Why You Should Work ‘Worry Time’ Into Your Schedule

Worrywart, nervous Nellie, fretting Fran—no matter you name somebody who worries excessively, I contemplate myself to be one. And when you’re like me, you possibly can relaxation assured we’re not alone. The American Psychological Affiliation’s Stress in America 2022 report paints a bleak image of a rustic riddled with anxiousness and dread. 

For those who don’t really feel like scrolling by means of the entire report, enable me to summarize: We’re all anxious about one thing. Shocker, proper? Whereas it may be tempting to lean into extra avoidant options, clinical psychologist and cognitive behavioral therapist Dr. Ali Mattu recommends diving headfirst into your misery with scheduled “worry time.” 

However once more, when you’re something like me, fear time is on a regular basis. So what’s the distinction? I sat down with Dr. Mattu to seek out out.

What Is Fear Time?

“Worry time” has no stipulations or guidelines concerning subject material; no concern is just too massive or too small if it’s negatively affecting your psychological, emotional, or bodily well being. Nonetheless, there are just a few really helpful pointers to profit from this time.

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“To do worry time right, pick a time of day when you’re not distracted by other demands [and you can] get a bit emotional,” Mattu mentioned. “In other words, don’t do worry time before an important meeting or before going to sleep. Then give yourself 5-10 minutes: less time if this scares you, more time as you become comfortable with it.”

He continued, “Throughout this time, enable your self to jot down down all of your ideas about every thing you dread—all of your worries, every thing that’s in your thoughts proper now. Then, throughout the remainder of the day, in case your thoughts begins to deal with the belongings you dread, remind your self that you’ve fear time to focus utterly on these ideas. 

“Worry time can work because it helps you get unstuck with your thoughts and focuses your attention on what really matters. As you revisit the things you wrote down, you might start to see patterns that help you gain a more accurate view of the things you dread.”

Apprehensive About Your Fear Time?

As somebody with little to no wiggle room in my each day schedule, the concept of including time to fret (as an alternative of worrying 24/7, which is way extra environment friendly to my thoughts) is laughable. So I requested Mattu about that, too. “If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably giving your worries a LOT of your time,” he responded. 

“All I’m asking you to do is strive a distinct means of approaching your ideas as an alternative of ruminating about them in your thoughts. Even only one minute of fear time may assist. And we will all discover one minute someplace in our lives—throughout a commute by recording into your telephone, whereas ready for a kettle to go off, or whereas sitting on the bathroom.

“Our thoughts always reflect our emotions,” he defined. “When we’re anxious, our thoughts focus on disaster; when angry, everything is an injustice, and when happy, life looks great. So your thoughts are really just this background noise of the mind. Sometimes there are good bits in there, but a lot of the time, it’s just noise.”

Mattu concluded by saying, “You can’t control what thoughts your mind produces, but you do have some control over how much focus you give them. Techniques like worry time can help you learn how to give your thoughts a bit less of your time and focus on what really matters—the stuff going on outside of your head.”

So I suppose there’s only one factor left to fret about—when will you schedule your fear time?

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