3. STOP YOUR BRAIN FROM WORRYING BY WRITING IT DOWN.
When you are training your brain to stop worrying, this technique might be the most valuable. If your brain is keeping you up at night by thinking about something, put it down on paper. (Electronic formats also work.) This action lets your brain breathe a mental sigh of relief by no longer having to spend energy trying to remember these details. If you’re worrying about what to serve for a gathering of friends, write down “What to serve?”
Writing it down also is a way for you to put your brain on notice. In other words, you basically tell your brain, “This is important enough to write down.” Your brain has now been alerted to put resources toward solving this problem rather than being worried.
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Why write it down? Researchers now have evidence that chronic worriers may be chronic problem-avoiders too. Scientists in the journal Anxiety, Stress & Coping gave worriers an opportunity to write down three possible outcomes for worrisome situations. Then they analyzed their answers for practical solutions. The scientists say, “When participants’ problem elaborations were rated for concreteness, both studies showed an inverse relationship between degree of worry and concreteness. The more participants worried about a given topic, the less concrete was the content of their elaboration. The results challenge the view that worry may promote better problem analyses. Instead, they conform to the view that worry is a cognitive avoidance response.”
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