Compound W for Worry Warts!

Are you a worry wart?

I know lots of people who are. I also know a few people who aren’t. Those who aren’t seem to have so much less stress…those lucky ducks!

I used to be a worry wart. And then I worked really hard at it and had a transformation when I learned stress management skills and applied them. Every. Single. Day. Now there isn’t much I truly worry about, I don’t worry at all if it’s out of my control. One of my favourite sayings is, “not my circus, not my monkeys”. That helps with perspective.

That being said, when I was a worry wart the damage of my worry was already done by the time I dealt with it. Let me back track a bit.

Let’s look at the meaning of “worry”. Worry tends to be specific to an event or situation whereby we think about it, seeming to focus on it and potential outcomes so that it consumes a great deal of our time in the short term. Examples are:

• worrying about all the things that could cause us to miss a flight,
• worrying about forgetting parts of a speech or lecture we have to give, or
• worrying about whether we said something to piss off a friend because they haven’t called us back.

Worry tends to be short term in nature and causes us mild distress. Often the things we worry about work themselves out or don’t come to fruition and we realize we worried for nothing. How often has that happened to you?

“I have spent most of my life worrying about things that have never happened”, said Mark Twain.

When we worry, our body initiates the stress response because there may be ‘danger’. That stress response is engaged until the worry passes. In the examples above, it may pass once we are on our flight, we finish the speech, or we talk to our friend and find out they were busy getting a project done for work.

However, if we worry about a lot of things constantly (i.e. the worry wart) and we aren’t managing our stress then the stress caused by worrying all the time can become chronic and pervasive. This is when our body starts to show the symptoms of chronic stress and we start to feel tired, we get sick a lot, we can’t sleep etc.

If we are a worry wart we either need to: 1) stop worrying (easier said than done but this reformed worry wart knows it’s doable) or 2) manage stress better (which will take some work and conscious effort but well worth it).

Let’s circle back to my comment above that when I was a worrier and thus had chronic stress, I had already caused damage to myself.

I used to worry especially about a certain situation or situations with certain people. This caused me distress. This was before I was trained and certified in stress management. This is why I sought stress management techniques to use. It was starting to affect my health.

I realized that things I was worrying about, I had no control over such as how other people behaved. I only had control over my reaction to them. Huh. Once I wrapped my head around that and started to use the techniques I learned, I stopped worrying so much. But my body had already developed a response to the situation.

Then that led to anxiety.

Anxiety is a sustained mental health disorder whereby we feel it throughout our bodies – we have a visceral reaction without even thinking about it, if we do think about it, or if we are triggered. Worry is specific. Anxiety is generalized.

To be clear here, the term anxiety is often overused. Thinking about and being distressed about potentially missing your flight (i.e. a specific situation) is worry not anxiety.

Here is an example. Say you get a job where you have to travel a lot and you’ve never travelled before. You start to worry each time you have to travel; missed flights or bad weather. You didn’t manage that worry so it became a stressor for you every time you have to travel. Then you didn’t manage that stress so it started to have an affect on your health. Eventually it turned into anxiety so that you feel a physical reaction every time you think about travel whether you are travelling or not. Now you have what I’ll call for our purposes “travel anxiety”.

Many people will worry when they first start to travel and then once they get through it once or twice realize that things are beyond their control (like weather) or they can take steps to prevent worry like setting the alarm clock early and maybe having a back up alarm, packing ahead of time etc. It’s when we don’t realize that we can let go of this worry by taking steps or letting it be in others’ hands that we feel distress in these situations. I never worry about travel. I’m prepared on my end so I just enjoy the ride. Sometimes a flight gets cancelled; that’s a pain in the ass, but I have a back up plan which may include cancelling the trip. Sometimes that’s the nature of a situation. I used travel here because most people can relate to it.

Because my situation ended up with me having a visceral affect on me, I have what my doctor calls, “situational anxiety”. When I think about having to interact in certain situations with certain people, my stomach gets upset, I get shaky, I often get a headache, and I end up feeling tired afterwards even though the interaction went well. I’m always waiting for it to not go well. I walk on eggshells.

I’m able to manage how I feel and my physical reactions by using the techniques I’ve learned to reduce the physical symptoms and calm myself. Often deep breathing or meditation are my ‘go-to’s’. I’m so thankful that I have the skills to deal with it. Therapy helped also. I don’t have anxiety in any other situation. Sometimes I still have some worry in other situations, but I’m able to discern whether I have any control over the situation or not. If I do, then I take action or have a plan in place. If I don’t, I let it rest in the hands of the Universe.

Thus, the student became the teacher. This is why I created my Stress Management workshops, my Meditation workshops and challenges, and a host of other things I offer. These things work to help manage the stress caused by worry so we don’t become anxious people. I don’t want others to go through what I went through.

[Sidenote – The book “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman is a super cute story (also a Netflix series) that really made me feel better about myself and laugh out loud!]

I’m sharing two techniques here that you can use when you feel you are worrying too much:

1. What if?

In this technique write down everything you are worried about right now. Anything that is causing you distress. What keeps going through your head? Get it on paper.

Then write down all the “what if’s” beside each worry. What if I miss my flight? What if the weather is too bad to travel? What if my friend is mad at me?

Then, write down a fix for the ‘what if’ statement. If I miss my flight, I can attend the conference virtually. If the weather is bad I’ll leave the next day. If my friend is mad at me, I’ll take them out for coffee and apologize. Write a fix for as many worries as you can.

Once you know you have a fix then you can let the worries go. Or if you don’t have a fix because you have no control over the situation, then you can let it go too…you can’t do anything about it so don’t waste your precious time. Go watch Anxious People on Netflix instead.

2. What would you tell a friend?

We are often much harder on ourselves than anyone else. If a friend came to us with the same worry we’d likely tell them that they have no need to worry. So, take your worry and write it down. Then write what you would tell your friend if they came to you with this same worry. Now do what you told your friend to do.

Hopefully these simple techniques are like Compound W for worried warts!