The Sky Is Falling! (Or Is It?) — How I’ve Learned To Reduce The Worry Burden

Stop Worrying!

I can be a worrier. I’ve been working on reducing the weight of worry for many years.

I’ve found three things that help me:

1. Ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
2. Fact-check thought distortions.
3. Think the best.

Imagine the Worst And Then See If You Can Handle It

It drives me crazy when I watch my son play sports and I can see him doing the pee dance. I’ve learned it’s not cool for a mom to go up to their almost-middle school aged son during the game and ask him if he needs to go potty. So, now I ask myself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Well, he could wet his pants, everyone notices and he’s embarrassed for the rest of the season. If that did happen, would we all be OK? Yes! Is this the most likely thing to happen? No! It’s more likely that he will get desperate and find a way to run to the bathroom.

If I’m presenting in front of a large group of people, sometimes I imagine myself having a panic attack followed by me vomiting and pooping my pants. Am I still alive in this scenario? Yes! Am I embarrassed? Yes, but mostly people would be worried I was violently ill. Is this very likely to happen? Nope.

I have overcome my fear of flying thanks to many years of riding over the ocean, but sometimes I still get worried. Again, I ask myself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” The worst is that the plane crashes, but we survive with severed limbs and get eaten by a shark. In this scenario, I’m gone, so then I feel bad for my kids. Will they survive? Yes! Is this scenario very likely? Nope!

So you can see this strategy has its pluses and minuses, and offers a chance to be creative with your disaster, but I find it helpful to calm my nerves and remind me that I will be able to handle most anything that comes my way (except the whole shark thing).

Can you back up that impending catastrophe with evidence?

How many times does something happen and you immediately think you’ve done something wrong or something bad is going to happen? I’ve read and listened to enough psychologists to be able to drop the term catastrophizing to describe this behavior. My solution to reduce catastrophizing is fact-checking thought distortions. Thought distortions is another fancy term that basically means you make a mountain out of a molehill, i.e. blow something out of proportion.

Are you still with me?

Here’s an example:

You send an email to someone and they don’t respond. You automatically think you must have offended them, they don’t like you and they are now busy plotting to get you fired. You might as well pack your boxes and turn in your key. These are thought distortions.

Fact-checking these thought distortions looks Iike this:

1. Was the most recent interaction I had with this person good? Yes.
2. Did I find anything offensive about my email? No.
3. Can I stand behind what’s in the email if my boss asks? Yes.
4. What other evidence do I have they are plotting my demise? Come to think of it, none.
5. What if they their kid got sick, their boss asked them to do something new, they are busy with other emails or their spouse just called and said a pipe burst in their basement? Can you think of more reasons it isn’t what you think than it is? Yes, almost always, you can.

Also, it’s important to remember you aren’t that important. People are more worried about themselves than you. I find this to be a very liberating fact to remember!!

What if everything goes your way?

Finally, what if instead of thinking about what’s going to go wrong, you think about what could go right? In the case of my examples above, what if my presentation is a big hit and everyone wants to talk with me afterward because they really got something out of it? What if I make a new connection with an airline passenger and it leads to great things? What if it turns out I can become closer to my coworker because I find out what was really going on and it ended up they are completely aligned?

Think the best. Give it a try! What’s the worst that can happen — you stop thinking up embarrassing bathroom accident scenarios? You might be surprised how good it feels to tell worry to take a hike over the molehill.