Gain Control over Worry

There are things you can do to gain control over worry. I recently heard a psychiatrist detailing what we can do to work through the anxiety and worry so prevalent these last few years.

He offered a threefold strategy. He said, 1) Never worry alone, 2) Get the facts, and 3) Make a plan. Let me flesh these three strategies out a bit.

Never worry alone: A burden that cannot be shared cannot be lifted. There is power in sharing, power in community. Sharing broadens our personal perspective, and can brings back from the terrors of the night, into the light of companionship. The perspective of two or more is almost always more reasonable, reasoned, calm and calming better than the perspective of only one. We are stronger together than alone.

During the Viet Nam war, scouts were send out into the jungle in pairs. This was primarily because they could test out with each another whether a noise was genuine or merely imaginary. Mutual listening helps keep us sane, keep us moving and thinking and acting sanely.

Get the facts: It is vital in situations of stress or anxiety to define just what the problem is. The worse part of anxiety is not having a clear idea what the threat is, who or where the danger is coming from, when or how some evil might strike you or your loved ones. It is very difficult to orient yourself to something when you don’t know exactly what that something may be. There is orienting power in naming. wait

When I was a pastor, I often waited with a parishioner for the results of some test. That period itself often turned out to be the most difficult part, the sheer waiting for defining results. The nagging “could be” and “what if” thought filled the silence between conversation. Once you have the facts, you can make the adjustments, prepare yourself for what is to come.

Make a plan: Making a plan means doing something, which, like sharing your worry with another, reduces the level of your anxiety. It is rather like the relationship between revving your engine while in park and actually putting it into gear, so you can begin to move, to get somewhere, which, even if it does not turn out to be the right place, at least is toward the right place, at least gets you out of the predicament you were in before you finally got moving.

If you don’t make a plan, you are more likely to just fret, obsess over the problem, even after you have gotten the facts. I recently came across a great quote: “Worry does not take the trouble out of tomorrow; it takes the strength out of today.” I have been working on remembering and applying that whenever I begin to fret about this or that problem. My worrying will simply not affect whatever I am worrying about; rather, it will only debilitate me. Losing sleep over that which will not change one whit by virtue of your worrying is the height of wearying foolishness.

Far better to share you worry with a trusted other, and so put it to bed, gain a clearer perspective. Far better to get the facts as calmly, as dispassionately as possible. Far better to make a plan, and to invest your trust in that plan. Then you just might be able to settle down and see through what you must.