Nagging Worries and Racing Thoughts – Part 3

As I said last week, solutions and strategies for the nagging worries and racing thoughts can be placed in one of three categories – environmental interventions, cognitive / behavioral interventions, and physical / physiological interventions.

Environmental interventions are just what they sound like, changes in your living environment. Last week I spoke briefly of enlisting friends to be available as a means of confronting loneliness. When you discover that worries occur most often when it’s dark and quiet, the use of soft lighting and gentle music may be very helpful. If the news or articles in the paper are triggers then you may have to be careful about how much you allow yourself to be exposed to such information. All of these very simple adaptations are ways that you can change your environment to reduce the worries and racing thoughts.

Cognitive / behavioral interventions are very powerful tools that can be used to change the way you think about your current circumstances and / replace old dysfunctional behaviors with more helpful ones so that you can lessen the distress of those negative thoughts.  As we all know, worrisome thoughts seem to spin in an endless loop in our heads. Without a way out or an answer to some questions these thoughts become torturous.

A very simple but very effective technique for some people is journaling. This involves putting your thoughts and feelings down on paper as a way of breaking the loop. Many people find that writing things down seems to free their mind to think about different things. Another behavior strategy is to establish a “designated worry zone” which involves designating a certain block of time every day to be used for worry. Worries that pop up at other times of the day are written down or held off until the time comes when worry is allowed free reign. The worry zone lasts for a specified amount of time and its end can be signaled by a timer. All worries are allowed until the timer goes off and then no further time is allowed until tomorrow’s time slot.

As compared to these more behavioral techniques, cognitive strategies directly target the way we think and challenge ideas that either have no real objective basis or counter some faulty logic that keeps the fears and worries alive.  One very basic approach involves walking people through the “what ifs”. We are all familiar with these. You know, like “what if I get sick while I’m on vacation?”

Usually when we get caught in a loop of these kinds of thoughts we become scared by the possibilities and never think our way through the imagined problem. So, instead of letting yourself get stuck at the scary possibilities you push your thinking all the through to the solution. “Well, if I got sick on vacation I’d go to the nearest hospital, have them call my doctor, and do exactly what they agreed was best. If I needed to come home I’d ask for some help with transportation from the hospital social worker.” Now you have a mental plan or response to the situation that you were feeling afraid of.