How To Stop Worrying So Much

February 14, 2012

Interview with Tamar Chansky, PhD, author of the book Freeing Yourself from Anxiety: The 4-Step Plan to Overcome Worry and Create the Life You Want [1]

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Mike Carruthers:
All of us worry sometimes way too much about things that will likely never happen.

Tamar Chansky, PhD:
What happens is worry makes us dysfunctional, it makes us think about all of the “what ifs” instead of really helping us focus on what’s going to help solve the problem.
 

Dr. Tamar Chansky, author of the book Freeing Yourself from Anxiety [1]... 

Worry gives a fast but not accurate assessment of the problem. And so what we need to do is very quickly kind of stamp it as this is worry taking over and then shift into more accurate thinking about what really is the problem that I need to solve here. And all of that happens once we quiet the worry down; worry really isn’t the way that we get there.

The fact is that if you look back on the problems you worried about you’ll likely see you got through them and you’ll get through the next one as well.

We do solve these problems even when we’re facing a layoff, a loss of a home, terrible challenges – a chapter or 2 later we have figured it out. Remembering that we have that ability and that wisdom is part of how we tap into it sooner.

Resilient people have bad things happen to them just like the rest of us.

But they bounce back faster because they tend to focus on what they can control versus what they can’t control.