Challenging the value of worry
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00:00A good question to ask ourselves is, why do we worry?
00:04Now sometimes people kind of dismissively say,
00:06oh, what's the point in worrying about it?
00:09As if that's kind of magically supposed to make it go away.
00:12And of course it doesn't.
00:13It's not that simple, but it's still useful
00:17to understand the kind of worry process
00:19and what's going on there.
00:21Because our emotions tell us stuff.
00:24Like they're really useful in motion focused therapy.
00:26We talk about the message that our feelings
00:29are giving us.
00:30Worry is often a tool to motivate ourselves
00:33to get to safety, to study harder,
00:35to not mouth off at our boss.
00:39Every time we think about maybe punching our boss
00:42because we're really angry about them,
00:43we worry, oh no, I would lose my job.
00:45That's a really healthy level of worry there
00:48because actually if you mouth off or you hit your boss,
00:51you almost certainly will lose your job
00:53in a lot of situations.
00:55So it's good in that sense
00:57that it's telling us something important.
00:59But with anxiety, we often get trapped in these cycles
01:03where we know the worry isn't telling us anything important,
01:06but we just can't make it go away.
01:09So what do we do in these situations?
01:11Well, there's a couple of things we could do here.
01:15So we could say to ourselves,
01:17okay, what's the benefit of worrying about this?
01:20Like, can I actually do something about it?
01:23Because if I can, then maybe that's a call to action.
01:27If I'm worried that there's some mold growing in my bathroom,
01:35then maybe I should worry a bit about that
01:37and speak to the landlord or get it taken care of.
01:40That's something I can actually, I can do it about.
01:44But let's say I'm waiting on some test results
01:47from my doctor and I'm really worrying about that.
01:51There's nothing I can do in that situation.
01:54I've just got to wait for the test results to come back.
01:56So that's a good example of saying to myself,
01:59okay, well, there's nothing I can do about this,
02:02but I'm still feeling really worried about this.
02:06And what can be really useful here
02:07is rather than just saying, well, I'll stop worrying about it
02:10is to bring some compassion to ourselves to say,
02:13ah, yeah, like I really am scared
02:16about what these test results might say.
02:18So no wonder I'm constantly worrying about it.
02:21But I know there's nothing I can do
02:23when I just have to sit with these uncomfortable worries
02:26about what's gonna happen in the future.
02:28And I'm doing that because I'm scared
02:30and bringing some of that compassion to ourselves
02:33can be really useful.
02:35Another good question here is to ask ourselves,
02:38is there any new information?
02:40Because again, like if we're worried
02:43about those test results,
02:44we might find ourselves hooked over and over again
02:47into thinking about the worry again.
02:49But if we can respond,
02:50actually, I know that there's no new information
02:54from when I'm worried about this an hour ago.
02:56And so I don't need to do any more problem solving.
02:59Again, if we think about that, what's worry telling us
03:02is often telling us, okay, spend more time
03:05so you can find the answer,
03:06so you can troubleshoot this problem.
03:08But when we know that there's nothing more we can do,
03:11there's no new information.
03:13When that worry pops into our head,
03:15we can say, aha, I have done all of the worrying
03:19I need to on this.
03:19Thank you for telling me
03:21to try and troubleshoot this problem,
03:23but I know there's no new information,
03:25so I'm not gonna spend any more time on it.