Hello everyone! In this video you're gonna learn what to do when your brain
just won't shut up with all the worries about what's gonna happen in the future
and I'm gonna teach you one antidote for when you're stuck ruminating on your fears.
I'm also gonna teach you why you should never worry in your head.
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month. I was recently working with a young man who was terrified of going to college
he was bright and he was very skilled academically, but the thought of leaving home and going to
college terrified him. He used to think 'what if I fail all my classes, what if I hate my roommates,
what if I can't find my way around campus, what if I don't stick to my budget and run out of money,
what if I get depressed, what if I'm too anxious', what if, what if, what if... and he spent so much
time worrying all summer that he had practically convinced himself to not go to college in the fall
and besides that he just felt like anxious and sick to his stomach all the time and the other
thing was he put a ton of energy into trying to not worry and trying to not feel anxious which
of course made things worse. Do you do that? Do you worry so much about the future? Do all the thoughts
of what could go wrong constantly run through your head? A little worry is okay, worry serves a
function. Beneficial worry prompts action, it can help us plan for the future by helping us think
through possible problems and their solutions but compulsive worry makes us feel sick and freeze up.
When we imagine danger our body has the exact same physiological reaction as if there was
real danger present. So that's why your body pumps out all that adrenaline when you're safe at home
watching a scary movie and when we're stuck in chronic worry that can make us so anxious that we
get sick or that we can't function. So my client's brain was making him feel like he was in danger
when he was actually safe at home and this was not productive worry. Productive worry would have said
'what if I can't find my way around campus? oh, let's solve this, let's go to campus with a map and start
to practice and learn the buildings', but no, this worry was so overwhelming that he just felt
like hiding, running away and trying not to think about it and this tape was on constant repeat.
He had accidentally developed a habit of obsessively worrying about things.
So let's talk about one antidote, but first let's all take a deep breath.
A calm body leads to a calm mind. So before we try to change our thinking, I encourage you to
do some kind of grounding activity. Okay, the antidote to worry is the power of attention,
our ability to choose where we pay attention and what thoughts we put our focus on, what
we bring to mind. This is a skill that can be strengthened with mindfulness, but I'm not going to teach you today some hypothetical exercise, but how to practice this with real life worries.
So worry is something that you do in the present moment but it takes your focus to the future.
If you want to shift it, just start by noticing that you are worrying, right now, in the present
moment. Just say something like 'oh hello worries, um I notice you there' right, it's it's like your
worries were your hand right and when we're stuck in our words it's like they're right on our face
and what we're going to do is just step back a little bit and look at our worries and then
when your hand, when your worries, are a little bit further away from your face you can look around
you and see what else is there. I'm actually in a beautiful place I'm going to notice some things
other than just my worries right. So you could say 'I'm gonna work on what I pay attention to right
now'. You're basically trying to rewire your brain. Perhaps it's had this compulsive approach to worry,
it's made these 'worry' neural pathways very broad and thick and smooth. Meaning that it's easy for
your brain to revert to worry as a default, but when you practice thinking in a safe and powerful
way, then eventually, you can train your brain to set a new default way of thinking, a new way to
be happier and less anxious. So, I'm going to teach you how to redirect worry into productive action.
The key is to spend time intentionally practicing positive imagery to bring to mind what it would
look like if you handled that situation well, to shift your focus away from just the worries
to like 'oh, what can I do about this?' or 'what should I let go of'. When we imagine danger, we feel like
we're in danger. When we worry, we feel anxious, but we're actually safe in the present moment.
When we imagine or bring to mind our thoughts of success and safety, then we feel peaceful and
composed in the present moment. Now it's really important that when you do this it's not just
imagining good things happening to you. For you to feel safe you need to feel a belief in your
ability to handle external difficulties and this is called having an internal locus of control.
It's not that you have control over everything in your life but it's that you focus your efforts and
your energy on what is in your realm of control. So what you're going to do is imagine yourself facing
challenges and handling them with resilience, you don't just imagine everything going perfectly,
you imagine yourself facing a problem and using your skills and your resources and your
support network to solve it. It's also really important to not let worries stay in your head.
When you just think about worry, it can run away with you, so write it down, say it out loud,
make it concrete somehow. When you write things down you can slow them down and face your worries
one by one. Now I made a video explaining one way to do his by drawing two circles on a piece of
paper and um if you want to learn more about that like check out that video on the locus of control.
So back to worries, you're going to write out each of your worries and with each worry that
comes up I want you to redirect your mind over and over to what is in your locus of control.
What can you change, what action can you take. Because worries might happen over and over
again, you will need to practice this to make it stick. So it could be helpful to record yourself
speaking this script out loud and then hit play or to draw it out, that uses your visual cortex
to make this new reality right, it might be more helpful to break your worries down
into facing them one at a time and that's another reason why writing things down is helpful because
you can kind of lay them out, I even do this on post-it notes sometimes, and I'll just choose
one post-it note that I want to work on that day right, and then after you've done this,
I'm going to lay out this whole process right and then I'm going to give you an example so
hold tight right, after you've done this you're, after you've done this you're going to
write out a script, you're going to write out a script of you solving your problems and facing
your fears in a helpful way and then you're going to rehearse this script several times a day
for 10 days and then once you've done that with just one of your worries
you're going to start feeling more confident and then you can repeat that with another worry.
Okay, so let me give you an example. So with this young man, a guided imagery may look like this
'I head off to college in the fall, I'm excited and nervous but I know that I want to get an education,
so I'm willing to do hard things. The first worry is that I won't know where to go. So I make sure
to get to campus 30 minutes early the first day, I walk through the beautiful campus and feel the sun and
see all the other excited and nervous students. I start to feel a little confused about where to go
so I pull out my map, but I'm not even sure where I am on the map. I slow down, take a deep breath
and I remember that I can ask for help. I pull out my phone and I use the gps to get a general idea
of where to go. As I walk toward the direction of my first class I see a nice looking student and I
ask her where the Harris building is, she points me in the right direction. I walk into that building
and I notice that there's a room map on the wall, so I follow that to my first class. I sit
down somewhere in the middle, pull out my notebook and I feel excited about my first college class.'
So that's an example of using guided imagery to to visualize yourself being successful at
solving a problem. Now that one might seem too easy, so let's take the more difficult worry of
'what if I fail my classes?' So before we write out this script, let's make a long list of resources.
So these are things like skills, your support network, etc. So when you're feeling anxious your
brain is not very creative, so try to make a list like this with a friend or a therapist who has an
outside perspective and you might be surprised at how many ideas they come up with. So let's
think about the student, what resources does this does this student have available to him. So first,
he has a growth mindset; this belief I can learn new things, I can learn new skills, if I work at it.
He's got his parents, he's got his older brother, he's got the tutoring center, he's got other
students in his class, there are online resources, like tutorials on youtube or Khan Academy,
he has the ability to decrease his class load if he needs to, he can retake a class until he
learns it or passes, so even if he fails the class, there's still a lot of options available to him.
He has the ability to understand the syllabus and the class requirements, he could access student
services to help with learning disabilities or accommodations or to access academic advisors who
can point him to other resources on campus right, so we make this big list of all the
resources that he could potentially access, then the guided imagery could look something like this:
'I'm taking spanish 101, I took a little Spanish in high school, but within the first two weeks
I'm starting to feel a little lost. Everything is moving so fast, I don't do great on the first test
and I start to panic, 'this is really hard' I think, but then I remind myself I can do hard things.
I haven't learned Spanish yet but if I put the work in and I use my resources, I can learn Spanish.
I can learn new skills to help me. So first, I'm going to call my parents and see if they have
any suggestions for me. So they recommend that I talk with a professor, so I get online and I find
the professor's office hours and I set up a time to meet with her. At that meeting the professor
reassures me that I can learn this. She tells me about a study group that gets together to
learn Spanish and she also sets up a meeting with the TA. So I start going to the study group and I
realize that the other students are using flash cards to memorize nouns and they've got a little
song to help with conjugations. So this is a new study skill. I can learn new ways to learn
and because I'm studying a little smarter I do better on the next test but not as well as I'd
like. So I meet with the TA and the TA explains to me a system for conjugation and that's helpful
and I am willing to work hard, so we go over the syllabus together I make a plan for how I'm
gonna get all my work done and I realize that to pass this class I'm gonna have to study three to
four hours a week. So I decide to drop one social activity and cut back on work hours so that I have
enough time in my schedule to study, but also to take breaks if I need to. I will work hard
and if I continue to struggle I know who to talk with and I plan to go to the University learning
center and to my academic advisor if needed but as I put in the study hours and I work hard, I start
doing better and better on each quiz. I feel more and more confident as the semester goes on I've
learned a system for studying and I've learned how to do hard things. I pass my Spanish class and my
other classes I may not have had a perfect grade but that's okay, I feel proud of my accomplishment
but even more of my hard work and my efforts. So that's a guided imagery right, and you could record
that script to write it down and listen to it or read it every day. That's going to help you rewire
your brain to get out of that worry rut, out of that you know compulsive worry and back into this
sense of power and ability to you know make changes in your life. Now I want you to notice
how this guided imagery didn't just say 'I start taking my Spanish class and everything's easy,
I'm so smart and the teacher likes me so she just gives me a good grade and then I pass'. This imagery
is all about locus of control, it's about the areas of his life that he can control, who he talks to,
his growth mindset, how hard he's willing to work and choosing to be wise with his scheduling.
When you practice the skill of choosing which thoughts you're going to dwell on,
you really can retrain your brain to worry less and to take helpful action. When we're stuck
in worry mode, it can be hard to bring to mind safety and alternatives and positives. Anxiety
literally crunches down creativity, so it can be helpful to get another person's perspective. So
I'm gonna recommend that you ask a safe person who you trust for their thoughts about the situation
you're worried about. Now last, if you keep getting sucked into worry spiral, choose something else
you would rather be thinking about something more important or more valuable to you. So you're just
going to keep noticing those thoughts of worry and say 'oh thanks mind' and then ask yourself how
would you like your mind to be put to work today, what do you value? So for example, if
you find yourself going over your fears over and over again, take a step back and make sure you've
done your productive worry, you've planned what you can plan and you've prepared what you can prepare
and now, mentally set aside that box of worries and choose something else to let your brain work on. So
this could be focusing on your kids, being present and mindful with them, looking them in the eyes and
setting aside all distractions or just you know, just being very present in the moment with your
kids or it could be something like shifting to gratitude um start making lists of things that you're
grateful for or it could be asking the question 'who could I serve today, who could I help out?',
and in that way we shift our attention from that you know, box of worries to what you really
care about, what's most important to you and then take some value to action if necessary, choose just
one thing to work on, so if you're worried about getting lost at college, print out a
map and go spend some time walking around campus or if you're worried about running out of money
watch some online courses on money management. I really think managing worry is simple, but not easy.
So just to review, when you're dealing with worries and what-ifs, remember the function of worry is
to prompt helpful action, but this can mess us up when we get stuck ruminating on the negative.
So imagined danger triggers real stress, so take a moment to calm your body and then the antidote to
worry is the power of attention, choosing how to look at the problem. I'm going to encourage you
to pause this video when I finish and work through each of these steps. So start by writing down one
of your worries and then choose to focus on your locus of control changing what you can change
and then use the skill of imagery to solve problems. Imagine yourself succeeding, what would
that look like. When we're stuck in worry mode it can be hard to bring to mind safety alternatives
and positives, so get someone else's perspective who can help you see the other side of things.
And then last, if you keep getting sucked back into worry spiral, choose something else you would
rather be thinking about, something more important or more valuable to you. How would you like
your mind to be put to work. I hope you found this video helpful. If you appreciate this kind of
content you could consider supporting this channel on Patreon. Thank you for watching and take care.