WORRY
psychologist Maarkedal brooding
Do you feel that worrying is interfering with your life and sleep? As a psychologist in Maarkedal, I guide you with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and practical techniques to reduce fretting. On this page you can read what fretting is, when help makes sense and which exercises help immediately. Make an appointment for an intake or read on.
WHAT IS WORRYING ?
Just because you worry doesn't mean you have a worry disorder. But you may find it too disturbing and still want to do something about it.
People have the incredible ability to thinking about the future. ‘Future thinking’ means we can anticipate obstacles or problems, and give us the ability to plan solutions. If it helps us achieve them, ’future thinking’ can make sense. eg: washing your hands and keeping social distance are helpful actions we can take to prevent the corona virus from spreading
BUT
‘Worrying’ is a way of ’future thinking’ that often makes us frightens or makes you feel anxious.
When we worry too much, we often think about the worst scenarios that could happen and feel we can't cope.
WHAT IS A WORRY DISORDER ?
People with Worry disorder:
- his more than 6 months very concerned
- worry greatly much
- have difficulty to keep the worrying under control
The worrying is often about ordinary things (being sick, missing deadlines, not being liked,....). But it can also be about the environment, newsreels or other things. Those concerns about those mundane matters are actually no necessary, but people with a worry disorder may not finding themselves able to hold them back.
Because anxious worrying is often about multiple things, we say anxiety is ‘generalized.
This is why a worrying disorder is also called a ‘generalized anxiety disorder.
WHAT CAN YOU NOTICE ?
Being anxious and scared for various things
Worrying about various things
Need for a lot of confirmation
Poor sleep
Restlessness and tension
Concentration problems
Quickly tired
HOW CAN WORRYING DISORDER OCCUR?
Often there is no specific cause to pinpoint. However, we do often see that if there are members in the family who fret a lot, you are more likely to do the same.
The fears cause you to avoid situations. We call this avoidance. For example, you stop attending certain activities. This is an understandable reaction. After all, it provides short-term relaxation and peace of mind. But in the long run, this avoidance behavior is harmful. For it ensures that the anxiety persists and may even increase. You don't get a chance to discover that what you fear is not happening.
When fear arises and persists, thoughts are also important. This is because fear causes you to estimate the danger to be greater than it really is. For example, you think that your supervisor will judge your work poorly. Or that your children might not be safe outside. While the chance of that happening is very small.
Together with the avoidance of difficult situations the thoughts can cause you to end up in a downward spiral Eventually that fear can get so bad that a worrying disorder arises.
Anxiety disorders are quite common. One in 5 people experience them at some point in their lives. Some of them develop a worrying disorder.
WHEN DO YOU NEED HELP ?
Do you often worry about lots of things? More than necessary ? If so, you may have a worrying disorder.
You need help when worrying interferes with your normal daily activities.
Are you in doubt about whether you need help? Discuss it with your doctor or contact me.
HOW DOES COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY FOR WORRYING WORK ?
Your behaviors and thoughts perpetuate your anxiety. During therapy you will work actively to changing it. Also important in cognitive behavioral therapy is that you learn by experiencing things. All that happens step by step.
The therapist is the anxiety and cognitive behavioral expert. As the client, you are expert for yourself. And together we actively engage.
Together we find out if this worrying pattern has underlying meanings , which trigger this. If so, we work on clearing those out with methods such as e.g. EMDR.
In addition, we may do exercises together exercises with the situations you find tense. This is called exposure. Suppose you are afraid to leave your child alone. Does something really happen when he/she is not with you? This helps you learn that such a situation is not as terrible as you thought. The more often you practice, the more your anxiety decreases. You may also be given exercises for relaxation and breathing. This will give you more control over your anxious feelings.
We will also work on the way of thinking that belongs to your fear. Are your thoughts real and realistic? And are they helping you? Or are they actually just causing more worrying? With the therapist, you examine which thoughts are wrong and which thoughts are not helping. Then you will change these thoughts as necessary.
TIPS
TIP 1 : MAINTAIN BALANCE IN LIFE
Our well-being results from organizing a balance in activities that give us feelings of pleasure, self-actualization and closeness.
We must be well aware that we are social animals. We have connection . We need that to flourish and thrive. Therefore, it is definitely recommended to do at least some activities that are social and involve other people.
You can also take late inspiration for this from an activity list which I drafted together with colleagues in Solta and inspiration from outside.
TIP 2 : IDENTIFY YOUR CONCERNS
Is it about a real/actual problem Or is it about a hypothetical worrying thought?
You can figure this out from the worrying step by step plan. (this is a plan detailed on the website of my other practice Solta)
When you experience a hypothetical worrying thought, it is important to remind yourself that your mind is not focused on ‘solving’ the problem. Rather, you focus on something else and let go of the brooding!
TIP 3 : DELAYING YOUR WORRYING THOUGHTS
Worrying is insistent - it can make you feel like you need to act right away. But you can experiment with the postponing hypothetical pondering. This may give you the opportunity to develop a different relationship to your concerns.
In practice, this means intentionally setting aside time each day to allow yourself to mull (e.g., 15 minutes before dinner). This may feel a little strange at first. It does mean that for the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of your day, you're putting off mulling until your worrying time.
Be sure to check out the worrying procrastination exercise.
TIP 4 : SPEAK TO YOURSELF WITH COMPASSION
Worrying can come from a place of anxiety - we worry about others when we care for them. A traditional cognitive behavioral therapy technique for working with negative, anxious and worrying thoughts is to make to write down your thoughts and Finding other ways to cope. For this, you can use the following compassionate-table Use it to respond to your anxious and worried thoughts with kindness and compassion.
TIP 5 : PRACTICE MINDFULNESS
Learning and practicing mindfulness can help us let go of our worries and brooding thoughts and bring us back into the current moment.
eg: focusing on the tender movement of your breath or the sounds you hear around you may be helpful anchors for you to come back into the present moment and let go of worries. There are lots of apps for this purpose (both for Iphone and Android):
VGZ mindfulness app – Smiling Mind (for children and young adults) – Mindfulness app – Headspace – Insight timer – …
Would you have liked to continue working around this? Please feel free to contact me using the button below
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