Set Aside Worry Time

In Chapter Three of the book, Leahy offers a few things you can do to challenge your worried thinking. One is, if you believe your worry is out of control and that it pervades every moment of the day, he says to challenge this, assign a specific time and place for worry. Worry time allows you to set aside worry until a specific time, write out your worries, recognize that your worries are limited and repetitive, and gain a sense of control.

Try using worry time every day for two weeks. Set aside a specific time and place--let's say thirty minutes in the early evening. Sit down at a desk and write out your worries as they occur to you. Don't challenge them and don't reassure yourself--just worry. The rest of the time, if you have more worries, jot them down on an index card but put off the actual worrying until your assigned worry time.

For example, let's say your worry is 'I am going to make a fool of myself.' Write it down and put it aside until seven-thirty tonight. Then go over any other negative thoughts that you might have, like 'I think I looked like an idiot today,' 'What if I lose my job?' or 'What if I make an even bigger fool of myself tomorrow?' [my examples :) ]

He says, after you have been practicing worry time for a while, you'll find that it gives you more of a sense of control over your worries. You begin to realize that you can put off your worries and that your worries are repetitive--you always have the same thoughts. It's not ten million worries--it's ten worries. In fact, some people say, 'I get bored during worry time. I don't have enough things to worry about.' This is a very common experience with worry time--people eventually find that they cannot fill the thirty minutes with worries, because they realize it is almost always the same things coming up over and over again.

Disappear To See Reality

Chapter Two of the book is: Accept Reality and Commit to Change. One step Leahy suggests is to "Take Yourself Out Of It". He says: "notice that each of your worries seems to have you in the center...There are eight billion people in the world, and everyone thinks at one time or another, 'This is all about me and what I have to do right now.' Can eight billion people be wrong? Yes."

He says you can put a worry in perspective this way: "If you are sitting at home thinking that you are alone, think about the fact that you are not unique. In fact, it is likely that almost everyone in the world at one time sat alone and thought they might not find someone to love forever. You are not alone."

The Disappear To See Reality exercise begins: "If you have taken yourself out of it, you can imagine taking a bolder step. You can imagine disappearing completely. Think about what you are worried about right now. Something has to get done, something might go out of control, some part of this vast world that we live in might not work exactly the way it should work. Now, imagine that you do not exist. You are not here. Time and events flow on without you. Tomorrow comes and you are not here. People move around, the sun rises, the cars flow through the streets. You have disappeared.

"If you have disappeared, if you no longer exist, then there is nothing to worry about, is there? The people who might not have liked your talk? Well, you don't exist now, so why does it matter? The bill that might be late? How could you care, because there is no 'you' to care? You are no more.

"Now, this might sound like the dark side of spirituality, but it really is the nature of almost all reality. There are eight billion people in the world. How much of this space do you really occupy?

"Where are you in this space of humanity--one in eight billion? One way of getting balance about the things that you worry about is to try to remind yourself that the world is not about you. You are not the world.

"Imagine a vast beach that stretches for a thousand miles and is fifty miles wide. The wind blows, and a single grain of sand falls two feet from where it used to be. That is you. You are a grain of sand. You struggle against the landscape, pushing and complaining about how all the other grains of sand get in your way. But stand back a moment and look at the larger view.

"The beach still exists. The tides come and go.

"Now try this. Imagine that you are worried that you won't find your perfect partner. Your worries are making you depressed and anxious; you can't sleep. You have become your sole preoccupation right now--what you can do to find the perfect partner. You feel you are getting nowhere.

"Well do just that. Try going nowhere. Imagine that you have disappeared. You are looking down at the earth. You observe the building you live in. You pull back farther and farther. Your neighborhood is like a patch of color you see from an airplane. You have given up any fantasy of control because you are disappearing for a moment. You cannot touch the reality that you yearn to control.

"Once you can take yourself out of it--imagine disappearing, describe what is in front of you, and suspend judgment--you are ready to accept reality. And once you are able to accept reality by observing it, you can do something about these worries.

"But what gets in the way of accepting reality?"