Anxiety: Worry hour Part 3

This post continues on what to do during the worry hour, more specifically identifying if your thoughts are productive and/or unproductive, which was introduced in earlier posts.

During the worry hour, write down for every theme what is the theme, what the disturbing thought, the what if… and the result/catastrophe that you fear, if it is productive or unproductive and hence what you should do, se below, how much time you spent with the theme in total, how you manage to get out of the thought as well as how you feel after the thought/theme have left you.

For the productive/useful thoughts: use traditional problem solving: think of your possible solutions, including actions that need to be taken by you, and weigh them against each other to get a prioritized action plan. Note, productive thoughts/themes are only productive if you are under 8 in stress level since you then have access to your brain’s problem-solving abilities. If your stress or emotional level is above 8 – do the techniques in earlier stress post to bring you down to a level where you can listen, reason and talk to yourself. Remember, the thought is only productive until you have decided on an action. After that it is unproductive again until you have gotten new information or there are some other developments over time. More about what to do with your unproductive thoughts next week…

One day when you have your worry hour and you do not feel the need to worry or use the time for problem-solving – congratulations! You then do not have to use the worry hour that day, you cannot save it, but instead you just gained an hour where you can do other things that makes life enjoyable for you. #worryhour #worryexercise #anxietyreductiontechniques