May
12, 2005: Toxic Worry
Interview
with Edward Hallowell, author of Worry
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Mike Carruthers:
Simply telling someone who worries a lot not to worry never
works because that's not how worry operates
Edward
Hallowell:
It's more of a reflexive almost biologically ingrained function
than it is a decision; it's in our hard wiring.
Edward
Hallowell, author of the book, Worry
says we're all wired a little differently when it comes to worry.
I'll
never forget when I was writing the book I spoke to a woman
in Texas and I said to her what do you do when you worry too
much and she laughed. She said, "Honey, why would I contaminate
my life with worry, I either solve the problem or I forget about
it." It was so refreshing I wanted to say how can I be
like you? What you can do and what the point of my book is you
can take someone like me who used to be a terrific worrier and
bring me more into the normal zone. And I think that's realistic
for all of us, that we can stop being what I call toxic worriers
and turn us into sort of ordinary worriers.
And ordinary
worry is good.
You don't
want to get rid of worry all together and that's a problem in
it's own right, we call that denial you need to worry in order
to anticipate danger.
And if
you or someone you know is a toxic worrier.
Getting
help really helps. You shouldn't languish in these states of
toxic worry and say well there's nothing I can do about it.
Because the help we professionals now have to offer is a lot
more practical and effective than it was even twenty years ago.
Tomorrow,
steps anyone can take to get their worry under control. I'm
Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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