Worry isn’t something that happens toyou! It’s actually something that you do that you subconsciously choose to do because. It serves a function, your brain rewards you for it, and then it becomes a habit.
If you want to learn how to worriless. You need to understand why your brain likes to worry, because that will free you to find a replacement for that habitual type of thinking. So, in this video you’ll learn the three subconscious benefits you get from worry and how to retrain your brain to worry less now.
First off i have to credit dry martin Rossman he’s the author of the worry solution and he’s an expert in mind body medicine this video is basically a concise excerpt from his longer and i would have to say, excellent YouTube video, how your brain can turn anxiety into calmness and I’m going to Link to that videoing, the description okay, so worry, serves at least three functions, but real, quick, let’s define worry, is a form of thinking.
It’s cognition, its imagining future outcomes, usually the bad onsets. It’s considering all the things that could possibly go wrong and stress is the physiological response.
It’s. What happens in your body when you’re physically threatened?
So, let’s say a huge dog jumps out to attack you, your adrenaline surges your heart rate and your breathing increase and. Your blood pressure goes up so, while worry happens in your mind, stress is what happens. In your body and your body doesn’t just respond. To physical threats. You can have a physical response to, a emotional threat or a cognitive threat.
Right you can have a physical response to being rejected by your peers or getting an angry email from your boss anxiety is the emotional response it happens in the limbic system in your brain and. I consider it to be a combination of thought sand those physical reactions but basically anxiety creates a strong motivation to avoid a threat, so if you’re, anxious around heights.
It makes you back away from a cliff edge if you’re anxious about an upcoming test. You may try to avoid that anxiety either by studying or by procrastinating, okay so back. To worry, which is the thinking part of fear worry or imagination, is how our ancestors survived on the African plain. They couldn’t run faster than cheetahs, they couldn’t swim faster than alligators Hey had no armor.
They had tiny little clowns and, very small teeth and very little fur right. They used their imagination to survives, for example. Our ancestors could think about how the day was going to get hot.
They could imagine or worry that they would get thirsty and they could plan how they would need to get water right. They could worry about how the alligators might be at the watering hole and then they could use their imagination their amazingly large brains to think of a way to get water from the stream instead because. It would be safer, so human survival Andin some ways dominance is due to our ability to.
Imagine ways to get food to imagine ways, we could get eaten and imagine ways how to avoid that to. Imagine dangers to our children and to prevent it right our ability to imagine future events. That haven’t happened yet is powerful and this is the first function of worry. It anticipates problem sand. It seeks for ways to prevent them. But worry can develop into a really unhealthy habits.
If you constantly imagine that the worst thingies happening, then your stress response is always getting triggered, and you just feel sick and anxious all the time it makes it hard to be present and you don’t actually solve problems you just feel unhappy. Now our imaginations, a skill that most people haven’t been taught how to use optimally. You can learn to use your imagination in a way that helps you and not hurts you and we’ll get to that in a minute but firth.
Let’s talk about the other two subconscious reasons, why your brain? Actually, likes to worry so reason number two: this is called magical.
Thinking your brain mistakenly thinks that if it worries and, then the bad thing doesn’t happen that it’s worrying that made the bad thing not happen the brain doesn’t like randomness. It wants reason for why things are the way they are and. It likes a sense of control. Dr Rossman shares this story.
He said there was this man in England who noticed that every day at 3 pm his neighbor walked around his house three times and he asked his neighbor why he was doing that, and she said because it keeps the tigers away, and he said: other are no tigers here and she Said see it’s working now i hear this all the time. People will say, oh I’d, rather worry about it and it not happen and then I’ll, be pleasantly surprised, then to not worry about it and have something bad happen.
Thematical thinking says that if i expect good things to come I’ll, jinx myself or if i let my guard down or if i hope for the best, then something bad will always happen. So, there’s something about this that feels emotionally true. So, every time you do catastrophize, like you, think oh I’m goon an get fired and then the catastrophe doesn’t happen, you don’t get fired. Then your brain makes this weird connection thinking.
Oh, because i worried about getting fired that prevented me from getting fired where.
It was much more likely that doing your work actually is what prevented you from getting fired but when the brain makes the connection between worrying and bad things not happening it rewards you for worrying. It thinks. Oh, let’s do that. Again you should do more of that. It worked and then it reinforces that habit, which makes you worry more okay so third, is worried, is a great way to avoid feeling.
So, if you experience some unpleasant emotions like sadness and anxiety and then you switch your brain into analysis, mode or planning or thinking mode, then you can use worry to distract yourself from your feelings and this can work pretty well in the short term, but in the long run. It actually makes you sadder, more anxious and, more fearful so you’re, basically tradingshort-term relief and short-term avoidance, forlong-term misery.
Okay, so worry as problem-solvingmagical thinking or avoidance that can becomehabitual.
It feels good for a little while and your brain rewards you for doing it.
So, this basically makes deeper neural pathways for worry which makes. You worry more and, and you get the idea right we basically can become addicted to worry but. You can learn to worry less, and you can learn to use the amazing powers of your imagination to help you uh instead of harm you. So, let’s talk briefly about what to do to stop worrying, thesis, obviously a much bigger topic that we can cover in a short video.
But let me give you a few ideas number one do intentional problem solving so! We need to take worry from something we ‘redoing unconsciously and make it intentional. So, the first thing you need to ask is: is it likely?
Thate could actually do something about this problem if? The answer is yes or most likely. Then it may beworth it to actually spend time imagining futureproblems and their solutions, but then i would justsay schedule in a time to do this. Just schedule in 30 minutes to worry each day, and this is to actively problem solve right.
Don’t let your brain choose when you do it, because it would always bright when you’re trying to do something, important like, sleep or play with your kids right so if this idea of scheduled, worry sounds crazy to you it.
Isn’t it’s a super effective way to train your brain, to use its imagination in a helpful way you can learn all about this in the course worry-free, where nick Wignall can teach you in about two hours how to stop the habit of worrying I’ve got, more information about that course down Ianthe description so check that out if you’d like to learn more about worrying and that very specific skill of scheduled, worry, okay, number two we’ve got to challenge your magical.
Thinking you could try to run some experiments, so you try imagining good things happening for a while and then just see. If that made bad things happen, when you don’t worry, and the bad things don’t happen it retrains your brain that the bad things aren’t prevented by worry. Now, dry Rossman’s book teaches you how to use guided imagery to replace worry and. I really do like his book, so you could also check that book out. That is not a paid promotion by.
The way. Okay number three, instead of avoidance learn to get better at feeling, stop using intellectualization and worry as a way to avoid your emotions. So instead, i would say increase your willingness. Skillset willingness is our ability, our skills, around feeling, feeling, emotions.
Then a couple ways: youkan do this. If you can keep an emotion journal you can talk with people about your feelings you need to just address your feelings, when you practice feeling your feelings, they become less scary and you can develop more confidence in, your own ability to handle them, and my motion processing course goes into a lot of Detail on this, so you can also check that out if you’d like to learn that skill. I hope that’s all helpful.
Thank you for watching and take care. You
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