're aware of what the worry beliefs actually are so
this may seem like a relatively simple task be aware of your worry and then uh be aware
of the worry beliefs that may be playing a role in the worry it's actually kind of complicated um
it's essentially thinking about your thinking and about your thinking we call it metacognition
so the first step is you have to be aware of what you're thinking you have to be aware of the worry
and then the next step is you have to go like a cognitive layer deeper and to ask yourself
okay now that i'm aware of this thought this worry thought what are the worry beliefs or
the thoughts that i'm having about the potential benefit that i might be getting from this worry so
it takes a little bit of practice but this can be a really important and powerful tool in terms of
worry management recognizing the possible benefits that you might think that the word is giving you
even though you're not you haven't been fully aware that you actually hold some of these beliefs
so uh that's it for today's video i would love to hear your comments and thoughts or questions about
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one