worry

Stress Management Consulting: Stop Worrying and Take Control

Posted on by Mark Moran

Anxiety about what is beyond one’s control creates intense worry in the one’s life.  Ironically, most things worried about are beyond one’s control and the actual worry never manifests.  This means alot of energy, emotion and time is wasting on worrying and not taking productive control of situations.  In this short blog, we will look at the nature of worry and how to better overcome worrying and instead produce positive change in what can be controlled in one’s life.

Please also review AIHCP’s Stress Management Consulting Certification which teaches professionals to help better train individuals to manage worry and manifest positive outcomes in life.  The program is online and independent study and open to qualified healthcare and behavioral healthcare professionals who serve communities at both the clinical and non-clinical levels.

The Nature of Worry

Woman biting her nails
While worrying natural, many times people worry in unhealthy ways. Please review AIHCP’s Stress Management Consulting Program

Worrying is a natural response to life circumstances (Davis, et al, 2000, p. 135).   Some worry and concern is legitimate while most worry is about things beyond one’s control or things that will never occur.  Worry becomes a problem when according to Davis, worry becomes chronic and anxious, dominates negative outcomes regarding the future, repeats itself everyday, refuses to cease despite attempted distractions, or when worry paralyzes oneself to act constructively (p. 135).

It is essential to differentiate heathy and unhealthy worry.  There do come times when legitimate worry manifests over something as opposed to random worries without any true foundation in reality.  Still, one’s reaction to legitimate concerns and the manifest of how one worries can determine healthy or unhealthy worrying.  Davis points out that healthy worrying is problem solving focused with effective solutions, evaluation of outcomes and decisions, while unhealthy worry involves no problem solving skills but only catastrophic and helpless thoughts (p. 136).

It is hence important to distinguish between problems not only as legitimate and illegitimate but also in regards to things that fall into one’s control.  Things we control include our own boundaries, goals, decisions, actions, and how we carry out those actions in word, deed and thought.  These aspects play a large role in healthy worry in how we carry out solutions.  Solutions become more difficult when we seek to control things beyond our reach leaving one to the helplessness of unhealthy worry.  We cannot control others and their choices, decisions or how they treat us.  Furthermore, we cannot change the past, or outcomes of the future, but we can control the present.  Understanding what one can control and what one cannot control can help one face worries in a more healthy way.

For instance, here are some examples of healthy worrying versus unhealthy worrying.

If someone worries upon their upcoming trip whether the plane will crash or not crash, one is experiencing anxiety and unhealthy worry.  While planes can crash, it is highly unlikely.  The worry should seek solution through statistics and understanding the science behind aviation, instead of worrying over something that probably will never happen, as well as being completely outside one’s control.

Another example includes worrying if someone received poor health results from a blood test with their cholesterol and sugar counts.  While this is reason for concern, unhealthy worrying would think of the horrible outcomes of heart attacks and diabetes and solely focus on the worst case scenario presented by these tests.  Healthy worry would recognize the health concerns, but take effective reaction to remedy the poor blood scores via medication, exercise and better diet.

Hence worry is natural and worry is important to challenges and bad news but it needs to be properly guided to produce better outcomes instead of damage to oneself.  Unhealthy worrying leads to not only no resolution to the issue, but also heightened anxiety and stress to the body.  By inducing the fight and flight mode of the body, the body’s excess production of cortisol can harm the body over time if worrying is consistent and manifests everyday.  Ulcers and other digestive track issues can arise as well as later heart issues if the body remains in a constant state of stress due to unhealthy worry.

Managing Worry

Davis lists multiple ways to better manage worry. If something is worrying you, sometimes one should write down the worry and identify it.  Instead of wandering into random worries and dead end solutions, brainstorm various solutions to each worry.  Evaluate the ideas you come up with and see which best solutions work.  If need be, give oneself specific times and dates to better deal with each worry.  Give oneself time to worry or a date to worry about something that needs your focus.  Sometimes, many worries are not immediate when assigned a date. (Davis, 2000, p., 137-139).

woman in a star scape of color
Learn to manage worry through stress reduction ,breathing ,meditation and cognitive behavioral trips to reframe it so one finds solutions instead of despair

When scheduling oneself a time to worry, one can allow oneself to expose oneself to the worry itself within a reasonable time constraint.  Worry exposure can help one rationally identify worries and reframe them.  Within this relaxed state and chosen time, one can risk assess the worry, predict outcomes from least to worst, and even rank the worries.  Davis also recommends visualizing the worry and rating one’s anxiety when visualizing it.  During this exposure, one can then imagine different outcomes that are more positive and then reassess one’s level of anxiety (Davis, 2000 p. 144-145).

In addition to exposing oneself to worry and identifying the worries, Davis recommends identifying triggers that cause worry.   He recommends identifying sources that cause worry, such as the news, social media, or places (p., 147).  If these things worry, avoid them and also start to try to limit one’s rituals of worry.  If one constantly calls a son or parent due to worry and not legitimate concern, then start to limit the number of times over the month one calls for purely worry reasons.

Meditation and Stress Management

Worry while natural can become unnatural in its effects on our mental and physical health.  Meditation and stress reduction is key in helping alleviate the fight or flight mode the body enters during worry.  While the Sympathetic Nervous System manifests, the body enters fight or flight which entails increased heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol and adrenaline, as well as tightened muscles.  The Para Sympathetic System returns the body to normal and is best activated through meditation or healthy breathing.  When worry beings to overcome oneself,  individuals need to cognitively identify this issue and begin to utilize deep chest breaths to help the body relax.  It is sometimes important to regain control of the body before one can rationally a design a way to react to worry.  Because worry initially is a reaction to something external that poses some type of threat, our body initially will respond the way it was designed to threats.  Hence remembering to regain control and allow our rational mind to rule the day over our emotional responses is key.

woman on a park bench looking at a paper worried
Worry in a healthy way. Please also review AIHCP’s Stress Management Program

Conclusion

Worry is a natural mechanism to react to negative things and threats in life.  We can utilize it a healthy or unhealthy way.  If our worry response paradigm is based in reason and solutions, it is healthy, but if our worry paradigm is based on things beyond our control, or represent the worst of the worst possibilities, then our worry  becomes unhealthy and unproductive in resolution.  This is easier said then done, so we must utilize healthy breathing when confronting with a new worry to better digest it and reverse the Sympathetic Nervous System from taking over.  Through rational solutions and techniques to manage worry, one can in a healthy way face worry in a productive and good way.

Please also review AIHCP’s Stress Management Program.  The program is online and independent study and open to qualified professionals who look to help populations better face stress both from a clinical and non clinical scope of practice.

Additional Blog

Fear and Grief Blog.  Access here

 

Stress Management Certification Article on The Nature of Worry

Posted on by Dominick Flarey

Human beings worry everyday.  They worry about global politics, national concerns, sports, domestic concerns at home, finances, family, health, weather, relationships, or the most simplistic interactions.  Some worries are deeper and more critical to survival while others are very trivial in nature but if we let worries dominate life, then they can cause unneeded damage to the body.

The Serenity Prayer teaches one to let go and to control what can be controlled and to release what cannot be controlled.  In understanding this basic ideal, one can releases oneself from the conscious reality of worry and focuses instead on productive reactions to legitimate concerns.   Worry itself is the direct mental process of dealing with problems.  It is essential because without it, important aspects of life would go untended to.  Hence worry is a thinking process that is essential to life but like any function, it is when it misused or overused that issues arise.

Individuals worry all the time. Worry is part of life but it should not be an aspect that overwhelms the mind especially with worries that are insignificant or cannot be changed. Please also review AIHCP’s Stress Management Certification

 

Anxiety, an emotional response to worry, can cause immense physiological damage to the body.  Anxiety is a dread of what may or may not happen.  It is unfounded and based on numerous misconceptions or unreal expectations.  85 percent of bad things the mind can conjure, usually never happen.  This worry that leads to unnatural state of anxiety is something that negatively affects the sympathetic nervous system.  In addition to anxiety, the worries that surround one become stressors.  Stress itself is a physical response to something and again activates the sympathetic nervous system, which in turn, activates such hormones as adrenaline that increases blood pressure and heart rate, as well as tightening muscles and closing down the digestive system to more fight or flight responses.  These responses are good if truly in physical danger, but the mental stressors and worries of life usually do not require such an extreme reaction.  If in a constant state of anxiety and stress, the body will begin to hurt itself through these responses.

This is why it is so important to worry over what truly matters most and when worrying, to worry well.  Worrying over things that cannot be changed do not help to the situation.  Worrying late at night, losing sleep, and becoming ill, do not help situations either, but individuals due to a variety of bad worrying habits, or mental ticks are unable to turn off bad worrying.  In effect, they become sick from worrying.  They do not possess the ability to shut down the sympathetic nervous system to find relaxation.

The Parasympathetic nervous system is the opposite of the Sympathetic.  It lowers the heartrate, blood pressure, and relaxes the body’s muscles and permits better digestion.  It is imperative to return to this type of operation and find new balance.  Individuals with panic and anxiety disorders that explode with worry do not have the abilities to find that balance.  Many times they turn to a variety of medications which only blanket the symptoms but once untaken, do nothing for the body to learn to balance

This is why it is so important to learn to worry well.  In the MED300/SM550 course, the text and CD of Dr. Weil is utilized to teach individuals how to use meditation and visualization as a way to combat and cope with worry.  Dr. Weil emphasizes that one needs to place worries in three different columns.  Situations that can be changed, may be changed, and cannot be changed.

Worry should be proportionately applied to things that can be changed.  Through identification of what one wishes to accomplish, one can then follow a plan of action, choosing the best options and how those options will be carried out.  Affirmation of success is key as a follow through.   Dr Weil encourages visualization as a technique in meditation to find a quiet and peaceful place where one can find an inner wisdom guide, which in actuality is one’s unbiased subconscious.  Some individuals make this spiritual by prayer and speak with Christ or Mohammed or Buddha, while others relate to deceased parents.  This inner wisdom can sometimes supply fresh insight into an issue that seemed difficult prior.

In reaching these states of meditation, Dr Weil believes in the importance of breathing as a source of helping the body again find balance with the Parasympathetic system.  Focused, deep, longer breaths can help the body find balance and reduce the tension in the body.  The focus on breath also can closely follow Dr. Benson’s Relaxation Response, which follows the same ideals of breath, focus words and muscle relaxation.   While these steps follow religious guidelines, they also coincidentally open the body up to more tranquil states associated with the Parasympathetic system.  This can reduce the effects of stress, anxiety and unneeded worry.

Proper breath work in meditation can help one return to a more balanced state with the Parasympathetic Nervous System. Please also review AIHCP’s Meditation Instructor Program.

 

Good breath work and meditation can be used to free the body from unchangeable worries and also be used to guide the mind to find resolutions for things that can be changed.   It can also help the mind find ways to transform oneself to things that cannot be changed.  Some worries cannot be altered but they can be accepted and the situation can be adjusted to.  The worries that cannot find solutions should generate transformation.  In doing so,  worrying is then used the natural way it was intended through evolution as a way to help the body deal with problems.

Through analyzation of worry, proper breath work, meditation, visualization and affirmation, one is better equipped to free the body from the stress and anxiety of the Sympathetic Nervous System and allow it to rest but also to be better able to dismiss unneeded worry and focus on real solutions to real life issues.

If you worry too much, it may be time to try to utilize these techniques to minimize unnecessary problems and focus on real problems but in a productive way by retraining how you approach worrying itself.

Please also review AIHCP’s Meditation Instructor Program as well AIHCP’s Stress Management Certification Program and see if they match your academic and professional goals.  The programs are online and independent study and open to qualified professionals seeking a four certification.