Are you a worrier? Flood yourself with uncertainty!

Today’s post is excerpted from The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You by Robert L. Leahy, clinical professor in psychiatry.

Worriers equate the unknown with danger. However, uncertainty is actually neutral with regard to outcome. I do not know what the weather or the stock market will be like next week. I do not know what my friend will say to me when I meet him for lunch. I do not know what my next patient will find troubling. But, simply because I do not know what these events will be, it does not follow that they will be negative. They are simply unknown.

I also do not know the positive outcomes that will occur.

Rather than focus on the unknown and equate it with danger or bad outcomes you should focus your attention on the actual facts that you do know. If you think that the problem to solve is to solve problems about the unknowable, then you will feel helpless.

Why do you have to solve problems about the unknowable? If something is unknown or unknowable, it may never be a problem.

Flood Yourself with Uncertainty

Uncertainty is reality. I don’t know for sure what will happen tomorrow or the next day. I can make an educated guess, but I cannot say for sure. When you do not tolerate uncertainty, your thoughts are something like the following: “It’s not certain that things will be OK; if I don’t know for sure, I should worry until I do know for sure: I’ve been worrying and I still don’t know for sure, so I should keep worrying until I am absolutely certain it will be OK.” In contrast to worry, which is the search for certainty, in uncertainty training you practice having the thought thousands of times that “I don’t know for sure” or “It’s always possible that something terrible could happen.”

Nancy thought that she might have HIV even though there was no real evidence that she did. She had not engaged in any high-risk behavior. But she began having this intrusive thought anyway. So she worried and checked her body for any of the early signs of AIDS. I had Nancy practice repeating for twenty minutes each day. “It’s always possible I have AIDS.” I told her to do nothing to neutralize this thought – not to try to reassure herself, just practice having the thought, “It is always possible.” As expected, her anxiety went up (see yesterday’s post) – and then it went down as she repeated this thought hundreds of times. She began to realize that having a thought about what is possible could be tolerated. In fact, it became boring.

Now think about how this is different from the technique of thought stopping, which involves noticing that you have an unwanted thought and then yelling at yourself, “Stop!” The idea is that you cannot stand having this thought. Thought stopping does not work and it actually can make things worse, because you believe that the thought – “It’s possible I have AIDS” – is a thought that you need to fear and get rid of. In contrast to this, thought flooding about uncertainty teaches you that you can have thoughts about what is possible, yet do nothing to neutralize the thought. You can experience the thought thousands of times and do nothing but invite it back in to bore you again by repeating it.

Accepting uncertainty is a core strategy in dealing with your worries. Once you accept that you can never know for sure, then you can recognize that continuing to worry to gain certainty is a total waste of time. Practicing flooding yourself with uncertainty thoughts – repeating them endlessly without doing anything to gain certainty – helps you recognize that you can live with uncertainty. It’s like getting on the elevator thousands of time. You will no longer fear it because it has become boring.

But accepting uncertainty does not meant that you have given up participating in real life, because it may be necessary for you to make some changes. (More on that tomorrow.)

Mindfulness: Dr. Leahy also recommends the cultivation of mindfulness, as part of his “seven steps.” I have focused on mindfulness many times on FemCentral. Just follow this tag: http://jenniferlshelton.com/tag/mindfulness/ for more information.

Let’s practice “thought flooding”! (This section is all me but you’ll probably be able to tell that.)

Worried about stating your fears explicitly because you think they might manifest? The most typical advice, in “manifesting circles” is to replace a negative thought with a positive one. For many this is great advice, but if you are a chronic worrier, this does not work.  It will not make your worried thoughts go away. When a worrier does not verbalize or acknowledge her thoughts, they stick around (see yesterday’s post). But, they WILL GO AWAY if you verbalize them by “thought flooding”! So, bring those fears out and get rid of them for good!

What is worrying you right now? Repeat the worst case scenario (repeatedly) in the comments below.

I’ll get started: It is possible that I will never publish a book. It is possible that I will never publish a book. It is possible that I will never publish a book. It is possible that I will never publish a book....