do you ever find yourself worrying about things that haven't happened
worst case scenarios that may never happen we call these type 2 worries and i'm going
to be talking about why they happen and why it's so hard to stop worrying about them
hi everyone today i'm going to be talking about type 2 worries worries about future or potential
problems problems that haven't happened problems that may never happen but before
i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist in
the province of 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 type 2 worries so
this video is a continuation of our series on worry management so we initially started by
talking about a basic engine of worry we talked about the fuel that drives the worry engine
something we call intolerance of uncertainty we talked about beliefs about the usefulness of worry
these common beliefs that people will have that worry is serving some potential benefit and most
recently we've been talking about type 1 worries worries about actual problems that are going on
and more effective ways of solving problems to help address those worries so in this video
we're going to be shifting away from type 1 worries and focusing on type 2 worries and as
i've mentioned in an earlier video type 2 worries are worries about future or potential problems
problems that haven't happened problems that may never happen but still a person worries about them
now the thing about these type 2 worries is that they tend to tap into the core fears that a person
often has so these type 2 worries tend to be about the most scary things that we fear or that we
dread happening worries about failure failure academically failure in life more generally
worries about losing a job or a relationship breakup worries about you or someone you care
about becoming very sick or a family member dying in a motor vehicle accident these types of things
so these type two worries tend to be quite scary and quite upsetting when they come up
so if you think about it if uh if you catch yourself worrying about one of these really sort
of scary core fears what's the most natural thing the most natural reaction to do with those worries
well for a lot of people who worry a lot and for a lot of people who don't worry a lot
the most natural thing when these uh unpleasant worries these unpleasant thoughts about
future negative events come up the most natural thing to do is to try and push those thoughts
out of your mind try not to think about them and it makes sense if if these thoughts
bring up sort of images or or thoughts about things that are really distressing or really
upsetting to think about it's natural to just want to avoid thinking about that in general
it's something we call cognitive avoidance so pushing these thoughts
suppressing these thoughts uh from my mind so that i don't have to think about the thing
that's so upsetting that obviously i don't want to think about
now this cognitive avoidance may make sense on the surface and it's kind of the most natural response
to these upsetting thoughts but one experiment one little exercise i do with my clients to sort of
explain how this cognitive avoidance works is to get them to for one minute to think about anything
they want to think about anything at all but in that one minute i get them to try really hard
not to think about a pink elephant so they can think about anything they want to think about
just not a pink elephant and so i start a timer and i get them to think about whatever
they want just not the pink elephant but if they happen to think about a pink elephant i ask them
to make a mark on a piece of paper each time the thought or image of a pink elephant comes to mind
and usually what happens is in that one minute i see them really start to struggle
either they start to kind of laugh or they start to roll their eyes or they but they're
making marks on that sheet of paper and what ends up happening at the end of that minute is
they've thought about the pink elephant a lot and so i often ask them a few follow-up questions
like how many times in the past week have you thought about a pink elephant
and usually the answer to this question is well i haven't thought about a pink elephant at all and
then i asked them okay well in the past week how much effort did you put into trying not to think
about a pink elephant they tell me well i wasn't trying not to think about a pink elephant at all
and so i point out well isn't it interesting that in one week of putting no effort
into trying not to think about a pink elephant you didn't think about a pink elephant at all
but in one minute of trying not to think about a pink elephant
you thought about a pink elephant multiple multiple times
we call this the paradox of thought suppression the more you try not to think about something
the more you end up thinking about it so relating this to type 2 worries
if i'm avoiding thinking about these type 2 worries because they're really upsetting to think
about and i don't want to think about them and so if i'm trying to deal with these type 2 worries by
pushing the worries and by pushing the thoughts out of my mind it's essentially me doing a pink
elephant with these worries i'm trying not to think about it and by trying not to think about it
all that really does is it causes the worry to come up over and over and over and over again
and each time it comes up i try and push it out of my mind which means it's just going
to come up again and then i'm going to push it out of my mind and it's going to come up again
so the reason why these type 2 worries keep coming up is often because a person's trying
not to think about it and the harder you try not to think about it the more the worry
is going to keep coming up so it's this uh really kind of self-destructive uh self fueling cycle um
i liken it to trying to hold a beach ball underwater the more pressure you put to hold that
beach ball underwater the more pressure there is for the beach ball to keep popping up and then you
grab it and you push it back down again it pops up and you grab it and you push it back down again
but it just keeps coming up and so while this cognitive avoidance on the surface seems like
the most natural thing to do when these type 2 worries come up it's actually one of the
factors that's maintaining the type 2 worries so that leaves us with the question okay if trying
not to think about the type 2 worries is what's causing the type 2 worries to come up
over and over and over again what can i do about it well the answer to that question
is something we call cognitive exposure and i'll be talking about that in the next video
so i hope you found this video helpful i know it's a bit of a strange idea a strange concept this
notion of uh the paradox of thought suppression the more you try not to think about something
the more you end up thinking about it but just spend some time thinking about this over the next
few days you can do your own pink elephant exercise take some time take a minute
think about anything you want but try not to think about pink elephant
see what happens and so what we'll be talking about in the next video is
what we can do to overcome these type 2 worries if cognitive avoidance isn't a very good solution
i'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this so please leave me some comments down below
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so thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one