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Guide to help manage worry and anxiety

March 24, 2020

During continuing uncertain times, we know that some people will be experiencing increased worry and anxiety. However, with us all acting together and supporting each other, we will overcome coronavirus and be able to better deal with the impact that it has had on our lives.

To help you, we would like to share a document written by Psychology Tools that gives some practical advice on understanding and managing your worry. We would like to give full credit and our appreciative thanks to Psychology Tools for producing this guide, as we hope you find it useful to identify what are real and hypothetical worries and to have practical exercises to help manage worry.

Click and read this guide to help manage worry and anxiety

Firstly, Psychology Tools outlines what worry is, how it makes us feel and how to distinguish between real problem worries (such as staying at home to maintain social distancing) and hypothetical worries (imagining worst-case scenarios). By understanding your feelings, you can identify what is a normal level of worry and when this becomes excessive worry, causing anxiety, sleep loss, and having a really negative impact on your life. 

 

The guide then gives practical exercises to regain well-being and manage worry to help you to:

  • Maintain balance in your life
  • Identify real problem versus hypothetical worries
  • Postpone your worry
  • Speak to yourself with compassion
  • Practice mindfulness

Maintain balance in your life

Psychologists have identified that well-being is achieved by balancing activities that give you feelings of pleasure, achievement and closeness. With the current health situation, we are unsettled as our normal routines and daily activities have changed. However, we can help regain well-being by ensuring our new daily routine balances: 

  • Pleasure - when we struggle with anxiety and worry, we lose touch of things that used to give us pleasure. Each day plan activities that make you feel joyful, such as watching a comedy, reading a book, dancing, singing, taking a relaxing bath or eating your favourite food.
  • Achievement - we feel good when we have accomplished something, so each day include activities such as gardening, housework, decorating, completing a work or admin task, cooking a new recipe or completing an exercise routine.
  • Closeness - we are social beings, so we naturally crave closeness and connection with others. As we now have to self-isolate, we can seek out creative ways to connect so that we don't become isolated and lonely. We can use social media to uplift and connect, or make phonecalls and videocalls to friends and family; you could even set up shared online activities such as a virtual book or film club.

At the end of each day reflect on whether you balanced pleasure, achievement and closeness activities, and how you need to work on the balance to improve your mood.

Identify real problem versus hypothetical worries

Psychology Tools gives us a decision tree to help identify whether your worry is a problem you can do something about, or whether it is outside your control. If the latter, learn ways to let the worry go (postpone your worry) and focus on something else that is important to you, such as maintaining daily balance (see above).

Postpone your worry

People who are bothered by worry, especially during these unsettling times, can find it uncontrollable, time (all)-consuming and self-perpetuating. Experiment with postponing your worries by setting a fixed 'worry time' every day for the specific purpose of worrying. It can be helpful to focus on doing this daily for at least one week to see its effect.

1. Prepare - decide when your worry time will be, and for how long. Decide on a fixed time to worry each day, when you are less likely to be disturbed; if you are unsure, 15 to 30 minutes every day at 7.00pm is a good starting point.

2. Postpone - during the day as worries arise, decide whether they are real problem worries, which you can act on now, or whether they are hypothetical worries, which can be postponed to your worry time; then refocus your mind on the present.

3. Worry time - use your dedicated worry time for worrying. You could write down any hypothetical worries that you remember having had throughout the day, and consider how concerning they are to you now? Are any of them real problem worries, which can be acted on now? Try to use all your allocated worry time to consider how you now feel about your daily worries, and what practical steps are needed to deal with any that can be solved.

Speak to yourself with compassion

Psychology Tools has provided a worksheet to record your thoughts compassionately by recording:

  • The situation - what were you doing during the worry, who was with you, where were you, when did it happen?
  • Your emotions and body sensations - what did you feel? Rate the intensity of your worry 0–100%
  • Automatic thought - what went through your mind? Include thoughts, images or memories.
  • Compassionate response - what would a truly self-compassionate response be to your negative thought. Try to respond with the compassionate qualities of wisdom, strength, warmth, kindness and non-judgement – think of the tone and advice a compassionate person would say in order to reassure you, and adopt this for yourself.

Practice mindfulness

Develop a gratitude practice that can help you connect with moments of joy, aliveness and pleasure. At the end of each day, reflect on what you are thankful for during the day. Try and be specific and notice new things each day, such as "I am grateful it was sunny at lunchtime so I could sit in the garden". You could start a gratitude journal or keep notes in a gratitude jar.

Useful tips

Set a routine - maintain a regular time to get up and go to bed. Eat at regular times, and get dressed and ready every morning. Timetable your day if that helps give it structure.

Stay mentally and physically active - when you plan your daily timetable, include pleasure, achievement and closeness activities to maintain balance.

Practice gratitude - reflect on what you are thankful for each day; encourage others to do the same.

Notice and limit worry triggers - as the health situation develops, we may feel we need to constantly follow the news or check social media for updates. If this triggers worry and anxiety, limit the time you are exposed to worry triggers each day. Maybe listen to the news at a set time each day only, or limit the amount of time you spend on social media.

Rely on reputable news sources - be mindful of where you are obtaining news and information and choose reputable sources, such as the NHS, Government guidelines and World Health Organization.

 

As before, we are really grateful to Psychology Tools for allowing this to be freely shared.

 

Click and read this guide to help manage worry and anxiety

Copyright 2020 Psychology Tools Limited; this resource is free to share.

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