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Challenging Worry - Worry Time

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Hugs

Until Vincenza gets back to you. Some more information. They can be more than one just as long as there is a fairly long space between. And the period of worry has to be long enough that you have trouble filling it. Even if you have to replay your worries.

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 4027

Vincenza,

I'd like to try that, but it seems my worry is so subtle and pervasive, I'm not certain how I could restrict it to one time window. I have heard the idea, when I did a public speaking course. The compartmentalization idea is great and has to do with boundries, which are helpful for sanity.

Maybe some the worry can be corralled, though.

What hour of the day do people do this, or when is it feasible or most productive

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

misscristie

For every negative "what if" there is a positive one. Some times the best way to deal with "what ifs" is to bury them with other "what ifs".

That really is what CBT is about. Changing negative thought to positive.

Davit

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Vincenza.

You told us how to do this worry time but not why. From what I have read the theory is that if the worry is not reasonable you will have a hard time filling the worry time with the worry. In other words you will get bored and tired of it and let it go. Good for unreasonable worry such as India getting tired of us eating cows and nuking us. Not likely to happen. But what about real concerns. Like the ongoing decline of the economy. Some people can't meet there expenditures and have a legit reason to worry. Okay I think this is not the type of worry we are concerned with here. More concern than worry. Worry time also works better for OCD where the worry is unreasonable. Interesting because although OCD is unreasonable there is always a reason or it isn't OCD. Excessive hand washing, (unreasonable) germ phobia, (reason)

The problem I find with this is that it doesn't really deal with the worry. It can come back. And if it is a legit worry it is not going to stop when the time is up. I would much rather use the time to challenge the worry and separate the legit from the imagined. And also challenge whether the amount of time spent on a legit worry is reasonable. Of course it is possible that this won't work for GAD where the worry seems to come out of the blue. (I don't believe this, I believe there is always a reason) So if challenging doesn't work then maybe doing worry time your way is the best way. A person can only try.

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1665

Hi everyone: I did use to worry a lot. I tried the worry time and had difficulty with doing this exercise mainly because I was so agitated the worry didn't stop when the half hour or so was over. I still worried. When it's so encompassing all day, it permeates everything. I found once I got better, more relaxed, it faded on its own.

I find now that it is more a "concern" I may have about something. If I can find some kind of solution for this concern, it is helpful. I can now sleep even if I do have a worry or a concern, unlike when I was unwell and in the midst of panic attacks. However it does happen when I will be kept awake about something once in awhile, but hardly ever nowadays.

Neither is it always negative thought which keep us awake, it could be excitement about something too. Remember when you were a kid on Christmas Eve?

Sunny

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 4

Good morning,

My 'worry time' seems to be when I awake out of a sound sleep. 2 or 3 A.M. I've been up since 2 now, I wake up, and start to worry about the events of the day. Oh, I so want to be sleeping, Oh, I'm so tired. I go to bed with pretty positive thoughts, why, in the middle of the night, do the negative thoughts come, and come so strong to wake me from a sleep.

Maybe if I did set up a special worry time. Maybe I would be able to sleep better at night.

But my concern would be that it would just start my anxiety earlier in the evening, and I don't know if I would be able to relax enough to even get to sleep. I have a real problem with the "what if's" and I do try to challenge them, but not alway successful.

cristie

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Ah, I found a different way to use worry time.

In that one they use the worry time to challenge the worry rather than worry. They also set all worry aside except for this time period. Now this I could do. But actually setting aside time to worry is counter productive to me.

But then I never had GAD, characterized by excessive worry. Nor did I ever have depression. So I probably don't qualify to do worry time.

Lets see if we can get someone else's opinion on this. Does any one here do this?

Another technique mentioned was writing down the worry so you wouldn't forget it, tricking the mind to think then since it was wrote down and you couldn't forget it and could come back to it later that you could let it go. It was mentioned that in this case the worry was often forgot from the mental process of thinking about it.

Has anyone done that?

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Hmmmm.

I don't do this. Maybe I don't have enough worry. Like my therapist says, "worry is a waste of imagination". I just put it aside when it crops up and do something else. I have a good imagination. I have a lot of concerns right now, It is normal to analyse concerns so they can be filed away, but some how I find allowing worry any room to be too negative.

Still thinking on this. If I allowed my concerns to be worries for half an hour what would I accomplish. I just think making a room for them is not for me. I suppose it is meant to be a form of exposure. Sorry, I'd rather bury them. But then maybe I just don't have enough worries and I never worry when I'm doing something more important. It gets my entire focus.

Going to talk to sunny on this one, and my therapist since no one else is answering. We are all different, not everything I do works for others.

Maybe we have a different definition of worry. Something to study on.

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1853

Members,

There are a number of CBT techniques that are commonly used to help people challenge worry including: thought records, thought stopping, worry time, challenging the value of worry, problem solving, experiments to increase intolerance of uncertainty and cognitive exposure. Let’s take a look at them one at a time:

Worry Time: Worry time is another simple technique that many people find extremely helpful. If you find that you worry all of the time or nearly all of the time, try setting aside a regular time each day to do all of your worrying and then do ALL of your worrying during your Worry Time. So, for, example, if you decide that your Worry time is between 7:00 pm and 7:30 pm, then you have to do all of your worrying at that time. You set aside that time to worry each day and during that time you do nothing but worry. Your job during Worry Time is to worry as hard as you can. When Worry Time is over you get up and get back to doing something else. Distraction usually works to help people stop their worry time. If you find yourself worrying outside of your Worry Time your job is to delay or “put off” the worry until Worry Time. It is not as if you are not going to worry at all. You are just delaying the worry until later. Don’t make a list of things to worry about during Worry Time. The basic rule is if the worry is important you will remember it at Worry Time. If it isn’t important, you will forget it. Try this technique for a week and see how it works for you.

Many people who try this technique and actually set aside Worry Time each day find it very helpful.

Does this strategy work for you?

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Challenging Worry - Worry Time