Skip to main content

Worry Time: A Simple and Effective Way to Manage Worries and Anxiety


Anxiety tends to be pervasive and it can interfere with your daily life. A helpful technique to prevent worry from distracting you from the task at hand is to create a fixed daily “worry time” and postpone your worries to that time (Lewinsohn et al., 1986). The purpose of this activity is not to avoid thinking about the things that worry you, but to let you decide when the best time is to focus on the worries. Individuals with anxiety, especially generalized anxiety disorder, have excessive worry about many different aspects of their daily life and this lack of a specific trigger for anxiety makes it harder for these individuals to gain control over their worries. Worry time offers a way for these individuals to gain more control over their anxiety through a psychological process called stimulus control. When people with generalized anxiety disorder worry throughout the day, the worry becomes associated with many places, times, and/or situations. Over a period of time these places, times, and/or situations start to provoke spontaneous worry. The goal of stimulus control is restrict worry to specific times and locations, so that only those times and locations can now elicit worry (Borkovec et al., 1983). On the face of it, this technique may seem counterintuitive, but research supports its effectiveness. A study comparing participants who were assigned a 30-minute time- and place-restricted worry period to a controlled condition showed reductions on measures of worry, anxiety, and insomnia (McGowan & Behar, 2013). 

Here’s how you do it:
  • Set aside 30 minutes daily (e.g., 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.) as your worry time. This is the time when you will think about all the worrisome thoughts that occur to you during the day. 
  • Try to use the same time and location for your worry time. 
  • Make sure that your worry time is at least three hours before your bedtime so that the worry process doesn’t interfere with your sleep. 
  • Postpone any worrisome thoughts occurring during the day to your worry time. If you feel that you wouldn’t remember these thoughts, then jot down a word or two to remind you of the thought (e.g., upcoming trip, finances, school, etc.). You may keep a pocket diary or use a “to do” app for this purpose.
  • When you do get worrisome thoughts, remind yourself that you have assigned yourself a worry time later in the day to mull over these thoughts. Continue to do the task on hand.
  • When your worry time comes around, settle yourself in a quiet place that you have planned to use for that purpose.
  • Go over your “to do” worry list and if an item on it no longer appears worrisome to you, then skip it.
  • Spend the entire worry time thinking about your worries and refrain from doing anything else such as talking, eating, reading, or watching television. You may also want to write your worries down as it may be more helpful compared to worrying in your head.
  • If there are some worries that can be solved, then use problem-solving.
  • Once the worry time is over, you go back to your daily routine and postpone your worries for the next worry time.
  • Do the technique for at least two weeks.
In conclusion, assigning a fixed daily worry time is a simple yet effective way to handle your worries and anxiety. To learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that are proven to work for anxiety and depression, check out Dr. Duggal's Author Page.

HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA

REFERENCES

Borkovec, T. D., Wilkinson, L., Folensbee, R., & Lerman C. (1983). Stimulus control applications to the treatment of worry. Behavior Research and Therapy, 21(3), 247-251.

Lewinsohn, P. M., Munoz, R. F., Youngren, M. A., & Zeiss, A. M. (1986). Control your depression. New York, NY: Fireside.

McGowan, S. K., & Behar, E. (2013). A preliminary investigation of stimulus control training for worry: Effects on anxiety and insomnia. Behavior Modification, 37(1), 90-112.





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Value-Based Goals: The Antidote for “Success Depression”

A disconnect between your present accomplishments and your core values may make you suffer from success depression  wherein despite “having it all” (e.g., successful career, stable relationships, healthy children, etc.), you still struggle with depression and view your accomplishments as hollow (Zettle, 2007). The cure for this malaise is to clarify your core values and have goals and actions that are driven by these values. Psychotherapist Russ Harris describes values as our heart’s deepest desires for the way we want to interact with the world, other people, and ourselves. They are what we want to stand for in life, how we want to behave, what sort of person we want to be, and what sort of strengths and qualities we want to develop (Harris, 2009). Values are subjective; what one may consider as a value (e.g., being famous) may be considered as being cocky by another person. Moreover, values do change with time. For instance, you may value social popularity and raising a fa...
Post a Comment
Read more

The 6 Facets of Impostor Syndrome and its Relation to Depression

A lot has been written recently about impostor syndrome, also called impostor phenomenon in scientific literature. Most pop psychology descriptions of this condition, which impairs professional performance and leads to burnout, skew towards making this a syndrome of perceived fraudulence or fear of being seen as fake. However, the fact is that people with impostor syndrome describe a myriad of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and none of the existing scales capture all the facets of this complex and multifaceted syndrome (Mark et al., 2019). Also, contrary to popular belief, impostor syndrome is not limited to highly successful individuals and depends more on how people respond to specific achievement tasks when there is an element of being appraised.  The six facets that define this phenomenon are discussed below: (Bravata et al., 2019; Clance & Imes, 1978; Walker & Saklofske, 2023). 1. Fake: This attribute is the closest to the original conceptualization of imposto...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rumination: A Maladpative Coping Style that Fosters Depression

Rumination is a maladaptive style of responding to stressful situations in which a person repetitively and passively focuses on the symptoms of distress and the possible causes and consequences of these symptoms. Ruminators mistakenly believe that by focusing on their past feelings, they can somehow have a better understanding of their emotions and this will help them solve their problems. The opposite is true: rumination makes people more fixated on their problems and feelings without leading to any active problem-solving to change the circumstances around these symptoms. Research shows that women are more likely to engage in rumination compared to men, which also makes them more prone for depression (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). Rumination fosters inactivity and can come in the way of getting things done. Many people confuse rumination with worry, but these two entities differ in the following ways (Lyubomirsky et al., 2015): Rumination is focused on the past while worry is fo...
Post a Comment
Read more