Banning worry
“Worry is a word I don’t allow myself to use.” DWIGHT EISENHOWER
Now that we’ve dealt with ‘resisting what is’, including ‘resisting what was’, we need to turn our attention to ‘resisting what will be’.
We’ve said that practically all dissatisfaction entails wanting something to be already different. The only exception is worrying about the future. Worry is about ‘resisting the future’, otherwise called ‘resisting what will be’ or more accurately, in most cases, ‘resisting what may be’.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting the future to be different. In fact the final step of the pacceptance process involves precisely that … thinking about how we want the future to be and doing whatever we can to achieve it. But worrying about the future achieves nothing.
We define worry as ‘ruminating about a negative outcome’. So when we’re worrying we have an image of something bad happening in the future … and we believe we cannot control it. If we believed we could control it, we wouldn’t be worrying.
Wanting something to be different in the future, from the way we think it may be, when we believe we have no control over the outcome is about as futile as wishing something were already different.
The only thing that does make sense is to think about how we can better determine the future and gain more control over whatever it is we’re worrying about. And, to the extent we’re not able to do this, we need to accept whatever the future might be.
Accept what we cannot control and focus on improving what we can control. This is what we need to do if we want to rid our lives of worry.
We can practise this in the same way that we practiced ‘accepting what is’, using a four-step process similar to pacceptance:
- Create a habit of noticing whenever you’re worrying
- Recognise this is an irrational thought. You’re wanting something to be a certain way in the future and you believe you have no control over it
- Drop the worrying thought
- Refocus on how you can gain more control over whatever you were worrying about or otherwise improve the future
If there’s genuinely nothing you can think of doing to gain more control, then stop after step 3.
You may find the worrying thought returns. Fine. Just see that as an opportunity to practise the process again.
It helps to practise pacceptance (of the past and present), as outlined in the first chapter, for a while, before trying to apply the equivalent process to worry.
CASE STUDY
Ingrid was in her mid-50s and by most people’s standards her life was in pretty good shape. She had a good job, a loving husband and her grown-up children were making their way in the world.
But Ingrid had a problem. She wasn’t coping well with getting older. She’d lost some of her youthful looks, was feeling less healthy, had put on weight and was becoming more agitated by her advancing age and the prospect of one day growing ‘old’.
She’d tried to focus on the positive aspects of her life, but couldn’t keep her mind from returning to what she saw as her ‘big issue’. When I introduced her to pacceptance, she at first found it difficult to apply to her problem.
But she started applying it to other areas of her life, initially relatively minor day-to-day events, then some bigger issues such as regrets involving missed opportunities.
Within a short time, as she became more paccepting, she was able to fully paccept herself, her age, her changing appearance and the process of growing older.
She started taking action in the areas she could control. She joined a health club, lost weight and began to feel a lot healthier and more vibrant.
PACCEPTING OUTCOMES
In the last chapter we introduced pacceptance as a vehicle to train ourselves to ‘accept what is’ all the time. Once we’ve developed the ability to paccept everything then we can be confident that whatever happens in the future, we’ll be able to paccept it.
Before I achieved this, I used to believe that one thing I’d find hard to cope with would be a disability. While I wouldn’t ever wish it on myself or anyone else, I no longer believe I’d find it so hard to cope, were it ever to happen. I’ve become so used to paccepting everything that I now believe I’d be able to paccept disability, along with everything else that I routinely paccept. Since I cannot think of anything else much worse that could happen, I now feel comfortable about my ability to paccept anything that may happen.
Once you know you can paccept anything, what is there left to worry about?
EXAGGERATION
The tools above are used in Acceptance-Action Training or Acceptance-Action Therapy (AAT) for dealing with worry. The following is a Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach.
Whenever we’re worrying, we’re nearly always exaggerating one or both of two things:
- The probability of something bad happening
- The consequences, even if that ‘something’ were to happen
Identifying those exaggerations will enable us to view whatever we’re worrying about from a more realistic perspective.
CASE STUDY
Back in the days when I used to get anxious about speaking to groups, I worried whenever I had a speaking engagement approaching. I was no doubt worried some disaster might occur.
I was certainly exaggerating the probability of such a disaster. After all I’d survived several times already, so the chances were pretty reasonable I’d get through it again without any disaster occurring.
I was also exaggerating the consequences even if the feared ‘disaster’ were to occur. If I’d stumbled as a result of losing my way or becoming overly anxious, would that have been the end of the world as I imagined it would?
Quite probably the audience would have been empathic as most of them were, or had been, anxious about speaking to groups. Quite probably they’d have forgotten about it pretty quickly and life would have gone on as before.
Realising this, together with the pacceptance-based approaches already described, eliminated my worry about speaking to groups. However, I still felt anxious on the day, and we’ll see how this was resolved in the next two chapters.
CHOOSE WHAT WORKS
Some find the pacceptance-based approaches to be effective. Others have found identifying exaggerations to be effective. I suggest you try both and use the one that works best for you.
‘WHAT IF’ QUESTIONS
A great deal of worrying involves asking the question ‘what if …?’ ‘What if I don’t succeed in this challenge?’ ‘What if we run out of money?’ When we find ourselves asking ‘what if’ questions in a worrying way, we can replace them with ‘then what’ thinking. ‘If this was to happen, then we’d …’ For example, ‘If I don’t succeed in this challenge, then by using the tools in this book I’ll probably succeed next time.’
WORRY IS FUTILE
It helps to recognise that worry is futile and has no value. Some believe worry can be helpful as it focuses our mind on the problem. Thinking about a problem so we can come up with a solution is fine. But we don’t call that worry. We’re defining worry as ‘ruminating about a negative outcome’. Thinking about a solution is valuable. Ruminating about a possible negative outcome isn’t.
Awareness of how we want the future to be and making plans are sufficient without needing to worry.
Worry focuses on the problem.
Pacceptance focuses on the solution.
PUTTING IT IN PERSPECTIVE
Most of the things we worry about never happen. And even if they don’t immediately turn out the way we’d prefer, they generally work out all right in the end.
What’s more, most of the things we worry about aren’t so serious that we couldn’t adapt even if the worst were to happen. We’ve survived this far after all.
If you do find yourself worrying it may help to ask:
- What’s the worst that could happen?
- If that was to happen, then what would happen?
- Then what would happen? (repeat a few times)
- Even if all this were to happen would I or anyone else I’m worrying about still be alive?
- Would we ever be able to smile or laugh again?
You may not get through all the questions before you begin to see the problem in its true perspective and realise there aren’t too many things really worth worrying about.
It’s also worth remembering that worry is just a thought; it isn’t reality.
Pacceptance focuses on reality by
encouraging us to accept what is, or
accept what will be to the extent we
cannot control it.
A popular form of worry is worrying about the possible consequences of something we’ve already done, a sort of worry–regret cocktail:
- ‘Am I going to get there on time or should I have left earlier?’
- ‘Will the job I’ve taken work out all right or should I have taken the other one?’
Whatever we’ve done is done. Whatever has happened has happened. Whatever the outcome may be, with practice we’ll be able to paccept it. So we may as well stop worrying. It’s simply a matter of choosing to do just that.
Exercise
Spend a few moments reflecting on some of the things you’ve worried about in the past and see whether your fears were realised.
On the rare occasion they were, ask yourself whether it really turned out so badly after all.
If you repeatedly use the tools outlined in this chapter and summarised below, you can eliminate worry from your life. That’s a promise.
You may need to be tough on yourself and refuse to maintain a worrying thought by using these tools.
Action summary
If you find yourself worrying, try the following and find which approaches work best for you:
- Apply the pacceptance technique to the future (create a habit of noticing when you’re worrying; recognise worry is irrational as there’s no point wishing something were different if you believe you can’t control it; drop any worrying thoughts; and refocus on what you can do, if anything, to improve the future)
- Realise that with practice you’ll always be able to paccept whatever happens
- Recognise you’re almost certainly exaggerating:
- The probability of something happening, and/or
- The consequences even if it does happen
- Replace ‘what-ifs’ with ‘then-whats’
- Understand worry serves no useful purpose that isn’t already served by thinking about, being concerned about, or planning for, the future
- Focus on the solution, not the problem
- Recognise worry is just a thought, not reality
Prior chapters:
- Paccept what is (our circumstances) at every opportunity
- Observe non-pacceptance in others (TV, etc.) and consider how you’d now think and act in their circumstances