Worry management is about being able to be attentive to your inner dialogue without becoming emotionally involved.
By raising your awareness it empowers you to decide how and in what ways to act.
For example we tend to worry about the future “What might happen” and the past “What has already happened”
Experienced worriers tend to spend a lot of time worrying about things beyond their control and influence.
Worrying can be mental habit as we tend to keep going over and over the same things in our heads without really achieving anything.
A key cognitive strategy to help alleviate worry is to practice being a lot more present in your day to day life.
By focusing more on your present experience you will start to spend less time worrying.
A useful strategy is to pick a memorable image that allows you to stop as your mind starts to drift into worry. It could be a large stop sign or hand raised or whatever works for you.
When you notice yourself starting to worry then use this mental image to gain back a little control. With a little practice it will become a lot easier.
The second key strategy is to look for small practical things to do to make some progress in the area of worry.
If there is nothing practical you can do then use strategy 1 to try and spend a little less time focusing your attention on your worries.
It is not always a solution in itself but these simple ideas can be very helpful with a bit of attention.
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