If you are finding your mind is frequently lost in cycling through all kinds of worst-case scenarios: “What if the corona virus goes on for months and months?” “How will I cope if I can’t see my family for a long time?” “What will the world look like after corona virus?” “What will happen if I lose my job?”And that’s just before breakfast!
Today, we are going to share a very powerful technique for easing the these worries and thoughts have on your mood, and well-being. Like all of our interventions, this technique, is supported by multiple scientific studies to reduce anxiety and depression and contribute to improved mental health (1). This technique is known to psychologists and health professionals as cognitive decentering. This is the first crucial step in untangling ourselves from worries. In next week’s post, we will discuss the second step: what to do about those annoying thoughts that just keep coming back again and again.
Today, we are going to share a very powerful technique for easing the these worries and thoughts have on your mood, and well-being. Like all of our interventions, this technique, is supported by multiple scientific studies to reduce anxiety and depression and contribute to improved mental health (1). This technique is known to psychologists and health professionals as cognitive decentering. This is the first crucial step in untangling ourselves from worries. In next week’s post, we will discuss the second step: what to do about those annoying thoughts that just keep coming back again and again.
Let’s get one thing clear – it is not that your worries are not legit. We are in the middle of a pandemic, the likes of which the world has not seen in a hundred years. Your worries are completely valid. However, you do have a choice about the ‘impact’ they have on your mood and your physiological response.
You can allow your worries to color your mood, leaving you in a state of despair, with a knot in your stomach, and a chest so tight it hurts. Or you can choose to use this tool to create a buffer zone between the worry and the cascade of emotions and physiologically based aftereffects.
The wise Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, Victor Frankl put it much more eloquently:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lie our growth and our freedom”
So how do we create that space? A new thought comes into our mind the moment another leaves. However, there is a crucial distinction between having an awareness of thoughts and getting lost in thought. Imagine that you are watching a movie in a room with a group of people around you and you are getting completely absorbed into the movie and its plotline. Now, imagine that you are in the room and noticing that you are in a room watching a movie; that there are sounds coming from the speakers, smells of popcorn, that there is a movie playing on the screen in front of you, and people around you. Observing your thoughts is like noticing that you are watching a movie, as opposed to being absorbed by the movie.
The goal is not to have a mind without thought. Thoughts are part of our make-up as homo sapiens. They are what allow us to be creative, to solve problems, to build bridges, to make medicine, and to speak in complex language. We need thoughts and mental representations for all of that.
However, there is a world of difference between being drowning in the belief “I can’t do anything right” and zooming out, and noticing that you had a thought, “I can’t do anything right.”
Seeing thoughts this way changes the power they have over you.
It can feel similar to being in an airplane flying into a cloud, and the cloud becomes your whole world. But when you have moved through and out of it, and you can see the entire sky with the cloud a part of it, but it no longer defines your universe.
By acknowledging the presence of thoughts rather than believing them, we don’t generate the tension and painful feelings that are usually associated with such anxious thinking. The ability to choose is precious.
In our guided audio exercise today, you will learn to recognize, in a non-judgmental manner, that thoughts are mental phenomena that come and go. In this post, we have talked about the first step in untangling from worries. Next week, we will discuss the second step: what to do about those pesky thoughts and stories that just keep on coming back— you know, the ones I am talking about………
If you do this practice regularly, you will find that after a while, the stories and thoughts will all come and go and will begin to lose their hold over you. All the views and beliefs about how you should be and what you should have done and what other people should do, will all start to release their power over you.
Click here to Practice Untangling from Worries
Hayes SC, Strosahl KD, Wilson KG. Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and Practice of Mindful Change. New York, NY: Guilford Press; 2012
Ciara Byrne, PhD 