By Diana Holbourn
Becky Gives Lectures at her Old University About Overcoming Anxiety Problems
Book eight of the online Becky Bexley series. Continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
A couple of hours before Becky's fourth lecture, she had a chat to some of the student friends she'd known at university before.
After they chatted for a while, Becky told them about some funny quotes she'd read from famous people about addiction. She'd never heard of the people, but the quotes had made her smile.
One said, "There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one."
She quoted a similar one: "In most betting shops you will see three windows marked 'Bet Here,' but only one window with the legend 'Pay Out.'"
She mentioned another one that said, "You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people."
She said another one said, "Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at maths."
Then Becky told them someone had said, "Why is it that drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?"
She quoted someone else as having said, "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
She'd found some quotes a bit surprising because they were said to have come from people who lived a long time ago, and yet they were still relevant. She said she'd read that a Roman official called Seneca had said, "Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness". And a couple of hundred years ago, someone with lots of names she thought might be an effort to pronounce had said, "When the wine goes in, strange things come out."
They were all interested when she told them that also a couple of hundred years ago, someone who also had a lot of names that weren't easy to pronounce had said, "The Spanish ladies of the New World are madly addicted to chocolate, to such a point that, not content to drink it several times each day, they even have it served to them in church."
A few of them giggled, while others were surprised.
soon after that, Becky wanted to go and make some last minute preparations for her lecture.
Becky Started her lecture by saying, "I'm going to talk mostly about worry today, as well as about distorted thinking patterns it's easy to get into the habit of having when anxiety gets strong. I'll give you an idea of what I mean:
"People who are highly anxious are often on alert for signs of what they're afraid of, and can misinterpret harmless things as signs that things are going badly for them. For instance, a woman with social phobia, that made her really self-conscious and scared of being judged as not being good enough and laughed at in public, went to a school reunion, determined to make the best of things despite her anxiety. She rehearsed some stories she thought it might be nice to tell the others, practising them because she wanted to make sure she could tell them fluently so she could make a good impression, and so as to make sure she remembered what she wanted to say without getting so anxious she forgot the stories in the middle.
"When she got to the school, she got a nice welcome, so she was happy about that. But then she was telling the others a story, when she heard one of them laugh. She looked over to see who it was, and saw two people grinning. She assumed they must be laughing at her, and thought it must mean her story sounded silly. She lost her concentration, and didn't make a good job of telling the rest of it.
"Afterwards, one of her friends asked her what had happened, and she said she'd got worried when she saw people laughing. Her friend had seen what really happened when they did that, and said they were laughing because one of them had whispered to the other that he had odd shoes on, and then he'd looked down and realised he'd accidentally put one black one on and one brown one on.
"The woman with social phobia was relieved to hear that, and felt better.
"Social phobia, and other phobias too, are partly kept going by the fearful thoughts a person has about how bad things could get, and by the way they can misinterpret things as meaning something bad's happening, such as if they think people laughing must be laughing at them, or else that someone who seems to be staring at them must be thinking they look weird or silly, when it might just mean something harmless, such as that they like something they're wearing, or that they're mistaking them for someone they know, or they're just looking in their direction with something completely irrelevant to them on their mind, or because of some other harmless thing.
"The kinds of thoughts that can stir up people's anxiety even more, especially if they've got social phobia, can be things like assuming they're going to be laughed at, and make mistakes that are going to make people feel scornful of them, or that they won't know how to cope well in conversation, or if it turns out that someone expects them to do or talk about something they weren't expecting to have to think about, or that they'll show themselves up as incompetent because it'll turn out that other people are better at things than they are.
"People who feel like that can make a lot of assumptions, without having any evidence that they're really true. Their assumptions will worry them, so they'll increase their anxiety; and then their fear feelings will feel like a confirmation to them that they're right about them, because they'll likely assume they wouldn't be having strong feelings if there wasn't a good cause for them. But the strong feelings can just be coming on because anxious feelings tend to automatically get stronger the more worrying people do.
"Some people with social phobia might have started thinking the way they do because they had hyper-critical parents, or scornful classmates, who often conveyed the message that it was important not to look bad in front of others, and often made them feel as if they weren't good enough. People who had experiences like that might be pleasantly surprised to learn that not everyone thinks that way.
"Questioning the truth of the thoughts they have can sometimes help people like that, for instance if they examine a thought they have that people are bound to laugh at them and think they're inferior, asking themselves how often they can be truly sure that that's genuinely happened in the past few years, and why it would really matter if some people really do think things like that, and how likely it really is to happen, and what ways they could best cope if it did happen.
"And they can ask themselves whether if they think they're being judged in some way, there might be alternative interpretations of what's going on, such as if they say hello to someone they know who they meet in the street, and the person just walks on by without even acknowledging their presence, and they usually tend to automatically assume that when that happens it must mean the person thinks they're not worth talking to, but it might really just mean they're so preoccupied with their own thoughts, or busily trying to get somewhere, that they just didn't notice them, or that they're in too much of a hurry to stop and talk, or that they didn't recognise them because it's been a while since they met, and so on.
"A person might have to think through things like that quite a lot before they can start to believe that things probably aren't as bad as they seem, and become less anxious.
"It'll be hard to think things like that through while they're actually feeling scared; but they can when they're thinking over what happened afterwards, or else worrying about what might happen in future.
"But in the situations themselves, people can still remind themselves that they might be thinking the worst and feeling as bad as they do because the emotional part of their brain's learned to fire off fear signals when there's no real need.
"It's easy for people to think over the day they've just had, and remember every little thing they did wrong, or didn't do well enough for their liking, and judge themselves for it. But they might be judging themselves a lot more harshly than anyone else did. A lot of people might not have even noticed what they did wrong, or else have forgotten it within a minute or two. So people can worry a lot more than they need to; and it can be better for them to spend the time doing something enjoyable to relax instead. It can help if they plan something to do beforehand that they can look forward to, on days when they can predict that they'd otherwise be mulling over worries at that time."
Becky Talks About Mistaken Beliefs Some People Have About Why it's Worth them WorryingBecky carried on, "Sometimes worries go round and around in a person's mind, making them feel worse and worse the more they worry, but all the while they don't realise that their worries are exaggerated, or misinterpretations of things, that make them feel worse than they would if they had a proper understanding of things. It can become easier to make unwitting errors like that the more anxious people are, because once emotion floods the brain, it's harder to think clearly.
"For instance, one person I heard about was finding it hard to buy a new house, and thought in an anxious state that it must prove that nothing was ever easy for her, when it was really just evidence that house buying can be difficult.
"Or some people have superstitious-type beliefs, such as that when something goes right, it's just bound to mean that something must be going to go wrong, because they can't imagine having that much good luck at once, so it's as if they think one thing will inevitably lead to the other, when good fortune and bad luck are really unconnected.
"Worry can also be a form of procrastination, where feeling the need to worry and worry over something can be a subconscious way of getting a person out of getting on and doing something, when they don't really feel up to the challenge of doing it.
"I read about one man who thought worrying helped him solve his problems, so he thought it was a valuable thing to do, since he said he'd been able to think up some solutions to problems during bouts of worry. But it turned out that he hadn't realised that there was a distinction between the kind of worrying he did that just filled his mind with anxiety about things going wrong, and the concern about problems he was having when he mulled them over in his mind while he was actively looking for solutions to them. He realised worry wasn't always good for him after he realised there was a distinction between the two.
"worrying a bit about problems can at least help the mind focus on them and consider them, so sometimes it can make it more likely that solutions will be found to them. And it can help some people feel motivated to getting around to solving their problems. But worrying often focuses on how bad things could be if things went wrong, and what could go wrong, rather than on how to solve problems.
"So it can sometimes be healthy to worry a bit, especially when a person's focus is on thinking of solutions to problems, since if a person never worried at all, they might take unwise risks, with no concern for the possible consequences. But worrying too much just increases anxiety.
"Some people try to cope with worries by trying to keep them out of their minds, by avoiding what's causing the problems they're worrying about; but then things get worse as a result, such as if they put bills away without looking at them, because they know looking at them will spark off their worries, but then the bills mount up and up, so the person ends up in a much worse situation than they were before. Actively trying to find solutions to problems can help reduce worry.
"Some people try to stop worrying by trying to force worries to go out of their minds; but that doesn't work, since the very act of trying to do that keeps a person's mind on them, because of the efforts it's making to get rid of them, meaning it's still concerned with them.
"Some people try to make worries go out of their minds because they're so worried about the way they're making them feel; but when it doesn't work, because forcing them out of the mind by an act of the will is pretty much impossible, they mistakenly start worrying that it means their worries are uncontrollable, not realising why it's really happening. So they can make greater efforts to push them out of their minds; but since it's impossible to stop worries that way, because you inevitably have to think about something while you're trying to stop it coming into your mind, so it actually stays there, they become all the more convinced that they can't control their worries, which worries them even more; and all the while, their emotions will likely be becoming more and more intense because of that, so they'll probably feel worse and worse.
"And the more their anxiety's heightened by that, the more new things they'll likely worry about, because anxiety makes people blow things out of proportion, so any more thoughts about problems that come into their minds will likely become worries, and they might well over-estimate the chances of harm coming to them more and more, thinking up new possibilities about what could go wrong, which will make them feel even worse.
"There are more effective ways to stop worrying than trying to force worries out of the mind though. I'll get to those.
"But something else that keeps worry going for some people is if worrying about things that might or might not go wrong keeps their minds from focusing on bigger worries that are more frightening for them, such as bills it's hard to pay. Then a person can be reluctant to stop worrying, because they know that then the concerns about the bigger things are more likely to come to mind. But not thinking about the problems means they don't get solved, so they still increase the person's anxiety.
"And some people apparently find worrying worthwhile because they think it'll mean they'll likely feel less guilty if things go wrong and they could be held partly to blame if they've spent time worrying about what to do if they do go wrong, so if they do, they can at least say they were concerned about what they could do if they did, and that they did try to think things through.
"And some people think worrying's worthwhile because it helps them imagine how bad things could get, thinking that if they really do get that bad, they'll feel as if they thought it would happen all along, so they won't be disappointed or dismayed by being taken by surprise by bad things happening.
"And there are other reasons why people think worrying is for the best, even though it floods them with anxiety, such as thinking that they might be unprepared for a problem that might arise if they don't worry about the possibility of it happening, or that worrying about a problem means they're working on it, or that worrying about it shows that they at least care about it, or that it would be hard to get around to doing anything about it if they didn't worry about it. And if occasionally a person does find a solution to a problem while they're worrying about it, it can convince them all the more that worrying's for the best, so they can become more reluctant to explore new ways of thinking about things, such as considering that there's a difference between worrying about what could go wrong and being concerned enough about a problem to apply the mind to working out solutions to it.
"Worries can veer off a problem someone first started thinking over into all kinds of areas, such as worries about getting old and losing the ability to think clearly, worries about losing loved ones, and all kinds of things that build up anxiety, but don't have to be of real concern at the time when the person's worrying about them, so worrying just ruins their quality of life, while their life could sometimes still be pretty good if they weren't worrying.
"But beliefs that worrying's doing good can stop people wanting to give up worrying, so they can keep people in a state of anxiety and unhappiness.
"One reason why worrying can do that is because worrying over problems can make people feel more and more anxious and vulnerable the worse they worry things could get, so they can feel less and less confident that they can cope with problems. And being caught up in anxiety makes it harder to think about problems in the clear and logical way that gives people the best chance of coming up with solutions to them, where the mind's focused on how to solve them, rather than on thinking about all the things that could go wrong.
"And the more tired out a person is by all the anxiety caused by worrying, the harder it'll be to spare any energy for settling down to think of possible solutions to problems, and the less people will be in the calm frame of mind that's necessary to do it.
"People sometimes try to cope by avoiding things that they know will bring on worrying thoughts, or by trying to lose themselves in distractions, or by continually asking other people for reassurance that things will be allright, or by keeping as busy as they can, to block out worries; but the more they do that, the more their belief will likely grow that they aren't capable of dealing with their problems head-on, or that worry itself is so anxiety-provoking that they won't be able to cope with it if they allow themselves to experience it.
"Some people try to avoid worry by sticking to rigid routines, where everything will be predictable, because they're sure that if something unexpected happens, it'll raise their anxiety levels, because it'll bring on worries about whether or not they can cope with it.
"There's no need to avoid worries altogether though, really, because instead, they can be made more bearable by thinking about things in a different way, so they don't cause so much anxiety. The reason why they often do is because there are common patterns of thoughts that can make worry more anxiety-provoking than it needs to be; and the more people get worked up with emotion, the less likely they are to be able to reason their way out of their worries, because the reasoning part of the brain pretty much temporarily shuts down when the brain's flooded with emotion. It's possible to worry and yet prevent that from happening, by analysing how realistic each worry is before getting too anxious about it. That can help to relieve a lot of worries."
Becky continued, "I'll tell you about some thinking errors that it's easy to make when people are feeling depressed or anxious. If you realise you're making them, it'll actually be easier to calm your anxiety down, because correcting them will mean you realise things aren't as bad as your thoughts are making you feel as if they are.
"One thinking error's called personalisation by some psychologists, and it's where people can often think that things other people do that they don't like must have something to do with some kind of bad feelings they must have about them, when they've really got no evidence that they really do have bad feelings about them.
"For instance, if someone comes in the room and says it smells of farts, they might worry that the person's probably suspecting them of making the smell, when it won't necessarily be the case.
"Or if they smile at someone in greeting, but the person doesn't smile back, and just walks on by, they might assume it must mean they don't like them, when it could really just mean they're in a hurry, and all their attention's focused on getting to where they need to be, or that they're unhappy about something, so they don't feel like smiling, or that they're preoccupied by something they're worrying about themselves, so they're a bit distracted from what's going on around them, so they're less likely to notice things, or for some other harmless reason.
"Another common thinking error's called filtering by some psychologists, because it seems to them as if it's a bit like as if events are unwittingly put through a subconscious filter in some people's brains whenever they start to think of them, which automatically filters out good memories and encouraging thoughts as pretty much irrelevant before they ever reach the conscious mind, so a person can only easily remember or think of bad things, such as if they go on a holiday and end up thinking of it as a disaster, because the bad things about it are what immediately come to mind, but in reality there were a few good times, but they never come to mind when they think about the holiday, because the bad things are what stick in their minds most, so they're what come to mind first, and then they get absorbed in thinking about them, and that makes their mood worse.
"It's possible to combat that, since it's not a real biological filter or anything, but just the way the mind can work sometimes; so Making an effort to think about any good things that did happen might change your view of the holiday a bit, or whatever else is bringing you down, so doing that can actually lift your mood a bit.
"It's the same with thinking about things like past relationships, spending time with the family, and other things; somehow it's much easier for the bad things to come to mind than the good things, because they stick in the memory more, because they're the things that bother people, and things that bother people tend to be the most memorable things.
"Another thinking error that high states of emotion make it more likely that people will make is called black-and-white thinking by psychologists, or all-or-nothing thinking, where people think of things as either all good or completely bad, or where they think that if they don't achieve perfection, it'll mean they've failed, forgetting that there are a lot of states in between.
"For instance, someone might think that if they don't come across as the ideal candidate in a job interview, they've messed things up and are bound not to get the job. And then they can become discouraged and think of themselves as a total failure. They might be right that they'll be rejected because of the questions they didn't answer so well, but not necessarily; and even if they are rejected, they might still have done pretty well during most of the interview; it might just be that there were some people who seemed to have more of the particular qualities and work experiences that the interviewer was looking for; and competition might have been high, so they might have got the job if there weren't so many candidates who did well in the interview applying. So even if they don't get the job, it won't mean they're a failure.
"Or they might worry before a job interview that if they show any signs of anxiety, it'll put the interviewer right off them, when it might not do that at all, since after all, most people will probably be a bit nervous.
"Or if someone says they don't like something about someone, that person might start thinking they must dislike them altogether, when they only said there was one thing they didn't like about them.
"Another thinking error people can make is over-generalising, where, for example, a person gets pessimistic that if one thing goes wrong with a plan they have, it's bound to mean everything will go wrong with it.
"Or another example is that if the first person they meet in a new workplace seems a bit hostile, they might think it seems like a hostile workplace, when it could just mean that the person they first met was having a bad day, so they were in a bad mood.
"Another way of thinking in unhealthy extremes is thinking rigidly about how you need to come across to others, such as thinking that it's very important not to make any mistakes or people will go away thinking you're incompetent, or that you shouldn't show signs of anxiety in front of your boss, because if you do it'll mean they'll think you're a weakling. In reality, I think, most people don't expect others to live up to such high standards.
"A counsellor helping people get over social phobia decided to try to prove to them that most people weren't as judgmental as they worried they would be, and asked a group of people what they'd think if they saw someone looking anxious at work. The people with social phobia worried that other people would think it must mean they didn't know how to do their job and were incompetent. But none of the group of people the counsellor asked said that. One of them said they probably wouldn't even notice, because they weren't very observant. One said they'd sympathise, because they got anxious themselves sometimes; and several said they'd wonder if the person was ill or upset. So it seems people often won't be judged as harshly as they worry they will be.
"Some psychologists call another mistake people can make in their thinking mind-reading, which is where it's as if they can feel sure they know what other people are thinking, such as if someone's sitting with a group of other people in a room, and they're feeling anxious, and they feel sure everyone's noticing their messy hair and disapproving of it, when the others might not even have noticed it, and might be thinking of different things entirely; or if they have noticed it, they might just be putting it down to it being a windy day or something.
"Another thinking error is catastrophic thinking, where a person thinks things will be terrible if things go wrong, when they might not really be that bad. For instance, a person might worry when they hear that the company they work for's going to have to make redundancies that they'll lose their job, and they'll be thrown into financial hardship because they won't be able to find another one, when there's no evidence that they're going to be one of the ones made redundant, and that if they are, they're likely to get some good redundancy pay that'll tide them over for a while, and their skills are in high demand, so it shouldn't be that hard to get another job.
"Another mistake people can make is called fortune-telling by some psychologists, which is where people anxiously feel as if they just know what's about to happen, such as if they feel sure someone's going to come up and ask them a question they'll find it hard to answer because they're too anxious to think straight, and then they'll stutter and not be able to come up with a good answer, and the person will go away thinking they must be stupid. They won't have any evidence that that will happen, but the thought itself can stir up more anxiety, which makes it more likely they'll stumble over their words and find it hard to think of what to say if a person does try to engage them in conversation, because they'll be too distracted by worrying about how they must be coming across to pay full attention to what they want to say.
"Some people might have got to think that way because they're got upsetting memories of being ridiculed by bullies or 'cool kids' at school for little things a lot, such as the ways some other kids thought they weren't coming up to standard, and they've come to assume everyone has those attitudes, when in reality most grown-ups won't have them, because a lot of people can grow to be less judgmental as they grow wiser with age, and also a lot of things that seem really important to some teenagers just aren't important to most older people, such as how fashionable a person's clothes are. But people who feel really self-conscious can be so worried about what might happen, and absorbed in feeling anxious, that they likely won't notice signs that other people are looking friendly instead of scornful of them.
"So when worry comes on, it can help to think through what the real evidence is for each thought that comes on that makes you feel bad, and what the evidence is that it doesn't have to make you feel as bad as you're feeling about it.
"For instance, if someone you know got really bad headaches, and it turned out they had a brain tumour, and then a friend of yours complained of bad headaches, you might immediately start feeling scared that they had a brain tumour too and might die. But if you look into the different causes of bad headaches, or think about what you know about them, you'll discover or remember that most of them are caused by things like migraines that aren't life-threatening. So while it'll definitely be worth the person going to the doctor about the problem, it'll just stir up anxiety unnecessarily to be fearful that the cause is a brain tumour before you know what's really causing it.
"A person can get into the habit of worrying in the first place because of life circumstances they used to be in that they genuinely couldn't cope with, such as if they were asked to take on the responsibility for looking after younger children when they were still a young child themselves, when they were realistically too young to look after other children, which might have happened because their parents were too ill to cope with them themselves; and the responsibilities and watchfulness to make sure the younger children were safe at all times, and so on, were too much for a child to cope with, so they had a lot to be anxious about, and it ruined their confidence in their ability to cope, because they didn't really know how to, and they knew they'd be upset and be blamed if things went wrong.
"So it would be understandable if after a while, worrying became so much of a habit for them that even when things got better for them, and they got older and more knowledgeable about what to do, the habit stuck, and it never went away, because habits can be hard to break.
"So whatever the reason is that a person started worrying a lot, they can still lack confidence about making decisions years later, and worry and worry over them, even though they're likely to have become much better at making decisions over time than they realise. They might still assume they must be bad at coping with things, not realising their skills to cope have increased a lot over the years, like most people's do.
"There are ways old worry habits can be broken though, such as analysing worries to work out how realistic they really are."
Becky continued, "It seems that a lot of worries are about things people can't really do anything about, so there's no real point in worrying about them, since whatever will happen will happen, whatever a person does.
"But one thing that can help to control worries is to set a specific time each day to worry over them, say half an hour after you've had dinner in the evening; and then when they come on at other times, you can just write little notes about them to remind you of what they are - if you're worried about forgetting them if you don't - and then resolve to put off worrying about them till your next worry half hour. That'll reduce the amount of time you spend absorbed in anxiety that's being caused by worrying about things, which would otherwise be ruining your quality of life.
"And then just before your worry half hour, you could go somewhere quiet, or organise things so you won't be distracted by phone calls, childcare responsibilities or other things. Then you could get out all your worry notes, and put them in order from the least worrying to the most, and then maybe start off with the least worrying ones, because they'll be a bit less unbearable to think about, so you won't dread starting the process so much; and then you could think about those for a while, and then move on, worrying about things in order, till you've worried over pretty much all of the worries you've had over the past 24 hours.
"But instead of just feeling helpless and working yourself up with anxiety about each of them, you could examine them, to see if they could be based on misinterpretations of things, like those thinking errors I mentioned, or whether you're forgetting that there are things you could make happen, or that might happen anyway, that might mean things don't turn out as badly as you're worried they will.
"And you could also think about what solutions there might be to the problems you've been worrying over, spending time working out possible solutions.
"Think about each worry in an analytical way till your anxiety about it diminishes. Coming away with some satisfying solutions, and some realisations that you were worrying more than you needed to, might give you quite a bit of relief from anxiety.
"But if there's something you don't feel like worrying about during that half hour, you could put it off till the next one, and then put it off till the one after that if you like, and then put it off till a future one if you still don't feel like worrying about it. Eventually, it might fade without you worrying about it at all.
"But on the other hand, if you're fortunate enough to realise you've run out of worries before the half hour's over, or if you feel like saving some till the next day, don't allot yourself extra time the next day for worry to make up for it; just get on with your life, saving up any more worries you have for your next worry half hour.
"During your worry half hour, you could write down exactly what each problem is that you're worrying about. Then you could ask yourself if there's something you can do about it, and if so, whether there's something you could do now. If there is something you could do immediately, make plans to do it. If there's something you could do at a later date, you could resolve to think about it later, or make plans to do something about it later. If there's nothing you can do about it at all though, there isn't any point in worrying about it, since it won't achieve anything. You could instead think of things to do that you'll actually enjoy doing, to take your mind off it, and to increase your quality of life and well-being."
Becky carried on, "Some people's anxiety is partly caused because they're not at all confident that they can solve their problems, so they think of them as threats instead of problems, and don't feel as if there's anything they can do about them. But once they start thinking of ways to solve them, or learn techniques to solve them, such as thinking of and writing down a range of possible solutions, and then rating each one according to how good it seems to be, and then going with the one that seems best, and then later picking another solution if the one they chose isn't working as well as they hoped it would, because circumstances change, or because of something else, they can get a real confidence boost by realising they're better at solving problems than they thought; and that can relieve their worries, because they feel more able to solve their problems.
"Some people are so preoccupied with worries about bad things that might or might not happen in the future, such as their children being in accidents or getting ill, that without realising it, they're neglecting opportunities to make life better for the people they're worrying about right then and there. It's simply impossible to predict what might happen in the future. But it is often possible to at least make sure that the people being worried about have a good quality of life today. So instead of worrying about their future, it can help to devote the energy that would otherwise be used up on worrying to try to make the lives of the people a person cares about as good as they can be in the moment, such as by telling children how much they're cared about, and playing with them and doing other nice things with them.
"Symbolism can help some people reduce their worrying, such as if they imagine putting their worries about their children's future into a drawer and closing it, and opening another drawer called 'today', that's full of nice plans to make the immediate future as nice as it can be for them.
"And when worries about the future reoccur in your mind, it can help to console yourself with thoughts such as that if bad things do happen, although they might cause a lot of distress, there are almost certain to be people around to help, and that things will often get better over time.
"For people who lack confidence in their own decision-making abilities, starting to make more and more decisions on their own, maybe starting with little ones and working up to bigger ones, can increase their confidence that they're capable of making them after all. And even if their decisions sometimes turn out not to be the best ones, they can practise coping with the consequences of them, which might not be as bad as they feared they would be. So planning how to make the best of things can still increase their confidence in their abilities.
"Distracting yourself from worries can be a good thing, if you're doing it because it just helps to calm you, rather than because you don't think you'll be able to cope with the anxiety the worries cause you if you don't do that, which can make people scared of not distracting themselves, so their anxiety increases if they can't think of anything to distract themselves with at the time when their worries come on. Your mental health will improve if instead, you discover that it's possible to face your worries head-on and deal with them, instead of making efforts to avoid them, such as by trying desperately not to think of them. If you can deal with them when they come to mind, you'll get to feel more competent. The better you get at dealing with them, the less anxious you'll likely feel.
"But you could still use other things to calm your anxiety as well, such as working off nervous energy with exercise, finding soothing or absorbing things to do, or talking to other people about things you're not worried about, just to relax.
"There are also relaxing exercises that can help worries fade, such as focusing your mind on breathing very very slowly and steadily, while imagining you're lying in a garden on a sunny day, feeling a gentle cooling breeze, surrounded by nice-looking flowers and trees; and then when you're starting to feel soothed by that, you could imagine that every time you breathe out, your worries are being blown out with your breath, rising up into the sky, and blowing away on the breeze or on little clouds.
"Or you could write your worries down, and imagine emailing them all to the dump.
"Some people think their worries are unpredictable, just coming on out of the blue. But if they start thinking about all the times when they come on, they might recognise specific triggers that make them more predictable than they thought they were, such as if it turns out that they tend to come on after conversations they have or other reminders about the kinds of things their worries are about, or when they're tired, or hungry, or before they go to sleep, or for women, at the times of the month when their periods are about to start. So people might get to be able to predict when their worries will come on, and be able to do things to prevent them coming on, such as doing soothing or absorbing things, so they'll feel more relaxed than normal, or their minds will be taken up with other things, so worries will be less likely to come on. Or else they can understand why their worries are coming on better, so as not to worry about the fact that they've come on so much."
Becky continued, "Misusing the imagination can make anxiety a lot worse, for instance if a person fantasises about the bad things they've been worrying about actually happening, or imagines what it would be like to come face to face with something they've got a phobia of without being able to escape. Even just using the imagination like that can set off fight or flight alarm signals in the brain, that set in motion the processes that make the body react the way it would if something dangerous was really about to happen, that meant they needed to take action. And they'll get the emotional fear feelings people get when their alarm signals are set off too. So they can unwittingly reinforce the fear that causes their phobia or anxiety, which can make it worse.
"A similar thing can happen if people imagine how bad it could be in a situation they're actually going to be in soon that they're nervous about, for instance if they're going to have an exam, and they imagine not being able to answer any of the questions, and panicking because of that. When they're actually in their exam, it can sometimes be as if their brain's been primed by what they've been imagining to recognise the exam room as a dangerous place, so the emotional part of their brain will set off alarm signals when they're there, and then they'll find it a lot harder to think clearly, because their mind will be flooded with strong emotions, so they'll find it a lot harder to answer the questions.
"So it might seem to them as if their fantasies about things going wrong were accurate; but it'll likely really mean that their nightmarish fantasies were an unwitting signal to the emotional part of their own brain that exams are dangerous, which made their fantasies more likely to come true, because it caused the emotional part of their brain to take their fantasies as a signal that exams are scary, so it triggered off fear as a warning to them when the exam actually happened, because it doesn't distinguish between vivid scary fantasies about worst case scenarios and real situations, or between genuinely dangerous situations and situations a person's just working themselves up with anxiety about because they're worried about them."
Becky continued, "One thing that can worry people is feeling as if they're detached from the world around them, as if they've lost their ability to be interested in the things other people talk about, and they can't emotionally connect even with other family members they used to feel close to. It's because the severe anxiety's preoccupying them so much that there isn't room for much else in their minds, and it's hard to be interested in the mundane everyday details of people's lives when they're feeling so distressed. People don't have to worry it'll last forever though. As their anxiety symptoms fade over time, their old feelings and interests are likely to return.
"Worrying that that won't happen is likely to make it take longer to happen, because it'll be increasing the anxiety symptoms that are preventing it from happening."
Becky carried on, "I read an old book called Stop Worrying and Start Living, by Dale Carnegie. It's full of interesting stories about people who used to worry a lot, but then found ways of Giving up the habit and solving problems better. I'll tell you a few of them:
"The author says he met a woman who gave him the impression she'd never worried in her life, but she said she hadn't always been like that. She said her life was almost ruined by worry before she'd learned to conquer it; she lived through eleven years of 'self-made hell'. She said she was irritable and hot-tempered, and lived under a lot of tension all the time. When she went out shopping, she'd worry herself into a state, worrying she might have left the iron on, or that the house might have caught fire, or that the maid had run off and left the children, or perhaps that the children had been killed while out on their bikes, and so on. She said she'd worry herself into such a state that she'd often rush out of the shops in the middle of her shopping and take the bus home to check things were allright. She said things were so bad that her marriage ended in disaster.
"But she said her second husband was a lawyer, a calm, logical man who never worried about anything. She said that when she got tense and anxious about something, he'd say to her, 'Relax. Let's think this out. What are you really worrying about? Let's examine the law of averages and see whether or not it's likely to happen'.
"She gave an example, saying that one day they'd been on a journey in the car, and they were travelling down a dirt road, and there was a terrible rainstorm. The car was sliding around and they couldn't control it. She was certain they'd slide off the road into one of the ditches by the side of it, but her husband kept saying to her to calm her, 'I'm driving very slowly. Nothing serious is likely to happen. Even if the car does slide into the ditch, by the law of averages, we won't be hurt'.
"She said his calmness and confidence reassured her.
"She said there was another time when they were camping in the mountains one summer, when there was a high wind. The tent was owned by a travel organisation. The guy ropes were fixed to a wooden platform, but the outer tent was making so much noise shaking around that she was convinced it would be torn to shreds, or that it would come loose and fly away in the wind. She said she was terrified. But she said her husband kept saying to her, 'Look, my dear, we are traveling with Brewster's' guides. Brewster's know what they're doing. They've been pitching tents in these mountains for sixty years. This tent has been here for many seasons. It hasn't blown down yet, and, by the law of averages, it won't blow away tonight; and even if it does, we can take shelter in another tent. So relax'.
"The woman said she did relax, and slept soundly after that.
"She said there was a time when there was a polio epidemic in their part of California, and in the old days, she'd have been 'Hysterical'; but her husband persuaded her to behave calmly. They kept their children away from crowds and school, and consulted the board of health, who told them that actually, even in the worst epidemic of polio they'd had in California, only 1835 children had got it in the entire state, which was bad, but still a small minority, and usually, the number was only about two or three hundred. She said that though it was tragic for any family whose child got it, the figures proved that by the law of averages, the chances of any one child getting it were remote.
"She said that the phrase, 'By the law of averages, it won't happen' had destroyed 90% of her worries; and it had made the past twenty years of her life peaceful and beautiful beyond her highest expectations.
"The author of the book with that story in it says it's been said that most unhappiness and worry comes from people's imaginations, not reality. He says he thinks that's been true for him.
"He says he spoke to someone who agreed it was true for himself as well. He was the head of a fruit distributing company. He said he used to torture himself by thinking things like, 'What if there's a train wreck? What if my fruit gets strewn all over the countryside? What if a bridge collapses as my cars are going across it?'
"He said the fruit was insured, but he was worried his business would suffer if he couldn't deliver it on time. He got so worried that he was afraid he had stomach ulcers and went to the doctor. The doctor said it was just jumpy nerves.
"Then he began to really think about what he was doing. He asked himself how many fruit cars he'd handled over the years, and estimated it at about 25 thousand. Then he asked himself how many had ever been wrecked, and he thought it might have been as many as about five, in all that time. Then he said to himself, 'Only five in 25 Thousand? That means there's only a one in five thousand chance that one will be wrecked! So what are you worrying about?'
"He said to himself that a bridge might collapse. Then he asked himself how many times a bridge had collapsed in all the time he'd been delivering fruit, and he answered that one never had.
"So then he asked himself whether he didn't think it was stupid to worry himself into stomach ulcers over a bridge that had never collapsed in all that time, and that a carriage of his fruit would be lost in a train crash when the odds were five thousand to one against that?
"He said that when he looked at it that way, he felt quite silly, and resolved not to worry about it anymore. He said he'd never been troubled with what he'd thought might be a stomach ulcer since.
"The author of the book says it's a great shame that so many people put off making the most of life in the present, thinking they'll wait till the future, which they might never see, or if they do, they might look back with grief at all the time they missed out on because they were too busy worrying about the future to take the opportunities life holds in the present.
"He tells the story of a man who longed to start his own business, but he was cautious and thought it best to hold on to his job for years before trying it. When he did start it though, it was really successful. But it was ruined quickly, because he offered to be responsible for a friend's debts and the friend went bankrupt, and then soon afterwards, the bank he had all his money in collapsed, and he not only lost all the money he had, but ended up with a large debt.
"He said his nerves couldn't take it. He couldn't eat or sleep, and he became ill, but it was only worry causing the illness.
"He said that one day, he collapsed, and couldn't walk any more. He was put to bed, and broke out in boils, which turned inward until just lying in bed was agony. He grew weaker every day. Eventually, the doctor said he only had two weeks to live.
"That was the turning point. At first, he was shocked, and wrote his will. But then he considered that there wasn't any point in worrying any more, since his problems were coming to an end, so he may as well just lie back, relax and wait for his end. He relaxed and fell asleep. He hadn't slept for two hours in succession for weeks because of all his worrying, but now he slept like alog.
"He said his exhausting tiredness began to disappear, his appetite came back, and he began to put on weight. A few weeks later, he could walk with crutches. Just six weeks later, he was able to go back to work.
"He said he got a job where he was earning much, much less than he had been before, doing a much less high-powered job. But he was just glad to have a job. He decided he'd learned his lesson; he wasn't going to worry anymore, either to wallow in regrets about the past or to dread the future. He just put all his concentration and energies into doing as well as he could at the job he had. In fact, he did it so well that he earned promotion after promotion, and in a few years was president of the company. It was successful, and he even had an air field named in his honour. The author says he wouldn't have been able to achieve nearly as much if he'd carried on spending his time bogged down in regrets about the past and worries for the future.
"The author quotes a French philosopher as having said, 'My life has been full of terrible misfortunes ... most of which have never happened'.
"He quotes the famous medieval Italian writer Dante as having said, 'Think that this day will never dawn again'. He says life is slipping away with incredible speed, and we ought to resolve today that from now on, we'll try to make the most of every day so we don't miss it, since we can't get it back. It's a precious possession.
"The author of the book tells the story of a man who was a successful businessman in the Far East during the Second World War. The man said he was in China in 1942 when the Japanese invaded Shanghai. He said he was the manager of a life insurance company, and the Japanese came and said they had to hand over their assets to them. He knew that if he didn't co-operate, he'd be killed. But he didn't tell the Japanese about some of them, because they belonged to the Hong Kong branch of the organisation and not to his own company. But he thought that if the Japanese found out he hadn't told them about them all, he'd be in serious trouble. And they did find out. He wasn't there when they found out, but his chief accountant said the Japanese admiral in charge flew into a rage, stamped and swore, and called the man a thief and a traitor. So he was worried about what would happen when he saw him again. He was worried he'd be thrown into the bridgehouse, the torture chamber of the Japanese Gestapo.
"He said he'd had friends who'd killed themselves rather than face being taken there, and others who'd died after ten days of questioning and torture in there. Now he thought he'd be taken there himself.
"He said he was told on a Sunday afternoon that the Japanese had found out what he'd done, and he would have been terrified, if he hadn't had a definite technique for solving problems that he'd used for years.
"He said that for years, whenever he'd been worried, he'd go to his typewriter and write down two questions, and the answers to them:
"'1. What am I worrying about?
"'2. What can I do about it?
"He said he used to try to answer the questions without writing them down, but he stopped that, because he discovered that writing them down helped him clarify his thinking.
"So he wrote down the first question, 'What am I worrying about?', and he answered by writing that he was scared he'd be thrown into the Bridgehouse.
"Then he wrote down the second question, 'What can I do about it?'
"He decided there were four possible courses of action he could take, and he spent hours thinking out and writing down what the probable consequences of each of them would be:
"'1. I can try to explain things to the admiral.
But he doesn't speak English. If I try to explain through an interpreter, he might get angry again and throw me into the prison where I might be killed, because he's cruel, and I'm sure he'd rather do that than bother talking about it.
"'2. I can try to escape.
I'd never manage it. They keep track of my whereabouts all the time. I have to even check in and out of the room where I live. I'd probably be captured and shot.
"'3. I can stay here in my room and not go near the office again.
If I do, the Japanese admiral will probably be suspicious, will send soldiers to get me, and have me thrown into the Bridgehouse without giving me a chance to explain myself.
"'4. I can go down to the office as usual tomorrow morning.
If I do, it's possible that the Japanese admiral will be so busy he won't think of what I did. If he does, he might have cooled off by now so he won't bother me. Even if he does bother me, I'll still have a chance to try to explain myself and avoid the Bridgehouse.
"'So going to the office and acting as if nothing had gone wrong gives me two chances to avoid it.'
" He said that as soon as he thought it all out and decided on the last option, he felt very relieved.
"He said that when he did go down to the office the next day, the Japanese admiral was there and glared at him as he always did, but didn't say anything. Six weeks later, to the businessman's relief, the admiral went back to Tokyo, and he didn't have to worry anymore.
"He said he probably saved his life by sitting down with his typewriter and thinking through all the possible courses of action he could take to try to solve the problem and then writing down the probable consequences of each one, and deciding on the one that gave him most chance of survival. He said that if he hadn't done that, he might have floundered around in worry and hesitated, and done the wrong thing on the spur of the moment. He said he would have been frantic with worry all afternoon, and wouldn't have been able to sleep that night. He would have gone down to the office with a harassed and worried look, and that alone might have caused the Japanese admiral to be suspicious and to do something ruthless.
"He said that time and time again over his life, he'd found that coming to a decision in a systematic way like that had helped him banish worries. He said half his worry tended to vanish once he'd made a clear, definite decision, and most of the rest would usually vanish once he started to carry it out.
"The author says the businessman became even more successful after that, and he said he owed a lot of his success to his method of eliminating his worries by facing the facts, deciding what to do, and then doing it.
"Another story the author tells is about a pioneer in the air conditioning industry, who once told him that when he was a young man working for someone else, rather than being the boss of his own company, he was told to fit some equipment in the premises of another company, and he was worried, because it was new equipment, and he discovered it didn't work as well as his company had hoped. He felt like a failure, and was so anxious that his stomach was really churning, and he couldn't sleep for a while.
"But he said that then, common sense reminded him that worrying wasn't solving anything, and he set his mind to working out a way he could solve the problem. He said he found one, and it turned out to work really well, and he's been using it ever since.
"He said he decided to try to eliminate his worries in three stages:
"The first would be to analyse the problem as fearlessly and honestly as possible, and ask himself what was the worst thing that could happen because the machinery he'd fitted didn't work that well.
"He considered the fact that no one was going to jail him or shoot him because of it. It was just possible that he'd lose his position in the company, or that they would have to take the machinery away and lose the twenty thousand dollars they'd invested in the equipment.
"He said the second step was to come around to the idea of accepting the worst, if he should have to. He thought to himself, 'OK, it'll be a blot on my record, and I might even lose my job. Well, if I do lose it, I can always get another one. Things could be a lot worse - at least there are quite a lot of jobs around at the moment. And if my employers do lose that money, they can stand it. They know we were experimenting with the equipment because it's new and they weren't sure it would work. They can charge it up to research, since it was an experiment.'
"He said that after bringing himself around to accepting the worst that could happen, if he had to, he found himself immediately relaxing and feeling a sense of peace that he hadn't experienced in days.
"He said the final step was to make plans to stop the worst happening, if possible, or to stop its effects from being as bad as they could be if it did. So he set to work planning how that could be done. He did some tests to try to find a way of reducing the amount of money his company would lose because they'd spent it on the inefficient equipment. He worked out that if they bought some other equipment, the problem would be solved. It cost five thousand dollars, but it caused things to work more efficiently, so eventually, instead of losing twenty thousand dollars, they actually made fifteen thousand.
"The engineer said he didn't believe he'd have been able to help the company achieve that if he'd still been worrying, since one of the worst things about worry is that it stops people concentrating. The mind jumps here, there and everywhere, and so it's impossible to come to any decision. But he said that when we force ourselves to face the worst that could happen and accept that we'll have to cope with it if necessary, we stop our minds from floundering around in vague imaginings, so they're free to concentrate on working out what to do to solve the problem.
"So his steps to solving worry problems basically went:
"The man said he called that technique his 'magic formula' for solving worries, because it worked so well that time with the machinery that he'd used it ever since, over years.
"The author of the book with all these stories in it says that one thing that can sometimes work wonders for people's own mental health is doing good for others, because it stops people thinking about themselves, which can contribute a lot to fear and worry and depression.
"He says a woman told him that five years earlier, she'd been mired in a feeling of self-pity and sorrow. She'd lost her husband, and as Christmas approached, her sadness grew deeper. She'd never spent a Christmas alone, and she dreaded having to spend that year's Christmas on her own. Friends had invited her to spend Christmas with them, but she didn't think she'd feel up to any jollity, so she didn't want to go and put a dampener on things by being miserable. She said that as Christmas Eve approached, she was more and more overwhelmed with self-pity. She realises now that she should have been thankful for many things instead, since we've all got a lot to be thankful for.
"She decided to try to cheer herself up a bit. She left her office in the middle of the afternoon on Christmas Eve and walked around the streets. They were full of happy crowds that brought back memories of happier times. She couldn't bear the thought of going home to a lonely and empty home, but didn't know what to do. She walked aimlessly for over an hour, and couldn't hold the tears back.
"Then, she found herself in front of a bus terminal. She thought back to the times when her and her husband had often boarded a bus not knowing where it was going, for adventure. She decided to do that. She got on the next bus that came along, and stayed on it till she was told they were at the last stop. She didn't know the name of the town she was in, but it was a quiet place. She decided to walk around before getting the bus back.
"Walking up a side street, she heard a Christmas carol being played by an organ in a church. She decided to go in. It was deserted apart from the organist. There were beautiful Christmas decorations. The soothing music from the organ and the fact she hadn't eaten for hours made her drowsy, and she fell asleep.
"She said that when she woke up, she didn't know where she was, and was terrified for a moment. Then she saw two children who'd come in to look at the Christmas tree looking at her. They were frightened when she woke up. She told them she wasn't going to hurt them.
"She said she asked them where their parents were, and they said they didn't have any. She noticed they were poorly dressed. She realised they must be much worse off than she had ever been. She felt ashamed of her sorrow and self-pity. She showed them the Christmas tree, and then went somewhere else with them and they had some refreshments. She bought them a few presents and sweets. She said her loneliness disappeared as if by magic. The two orphans gave her the only real happiness and self-forgetfulness she'd had in months. As she chatted with them, she realised how lucky she'd been. All her own childhood Christmases had been filled with fun and parental tenderness, unlike theirs.
"She said the two little orphans did far more for her than she did for them. She said the experience showed her again how happiness can be gained by making other people happy. She said happiness is contagious - by giving, we receive. She said that by helping people and giving out love, she'd banished worry and sorrow and self-pity, and she felt like a new person. She said she really was a new person - not only for a little while, but in the years afterwards.
"The author says he knew a man who was extremely upset when his five-year-old daughter died. Then his wife had another baby, who died within five days!
"The father said he couldn't bear the double tragedy. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, and he couldn't rest or relax. His nerves were shaken and his confidence was gone, not surprisingly.
"He said that at last, he went to a couple of doctors. One recommended sleeping pills, and the other recommended a trip somewhere. He tried both, but neither one helped him. He felt terrible.
"But he did have one child left, a four-year-old son. And one day, the child showed him the solution to his problem. One afternoon, the son asked the father if he'd build a boat for him. The man said he was sitting around feeling sorry for himself and certainly not in the mood to do that, or anything else. But the son kept asking, and he had to give in.
"He said it took about three hours to build the toy boat, and those turned out to be the first three hours of mental relaxation and peace he'd had in months. When he realised that, it shook him out of his depressed state, and he was inspired to do a bit of thinking, the first real thinking he'd done in months. He realised it's difficult to worry when you're doing something that takes planning and thinking. He hadn't been worried while he was building the boat. So he decided to keep busy.
"He said the next day, he went from room to room in the house, writing a list of all the jobs that ought to be done. There were dozens of things that needed repairing. In the space of two weeks, he made a list of 242 things that needed attention!
"He said that since then, he'd done most of the tasks, and had also filled his life with stimulating activity, going to adult education classes two nights a week, becoming governor of the school board, and doing other such things, raising money for the Red Cross, and other things. He'd found that while he was busy, he had no time to worry."
Becky ended her lecture there.
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