STOP STRESSING AND START LIVING

STOP STRESSING AND START LIVING

Does your worry generate terrible stress? Do you worry so much that you can’t get to sleep? Does the anxiety generated from your stress cause you to engage in emotional or stress eating, or another type of addictive behavior? If so, you’re not alone.

Worry is a “worse case fantasy” picturing the worst that might happen. As you imagine these negative situations, you begin to experience how those undesirable realities would feel in your body. However, your ability to worry and identify potential negative outcomes has great strength. By picturing the worse case scenario, you immediately grasp what you do not want to feel or experience – before it ever happens! You allow yourself to see a positive future and the resulting outcomes of certain ways of thinking and acting.

Below are the necessary steps you can take to acknowledge your worry, to see the benefits of knowing the worst-case scenario, and then create a happier, more empowered life.

1. Do Not Try to Stop Worrying

Trying to suppress your worrying thoughts only aggravates the situation. In fact, if you try to suppress the thoughts hard enough, the thought can become an obsession.

2. Describe Exactly What You Are Worried About

The first step in moving beyond worry is to make sure you have a clear picture of the problem. Just letting those worries run around your mind is not enough. Instead, speak your worries or make a list of all the things you are worrying over.

3. You Are Not Helpless

Worrying about what might or might not happen in the future is a habit. In addition, just worrying and not taking any action to change your potential outcomes if a form of self-sabotage. Instead of feeling a lack of control, begin noticing your internal conversations. Notice if you believe the worst will always happen to you. Notice the direction your worry takes you in. You can teach yourself to look for evidence that good things also happen in your life.

4. One way to alleviate excessive worrying is to learn how to breathe deeply and slowly-thee opposite of how we breathe when we worry and stress. Deep breathing is one of the simplest yet most effective stress management techniques.

5. Activate Your Right-Brain Creative Genius

Worry is a beginning, not an end-point. Think of worry as an opportunity to empower yourself by imagining a better future and new possibilities. Ask your creative self to envision a more desirable outcome. Focus on what matters most.

6. Take Action

Once you have imagined a more desirable outcome, notice what action step you could take that would bring you back into a place of feeling hopeful and capable. Taking action shifts your focus away from feeling helpless and overwhelmed, and toward feeling empowered and in control.

Worry can serve an important function in your life, once you know how to work with it. When worry shows itself and dark fantasies, follow the steps above and access your creative imagination. Use those stressful thoughts and ask your creative self, what do I want and how can I make this happen?

Dr. Annette Colby, RD

The tips Dr. Colby provides in this article describe a good strategy for problem-solving. The underlying assumption of this approach is that we cannot and should not avoid all stress, but rather use stress to enact healthy responses in our lives leading to happiness.