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The Worrywart’s Companion is written in a soothing, accepting, gentle, encouraging, inclusive voice, with concepts and techniques being gently conveyed with nonthreatening stories and metaphors. By comparison other books about coping with worry rely on technical jargon, psychobabble, therapizing, and statistics conveying the message that worrying is a psychological “problem”. The Worrywart’s Companion is written in a “lay” voice that does not make the worrywart a neurotic in need of therapy, and in a “timeless” style so that the book will feel current to readers, regardless if they read it today or in future years.
Docpotter uses metaphors and stories to enliven the material while conveying important concepts.
Teaching Stories are found through out the book, such as
Worrywarting Is Hell
After traveling for thirty days, a Seeker finally arrived at the Shaman Woman’s mountain cabin. The Shaman Woman was sitting on a small stool in front and looked up as the Seeker spoke, “Shaman Woman, I have traveled from a distant land to ask you an important question.”
“What is it you seek?” the Shaman asked.
“Would you explain why wise people say that worry is hell? the Seeker inquired.
“Hah! You are a foolish child. I have no time for such silly questions. Come back when you have a question of substance to ask!” the Shaman retorted in contempt, as she waved the Seeker away.
Distraught, the Seeker began pacing back and forth. “What did I say wrong?” the Seeker worried aloud. “Oh no, I’ve offended the Shaman Woman. How could I have acted so poorly? What can I do? This is awful. I can’t go home without an answer. What will the people in my village think? I’ll never be able to face them again.
“That”, said the Shaman Woman, “is worrywarting and makes life hell!”
CHAPTER 4
Worrywarts Let Emotions Take Over
Don't lose your head
To gain a minute
You need your head
Your brains are in it.
— Burma-Shave
1963 Roadside Ad
You have two minds, a “rational mind” that ponders and reflects, analyzes and plans; and an “emotional mind” which is intuitive and reactive, not logical. In normal daily discourse, thoughts precede feelings as the rational mind takes the lead, planning, coordinating, thinking, and calling upon the emotional mind for intuition and wisdom. In an emergency, however, this balance of power shifts rapidly as the emotional brain takes over.
The Emotional Mind Reacts Fast
Under emergency conditions impulses take a neurological “backdoor” directly into the emotional brain, which is a faster circuit that allows instant action and can mean the difference between life and death. This survival mechanism enables you to react fast to get out of way. Thanks to the super capabilities of the emotional brain, all of this occurs in a split second — before you can think about it. Respond first, think second.
The power of the emotional mind saved me from certain terror one night. After visiting friends for a couple of hours, I was returning to the car, which was parked along the street under a pine tree. Just as I leaned down to open the door I suddenly become aware that there was something an inch or two from my cheek. Instantly, without effort, my body propelled itself several feet back from the car as I yell, "Oh, my gawd! Oh, my gawd!" But I didn't know what it was that had terrified me until I heard myself screaming, "It's a spider. It's a spider!" Only then did I realize that the most enormous garden spider I'd ever seen, measuring at least some four inches from gigantic claw to gigantic claw was hanging on a web stretched from a tree branch to the doorknob on the car. The thought of that spider on my cheek or down my neck makes me appreciate — and marvel at — that wonderful ability to trust my instincts, reacting immediately without hesitation.
What Happens When You Worry
There is, however, a downside to this swift reactivity. When the alarm sounds the emotional brain takes over, recruiting the rest of the brain to its urgent agenda. Reactions are so fast that it is easy to jump to conclusions and act before you have full confirming evidence. If people say to you, "You over reacted!" "You lost it!” or "You blew it!" they usually are referring to the experience of your emotions gaining the upper hand, swamping the rational mind. Daniel Goleman, in his fascinating book Emotional Intelligence, calls these moments of irrational behavior "emotional hijacking." This is what happened to a police officer who shot a teenager one night because he thought the kid had drawn a gun, which turned out to be a paper bag that looked like a gun in the dim light.
Your mind tells your body what is going on which means if you think the worrisome situation is a catastrophe, your body believes there is a real emergency. Worry sounds the alarm and the backdoor to the emotional brain opens. Hormones are secreted readying you to fight or to flee the threat. Your attention is riveted on the source of fear, overriding rational thought as your memory systems retrieve information from the emotional brain relevant to the emergency.
To the emotional brain, an emergency is an emergency. It doesn't matter if there is a real danger standing before you — a robber with a gun saying, "Your money or your life!" — Or if it is only a worry about a possible danger — "What if a robber holds me up?” By the time the neural impulse goes through the back door to your emotional brain, both become emergencies. "Is there a threat?" your vigilant inner eye asks. "Yes! It's an emergency!" your worrying mind answers, triggering the same mechanism that allowed me to avoid a spider on my neck, and that lead to someone shooting a teenager armed only with a paper bag.
When you worrywart, you keep yourself in a chronic state of low-grade emotional hijacking which physically stresses you and diminishes your ability to think clearly. Your performance suffers because worry colors your judgment so you may act in ways that you normally would not. Worry clouds your logic as you work yourself into taking extreme positions you would reject when cool headed. Worry interferes with your ability to learn and prejudices how you view situations.
You become reactive, emotions overriding your rational capabilities. Of course you "think", but your thinking is driven by emotion, not reason. You convince yourself that doom is about to descend upon you at any moment. Rose Anne's worrying about her house is an example of how worrywarting diminishes quality of life. "I was planning some work done on the foundation of my 100-year-old home which is build on a steep hillside and I was really nervous about it. I had heard stories of foundations being opened to reveal more problems so that the cost doubled. The night before the contractor showed up to begin work, Tom and I went to a movie but instead of watching the movie, I had a movie of my own in my mind as I envisioned the contractor opening up the walls and discovering that all the joists had been eaten away by termites. I realized about halfway through the movie that I hadn't heard a single word of it."
Rose Anne worked herself up needlessly over something that wasn't very likely; at a time that she couldn't do anything about it. She deprived herself of the enjoyment of the movie. Instead, she came out of the movie a near panic. The images of disaster that Rose Anne created and her ability to actually see her catastrophic images are remarkable but these desirable abilities are being employed destructively.
As a smart worrier, Rose Anne would catch herself dwelling on useless worry, like imagining massive termite damage under her floorboards, and redirect her attention outward to the movie. She would additionally soothe herself by breathing deeply and, talking to herself like a supportive friend would, she would challenge her wild worries.
Chapter 29
Imagine A Happy Ending
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
— Marcus Aurelius
A happy ending is far more likely than the scary things worrywarts imagine. The possibility of a happy ending gives hope, which keeps worry from running wild. When you are worried something bad will happen, stop and imagine a happy ending.
Imagining a Happy Ending Gives Hope
When you sit around worrying and imagining unlikely disastrous happenings, you make yourself sick with worry for no good reason. The fact is that most situations turn out okay in the end. So why not imagine a happy ending? Your emotional brain responds to what you imagine as if it were real. When you imagine disasters you feel frightened and helpless; whereas imagining a happy ending builds hope and an expectation that all will be well in the end. Worry feeds on fear, while hope keeps worry in its place. There is always hope and it is smarter to hope for the best than to expect the worst.
Script a Happy Ending
When you catch yourself imagining awful happenings in a situation, stop and ask yourself, "What would be a happy ending to this situation?" Like a novelist, write out the happy ending on paper or in your journal. Then play out the happy ending in your mind and watch what happens. Strive to actually see the positive event happening. As ideas come to you, add more detail to the scenario. Think in terms of your five senses. What will you see during the happy ending? Hear? Feel? Smell? Taste? Whenever the worrisome situation comes to mind, take a deep slow breath and deliberately imagine the happy ending you have written.
Chapter 35
Practice Under-Reacting
What, me worry?
— Alfred E. Neuman
Mad Magazine
Worrisome self-talk generates anxiety and gets in the way of finding solutions. Helpful self-talk, the way a supportive friend would talk to you is more balanced and usually downplays the risks in the situation. Lucinda Basset, author of From Panic to Power, refers to this downplaying self-talk as "under-reactive statements" as compared to the fuddy self-talk which triggers over-reacting. Following are examples of under-reactive statements.
Under-Reactive Statements
This is no big deal.
This will pass.
It's just anxiety. It will go away.
Don't sweat the small stuff.
Ten years from now I won't remember this.
It just doesn't matter.
This isn't an emergency.
It's not my problem.
This is not worth getting upset over.
It's only money. It’s not my arm.
So what?
When you hear yourself saying, "Oh, no! What will I do?" or "Oh, my gawd, this is awful!" your emotional brain believes you are facing a real crisis and over-reacts. Actually, it's easier to function in difficult situations, even emergencies, when you are calmer than when you are panicking. When you talk to yourself in a friendly way using under-reactive statements, you react less. Your thinking is clearer so that you can focus on the problem at hand and think it though more easily. While fuddy self-talk tends to use over-reactive statements, friendly self-talk uses under-reactive statements like the ones in the list above.
When you catch yourself getting worked up, stop and ask yourself, "How can I under-react? What can I say to downplay this situation? Remember, to ask yourself the question in the way that a friend would ask it.
Chapter 36
Watch A Funny Movie
From the moment I picked your book up
until the moment I put it down,
I could not stop laughing.
Someday I hope to read it.
— Groucho Marx
When you are stuck in a worry, watching a funny movie can help lighten up your mood. The comedy changes your frame of mind, while your laughter dispels anxiety. When you feel depressed by a worrisome situation and unable to find a creative approach for handling it, watch a funny movie.
Watching a Funny Movie Opens Your Mind
Researchers from Cornell University showed that after seeing a funny movie people demonstrated more creative flexibility, whereas people who did not see the comedy suffered from "functional fixedness' on problem assignments. When worrying you get stuck in a mental rut, unable to break out of your fixed viewpoint. Comedy is created with dissonance, contradictions and contrasts all of which helps to open your mind.
Watching a Funny Movie is Good Medicine
Norman Cousins, the famous motivational speaker, attributed his remarkable recovery from a particularly painful form of cancer to massive doses of humor, which generated positive emotions. He made the discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect that enabled him to get a couple of hours of pain-free sleep. Based upon Cousins' findings, several metropolitan hospitals introduced laugh programs with funny movies as an adjunct to conventional therapy.
Watch Funny Movies and Laugh
The classic movies of Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin, Abbott and Costello and Bob Hope are good choices. Don't just smile at the funny scenes. Laugh out loud. Laughing generates endorphins, a brain hormone that promotes good feelings. Avoid suspenseful movies and those with violence, which will stimulate anxiety and set you to worrying again.
Build A Cartoon Library
If there's a particular worry that plagues you, like fear of flying or paying your bills, for example, collect cartoons and jokes lampooning the subject. Reader's Digest has a wealth of jokes and is a good place to look. The New Yorker Magazine is known for its numerous poignant cartoons. When you feel a worry about flying or bill paying coming on get out your humor collection and entertain yourself by reading over your favorite jokes and cartoons.
