Stop Thinking That!
With Stance 1, you were afraid that the worries were accurate predictions of trouble, and you spent a lot of time thinking about them, researching the problem, discussing it with loved ones, trying to persuade yourself that you were safe. Now, you’re much less concerned with the apparent content of the thoughts. Now you’re bothered by how much worrying you do, and afraid of how the worry itself might affect you. You have thoughts that worry might prevent you from ever enjoying your life, from being a good parent or spouse, that it might make you less productive at work, that it might become obvious to others and damage your reputation, even that it might literally kill you. So now you try to get the worry out of your head. You try distraction, thought stopping, avoiding the subject, anything to “stop thinking about it.”
While there is some overlap, most of the ways that people try to control Stance 2 worry are different from the methods they tried with Stance 1. Here are some of the key ways people try to “stop worrying.”
Distracting Yourself
A very common response is to try to distract yourself, so you don’t think about the topics that worry you. Distraction sometimes works to take your mind off a problem, especially when the distraction is an outside event like an unexpected phone call, a household emergency, or your dog barking. However, you can’t count on this kind of distraction—it’s unpredictable and unreliable. So many people try to deliberately distract themselves from their unpleasant thoughts and worries. They might hum a favorite tune, look over some text messages they’ve already read, or phone a friend just to chat. This quickly becomes a source of trouble, for two reasons.The first is that when you try to deliberately distract yourself, you’re aware of what you don’t want to think of. You tell yourself to “think about this, not that.” Once you’ve done this, it’s too late—you’re already thinking of what you hoped to avoid!
The second reason is that the use of distraction strengthens the belief that thoughts can be dangerous. On those occasions when it works, you are literally training your mind to expect relief when the thought leaves—and therefore to feel upset when the thought remains, or returns. The more effort you make to get those thoughts out of your head, the more your mind will justify the effort by viewing the thoughts as dangerous. The truth is, thoughts simply aren’t dangerous. Actions can be dangerous; thoughts can only be unpleasant. If thoughts were dangerous, the obituary pages would be banned. There’s no such thing as a “killer joke.” The more you use distraction, the more you strengthen this impression that thoughts can be hazardous.
A variation on distraction is when people try really hard to “think positive.” It’s probably a good thing to enjoy positive thoughts. But when you struggle to make your thoughts positive, all too often you’re going to end up with the opposite result.
Thought Stopping
When people find their ability to distract themselves erodes over time, they often escalate their effort to thought stopping. Here, by sheer power of will, people sternly instruct themselves to “Stop thinking about that.” They may even snap a rubber band on their wrist and say “Stop!” I’m sorry to say that this technique has actually made its way into the self-help literature, and even today you may find books advocating this technique. It ranks high among the worst advice I have ever seen in print!Thought stopping works like banning books—it just promotes interest in the forbidden topic! It leads, inevitably, to the return of the thoughts you were trying to stop. All you’ll have to show for it will be some red welts on your wrist.
Should you use thought stopping? Don’t even think about thought stopping!
Use of Substances
It’s quite common for people to try to control their worry with the use of substances that they ingest. Here the aim is not to dispute or contradict the content of the worries. It’s simply to stop the worry thoughts from arising.Drugs and Alcohol
People will frequently turn to the use of street drugs and alcohol in an effort to relax and quiet their mind. It works, until it doesn’t, and then you have a much bigger problem than you had before.On a daily basis, you might find that while your drug of choice helped you relax the night before, it leaves you feeling less comfortable and more anxious the next day, a hangover effect. This is part of a terrible chain of dependency in which you can become more and more reliant on the drug or on alcohol and develop the additional problem of substance abuse as a result. There isn’t any problem that can’t be made worse by the use of drugs and alcohol as a solution.
Tobacco use follows the same pattern.
Prescription Medications
I’m usually skeptical about the use of prescription medications for reducing worry. I think it often causes more trouble than good. It strengthens the idea that you need protection from your thoughts, and often produces unwelcome side effects.However, I have seen the occasional client who benefited from medication when nothing else helped much. If you are going to try these medications to tame really persistent worries, be guided by the results you get. If, on balance, your life seems to work better with the medication than without, that sounds like a reasonably good use of medication.
Comfort Foods
If only the comfort lasted without adding weight, and strengthening the urge to eat! Of course it doesn’t, and in this regard the reliance on emotional eating resembles the reliance on drugs and alcohol.Avoidance of Cues and Reminders
When you’re in the stance of taking your worries seriously, you may avoid situations and objects in the “real world.” A person who fears flying will avoid airplanes, and similarly with people who fear dogs, driving, and so on.
When you’re in the stance of simply worrying about how much you worry, you may find yourself avoiding sources of information in an effort to control or limit what you think about. You might limit your use of mass media—newspapers, television, and so on—for fear of hearing a story that triggers you to think about feared subjects. You might limit your TV watching to the Disney Channel, or your reading of periodicals to the children’s Highlights magazine in your dentist’s office (unless you fear dentists…).In a similar way, you may hope, or expect, a spouse or friend to stop mentioning the topics you find scary, and become upset with them when they don’t do a good job of this.
Like other efforts to control or limit your thoughts, these efforts usually lead people to feel more vulnerable and “on guard” rather than more comfortable and secure.
Support People
We all naturally enjoy contact and communication with others. However, sometimes people who struggle with chronic worry become dependent on one particular person for ongoing reassurance. Relying on a support person carries some of the same advantages and disadvantages as the use of alcohol to self-medicate. You can get some quick temporary relief, faster than you would otherwise; but the long-term disadvantages greatly outweigh the temporary advantage. The long-term disadvantages of relying on a support person include diminished self-confidence, as you attribute all your coping to the support person, rather than yourself, and the loss of independence and initiative, as you come to rely on and require the aid of the support person.Support people may be pressed into service in both parts of the relationship people have with worry. In Stance 1, when you take the apparent content of the worry seriously, you may look for repeated reassurance that the feared events will not occur. In Stance 2, when you struggle to “stop thinking” about the worry topic, you might be more likely to look to the support person as a source of distraction, or a source of general reassurance that all will be well.
Does this person have any special powers? No. Their influence stems from the relationship they have with you.
Support Objects
Support objects work the same way as support people, but without the possibility of back talk. It’s quite common for people to fall into the habit of carrying objects with them in an effort to reduce their worry. Sometimes these objects seem to have some logical but misleading connection to the worry, as when a person who worries about choking keeps a water bottle handy at all times. Other times they’re more like a superstitious lucky charm.While the use of such objects in an effort to reduce worry can seem harmless enough, it can cause you some problems. You can come to believe that you need these objects to get along, and continue to feel vulnerable to worry because you suppose these objects are somehow protecting you. If you believe an object is protecting you, you’ll probably worry about having an adequate supply of the object. For instance, if you have the thought that you need a water bottle to stay alive, is one bottle really enough? Additionally, while reliance on these objects may help you get some quick temporary comfort, it also prevents you from noticing that things are okay with or without the support object.
I’m reaching back into the distant past for this reference, but if you’ve seen the Disney movie Dumbo (1941), you might recognize Dumbo’s feather as a support object. Dumbo, the flying elephant, mistakenly attributed his ability to fly to a magical feather, and it wasn’t until he dropped the feather that he came to realize that he was stronger and more capable than he realized. You youngsters can Google it!
Here are some common support objects.
- Snack foods
- Pictures of grandkids or other loved ones
- Books about anxiety
- Cell phones
- Water bottles
- Items that grant “luck,” like a four-leaf clover or a rabbit’s foot
- Worry beads
- Rosary beads
- Medications
Take Inventory
Which of the anti-worry behaviors described in this chapter do you use most frequently? Do they serve you well, or poorly? Which would you like to leave behind?
Before you move on, take a few minutes to make a list of them, and periodically review it, updating it as necessary.Thinking It Over
In this chapter, I’ve described the dual relationship people establish with worry. Sometimes you take the apparent content of the worry thoughts seriously, and try to protect against the thoughts or disprove them. Sometimes you recognize that the thoughts are exaggerated and unrealistic, worry about how much worrying you do, and try hard to stop having such thoughts.
Neither response works over time. Neither is capable of giving you the relief you seek. Instead, both make your situation with worry worse rather than better and add to your sense of being “stuck” in your worries. Perhaps even worse, they may lead to the demoralizing observation “The harder I try, the worse it gets” and leave you feeling unable to help yourself.Fortunately, there is an effective way out of this logjam. Your situation with worry has been getting worse because you’re been tricked into trying things that do make it worse. As you come to discover this, you can turn your attention and energy to different kinds of responses to worry, responses that will reward your efforts by making your situation better. In later chapters, I will show you some methods you can try, methods which will probably bring you more of the results you want.
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