Struggling With Generalized Anxiety and Constantly Worrying? Try These Interventions For Relief Today.
Do you find yourself feeling anxious much of the day? Do you feel you are constantly worrying and cannot relax? Try these two interventions for relief today.
Many people struggle with managing the amount of their worrying and anxious feelings during the day. Sometimes it is about something specific such as giving a speech at work or worrying about our child’s day of school. Sometimes these feelings are normal and can actually be beneficial to help us prepare and plan for the future. However, sometimes the worrying and anxiety becomes too intense and takes up too much time during the day distracting us from other things we want to do. At its worst, we may find ourselves doing less of the things we want to do due to our constant worrying and anxious feelings.
Paradoxical interventions help us embrace those anxious feelings and worrying. It’s counter Intuitive, but it helps us learn different ways to manage our anxiety by experiencing the emotions leading to new tools and approaches to manage them.
Another way to learn better ways to manage our anxiety and worrying is learning to delay and predict, not ignore these feelings. Here are two interventions you can use from a cognitive behavioral framework.
Predict Your Anxiety and Worry
Instructions:
Given you find yourself overwhelmed with anxious feelings and worrying that is hard to turn off at times, let’s try a new approach where you predict when and how intense these feelings are going to be during the day.
In the morning, write down at least 4-5 times during the day that you might feel anxious or worry excessively. Then write out what is going on, how anxious you will be feeling using a 1–10-point scale, and what physical symptoms you might be feeling (e.g., upset stomach, increased heart rate, sweating, unable to concentrate). Also include what thoughts you might be having as well at this time. Then, put your list away and don’t look at it.
During the day, when you are experiencing some of those events you wrote down earlier, write out how intense your anxiety or worry is and what thoughts and physical sensations are occurring.
At the end of the day, compare your earlier predictions to the actual in the moment experience you wrote down. Were any less intense than predicted? More? About the same?
Do this for one week then look at how well you can predict your anxiety. Any patterns or themes occur? For example, do certain people or environments cause you to be anxious? Any thoughts that seem to commonly occur? Were you over predicting or underpredicting your anxiety and worry?
Why do this?
Well, it helps you see if there are differences in your ability to predict anxiety and the actual reality when facing it. In many cases, we anticipate anxiety being worse than it really is in the moment.
This also lets us create a more predictable future as we are unconsciously planning to cope with future anxiety. This helps us anticipate where we might be anxious or worry. When we are able to more accurately predict when we are likely to be anxious or worry, it can result in us feeling less anxious.
The 10-Minute Anxiety Delay
Instructions:
Sometimes anxiety and worrying can catch up with us quickly and out of nowhere. When you feel anxious or find yourself worrying, tell yourself to wait 10 minutes. Set a timer for 10 minutes and then move on with what you were doing. Do your best to not worry or feel anxious.
After 10 minutes, check in with yourself to see if you still intensely worried or anxious. If you are, feel free to spend some time being anxious. If not or it does not seem as intense, then simply keep going on with what you’re doing.
Why do this?
This intervention helps us delay our anxious feelings and worry rather than ignoring or suppressing them completely. Sometimes after the delay, our anxious feelings have dissipated or are significantly reduced. In other words, the window to worry and feel anxious has passed.
It also challenges our automatic reactions to feeling anxious and worrying giving us the ability to control when we feel them. We also learn many anxious feelings are temporary and pass with some time. We don’t have to always engage with them immediately.
So the next time you find yourself struggling with anxious feelings or worrying you feel you can’t stop, try these two interventions to help gain a sense of control back in your life.
Still Struggling with Worry and Anxiety? We Can Help.
If you find yourself constantly worrying and feeling anxious, it is ok to ask for some additional help. You are not alone, and many people struggle with the challenges of life. Sequoia Counseling Group specializes in Generalized Anxiety Therapy using empirically validated interventions and approaches. Reach out today with any questions you may have or to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. We look forward to hearing from you.
Dr. Philip B. Gnilka is the Clinical Director and Founder of Sequoia Counseling Group, a boutique mental health practice that serves clients in Las Vegas, NV. His experience as a tenured professor in mentoring students about counseling approaches and theories reinforced his passion for helping individual clients directly. He specializes in anxiety, stress management, and perfectionism.