The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It

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To me, this book could be greatly improved if the prolonged repetition were edited. For example, it seems the first seven chapters could easily be pruned into only two. (Later insert: **But see my wondering about this in the next paragraph, as well as the first comment to this review.) Now, worry isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it can alert us to some danger or problem that we then proceed to fix. But chances are that’s not why you’re listening to reading a summary on how to stop worrying. You'll have thoughts that tell you something bad could possibly happen sometime in the future. And that's true. Its always true, whether you have thoughts about it or not. Anything is possible, bad things sometimes do happen, and nobody knows the future.” If you find yourself arguing with yourself, there's one thing you can count on – you're not going to win this argument.”

Your recognition that your worries are exaggerated or unrealistic doesn't help you if you continue to avoid what you fear anyway. If you avoid the object of your worries, you will become more afraid of them. What you do counts for much more than what you think.”

How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It

The thing is, we all go through life as if we know what to expect. Chances are tomorrow will be as regular and forgettable as the vast majority of other days in your life. A worry-free mind knows this. So if a doubt arises, it’ll leave just as easily. What does the “what if” clause actually tell you? Say you’re thinking: “What if I’m in a car accident?” That’s not something you think at the moment that an accident happens. There’s no “what if” about it – it’s happening. As a chronic worrier, this book was very eye opening. Enjoyed it a lot, it's a fast, easy read, and gives you a lot to think about. The problem you face is not the problem described in the catastrophe clause of your worry. The problem you face is the discomfort you experience in response to the worrisome thought, and your natural inclination to take that thought seriously and resist it. When you resist the thought with your usual selection of anti-worry responses, this is when you once again experience the difficulty of The harder I try, the worse it gets.” Find a quiet place and sit comfortably for a minute or two, becoming aware of your thoughts and sensations. Lightly focus your attention on something constant – people usually use their breathing, but it can be anything. The sound of a fan for example.

Thoughts are ideas. Feelings are emotions, and they're quite different from thoughts. Thoughts can be true or false, or somewhere in between. Feelings are emotional responses that don't involve true or false.” And so on. The thoughts or situations might be different, but the feeling is always the same: Worry. It made me understand why CBT hasn’t worked for me, and it gave me ideas for other schools of therapy that could work better for my kind of thoughts and anxious mind.

This is why people notice "the harder I try, the worse it gets". They're putting out fires with gasoline.

Worry predictions aren’t based on what’s likely to happen. They’re based on what would be terrible if it did happen. They’re not based on probability—they’re based on fear.” Stand in front of a mirror, and read the worry out loud, 25 times. Eat one of the Tic Tacs each time, to make your counting conscious and deliberate. Worry loves it when this happens. When you treat your doubt as if it were danger, you naturally respond to it in a way that makes it worse. That makes it grow.As with everything in your life, you have some sort of relationship with your worry. And just like anything else – work, alcohol, your partner – this relationship can be healthy or unhealthy.

Think about it. What do you do when you start to worry? When you have that first sneaking feeling of doubt? Because your brain interprets it as danger, your first reaction is to try to stop it. This ends up with you arguing with yourself, and when you argue with yourself you can never win.

Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. To continue shopping, enter the characters as they are shown If the thought of calling out your worries fills you with, well… worry, keep in mind that we’ve already established that ignoring them doesn’t work.