today i'm going to be talking about a counter-intuitive way of dealing with
the scariest worries that you find yourself worrying about hi everyone in this video i'm
going to be talking about how to deal with type 2 worries a a counterintuitive way of managing
worries about those scariest things those most upsetting things that you find yourself worrying
about worries about future catastrophic events that haven't happened and that may never happen
but you just can't stop worrying about them 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 so with those two things
out of the way let's start talking about managing type 2 worries so this is a continuation
of our series on worry management we've talked about a lot so far we've talked about the basic
engine of worry we've talked about intolerance of uncertainty the fuel that drives this worry engine
we've talked about five common worry beliefs that can perpetuate excessive worry we've talked about
how ineffective problem solving can contribute to both worry and anxiety and then go flow back into
making a person less efficient at solving problems in the last video i talked about type 2 worries
shifting our attention to type 2 worries which are worries about future or potential problems
and i talked a little bit about how these type two worries are maintained by something we call
cognitive avoidance because these worries tend to be so upsetting and so distressing
they tend to tap into our core fears and the things that we dread most it's natural to want
to deal with these worries by trying to push them out of your mind try not to think about
them try to distract yourself try to get these worries out of your head whenever they come up
but as i talked about in the last video trying not to think about something actually causes you
to think about it even more it's something we call the paradox of thought suppression
so if trying not to think about the type 2 worry is what's causing the worry to come up
over and over and over again the solution the tip or the tool for managing these types of
worries may seem very counter-intuitive and the idea is rather than trying not to think about
the worry rather it's to think about the worry over and over and over and over and over again
until you essentially drain the emotion out of the worry thought so again remember that worries
are they're just thoughts their predictions about the future and with these type two
worries what can happen is you have this anxiety and this emotion connected with
the worry and the worry thought so every time the worry thought comes up the anxiety comes
up and if you feel really anxious every time this thought comes up it makes sense to want
to try and get the thought out of your mind because the anxiety is really uncomfortable
so the way around this is by thinking about the worry again and again and again
the the metaphor i like to use to explain this is to imagine that you're watching tv and one day
there's this weird satellite glitch that happens and uh whatever it is that you're watching on tv
disappears and what ends up happening is this really grotesque horrible horror film comes on the
tv it's really upsetting and it's really gross and and distressing and so you just turn off the tv
but the next time you turn on your tv lo and behold the same thing happens the same movie
interrupts what you're watching and it gets really distressing for you and you turn off the tv
you do it again and it just keeps happening well imagine what would happen and how you'd feel
if you watched if you allowed yourself to watch that horror movie all the way from
the beginning to the end well you'd probably find it really distressing you'd probably find
it really uncomfortable and really unpleasant and you feel really distressed watching that
movie but then you force yourself to watch it a second time well the second time you watch it you
may find it even more distressing and even more upsetting because you kind of know what to expect
and you kind of know the horrors that are that are awaiting but then you force yourself to watch it a
third time and a fourth time and a fifth time and a sixth time by the hundredth time you've watched
the horror movie by the thousandth time you've watched the horror movie what do you think is
going to happen to your emotional reaction to it well you're you're probably gonna be pretty bored
uh you're probably gonna be like oh yeah guy jim's out of the shower with a big knife
big deal the movie hasn't changed one bit what's changed is your emotional reaction to the movie
essentially it's drained any emotion out of the movie and so it's no longer all that distressing
and so um you're watching the same movie it's the exact same movie that you saw
the first time you saw it when it was really upsetting for you but it's no longer upsetting
it's the same process with this idea of cognitive exposure you essentially want to
take these type 2 wordies and think about them over and over and over again to their their really
horrible and the the most distressing parts of it that you don't let yourself think about
with these type two worries what often happens with people is their their mind will go to a
certain point in the worry and then they say okay you know what it's too much i i can't take it
anymore and they they stop thinking about it and so it's almost like one of those old-fashioned
record players and it just keeps skipping so it plays the same part of the song and just
keeps skipping over and over and over again so it's not playing the song all the way through
that's what happens with these type 2 worries a person doesn't allow themselves to think about
the type 2 worries all the way through to the the horrible end that they imagine but by doing
this and by doing this repeatedly uh essentially what you're doing is you're giving the worries the
air time so it's almost like these worries want their air time they want you to think about them
and so you give the worries their air time and you think about them in concentrated ways until
the emotion essentially drains from the worry and if the emotion drains from the worry it's
not going to be so upsetting when it comes up and if it's not so upsetting when it comes up
you're probably not gonna try and push the thoughts out of your mind so it's a bit of a
strange concept to wrap your head around but uh it works and in fact this is the exact same
treatment approach that we use for people with post-traumatic stress disorder uh the difference
with between post-traumatic stress disorder and this is that in post-traumatic stress disorder
the traumatic event has happened to the person it's happened to the person in their past
whereas in generalized anxiety disorder and excessive worry the traumatic event is something
that a person imagines happening in the future but it's the same process to drain the emotion
out of the thought so how do you go about doing this cognitive exposure
how do you how do you do it well cognitive exposure is different than worrying about
the worry with cognitive exposure the idea is you sit down and you write out a script
imagining your type 2 worry in all of the graphic horrific upsetting detail that you can imagine all
the way to the end to those darkest parts that you don't even allow your mind to go to you don't let
yourself go to and you take your mind there you write out this script detailing what you imagine
happening and i encourage person to write out the script in the first person present tense
so like it's actually happening to them because what that can do is it it puts you in the worry
scene it puts you in that scenario and it allows you to sort of more closely imagine yourself
in that situation uh and so you write out the script it should be anywhere from like
one to three or five minutes long it doesn't have to be any longer than that but you want
to include as much a detail as possible as much sensory detail as much thought detail as you can
so i'll give you an example of a script now this is a script for someone imagining
that they're going to die of cancer so the script may go something like this
i was diagnosed with or i was diagnosed with my cancer a few weeks ago and it is spread rapidly
through my body the cancer is my fault because i didn't take care of myself i had a unhealthy
lifestyle i ate poorly i spend too much time in the sun without sunscreen so it's all my fault
that this is happening to me i've gone through a series of upsetting and painful procedures
the treatments have caused me to lose my hair i've lost weight i'm fatigued i'm exhausted all
the time i'm now coughing up blood and it makes me sick every time i see myself in the mirror
i know now that i'm on my deathbed i can feel my life draining from me this was all my fault
i did this to myself and now here i am in this hospital bed having just soiled myself and i can
smell how awful it smells and i feel exhausted and weak i can't even call out for help i'm in
this darkened hospital room in this darkened ward and i see only shadows in the background i know my
death is coming soon and it's going to be a bleak emptiness that i'm going to face for eternity
so now notice that that may not be something that you worry about but that type of script
it's descriptive enough that it's like this kick in the gut it it should make you uncomfortable
and so the idea is you write out this script about this really horrific type 2 worry whatever your
type 2 worry is whatever the the worry that you're struggling with is you write out a script as
detailed as possible and once you have that script the idea is to take 30 45 minutes an hour a day
and read that script over and over and over again so you read the script all the way through and i
encourage people to make a note of how upsetting or distressing it was on a scale from 0 to 10
where 0 is not distressing at all 10 is extremely distressing extremely upsetting so after
every time you read the script you make a rating from 0 to 10. then immediately you read it again
from 0 to 10 make a rating and again and again at least 10 or 15 times
in that 30 to 45 minutes to an hour chunk of time that you're setting aside to do this
you want to do this at a time when you're not going to be distracted so turn off your cell phone
sort of get away so that people aren't going to be distracting you
now it's key to understand this is going to be very distressing it's going to be very very
difficult to do it's going to make you feel very uncomfortable and so if you're feeling
uncomfortable even at the thought of doing it that's normal this isn't something that
anyone should look forward to doing because the whole idea is to bring up the emotion
to bring up the distress and to learn to cope with it and to let it just go away on its own
like watching that horror movie over and over and over again so uh you do these ratings and
what you should find is that within a session of doing this so from the beginning where you
start with a rating the first time you read it maybe a 9 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. and then
you read it over 15 times what you should find is that at the end of that 15th time of reading it
your rating should be lower right the first time you do it maybe your rating at the 15th time is a
5 or a 6 out of 10. and then you do it again the next day and the day after that and i encourage
people to do this for a week or two and what they find is that over the course of that week or two
the ratings both within each session tend to decline and between each session they tend to
decline so after a couple of weeks of doing this the distress at the you know 10th or you know 15th
day that you've done this those distress scores are a lot lower than they were in the first day
so this is like i said a very challenging exercise this isn't something that you want to do with
every worry because it takes a lot of time and it's quite distressing so you want to use this
on those worries that are particularly problematic those worries that come up again and again that
you're really struggling with because this works it's it's not pleasant but it works so i liken
it a lot to that buckley's cough syrup commercial you know it tastes awful but it works that's kind
of what uh what this cognitive exposure is all about as well it tastes awful but it does work
so this is something to try if you notice yourself having type 2 worries that you're
still struggling with even if you've tried tolerating uncertainty even if you've tried
challenging those worry beliefs and you're still finding yourself struggling with type 2 worries
maybe you want to think about writing out one of these cognitive exposure scripts and going
through and doing this cognitive exposure it's not easy to do it's very difficult to do but it can be
extremely worthwhile to drain the emotion out of that worry so you don't worry about it as much
so i know that's kind of a heavy topic to talk about a sort of a a very difficult
skill and tool uh that i'm presenting so i would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this so
please leave me some comments down below
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you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one