The Worry Trick

by David A Carbonell

  When you treat worry as a danger that must be stopped or avoided, you’re fighting fire with gasoline. Your gut instinct is actually pretty much the opposite of what would help. This is what gives the worry trick its power.

  It’s as if your compass is off by 180 degrees, showing north when it points south. If you have a compass that’s off by 180 degrees, you can still find your way home, as long as you remember that the compass points the wrong way, and you need to go in the opposite direction it suggests.

  Your gut instinct of how to handle worry has probably been to take its content seriously, opposing it and seeking to avoid it. That’s what we saw in chapter 3. When you take worry to be a sign of danger, you naturally treat it that way.

  We need something very different for the discomfort and doubt of worry. This way would allow us to recognize the doubts and uncertainties that occur to us, and also allow for the way our brains may be over-vigilant in imagining future dangers. It would allow us to distinguish between thoughts that occur in our brains (our internal world) and events that occur (or don’t) in the external world. It would allow us to live more comfortably with the reality that we don’t control our thoughts, and that our thoughts are not always our best guide to what is happening, or will be happening, in our external world.

  The Rule of Opposites can be a powerful guide in the search for a more adaptive way to respond to worry. We’ll come back to it again as we look for different methods you can use in responding to worry.

  Thinking It Over

  In this chapter, we reviewed the nature of worry and found it to be a counterintuitive problem, one best served by a counterintuitive response. This aspect of worry is firmly embedded in the Rule of Opposites, which suggests that a person’s gut instinct of how to handle worry is usually wrong, dead wrong, and that we’re better off doing the opposite of that instinct when it comes to handling worry. This rule will be an important guide as we consider different ways to work with worry.

  Chapter 6

  The Mad Libs of Anxiety: Catch the Worries Before They Catch You

  If you experience chronic worry and struggle to get a handle on it, here’s one aspect of it you can turn to your advantage. Almost all of your worries—and I really mean all, like 99.9 percent of your worries—will announce themselves when they enter your mind. It’s as if the worry were waving a big flag, to make sure you know it’s arrived. Chronic worries almost always start with two particular words, the most overworked words in the vocabulary of a worrier.

  You probably know this. What are the two words?

  Think back to the last couple of times you struggled with a worrisome thought. What were the first few words of that thought?

  What Are a Worrier’s Two Most Over-Used Words?

  You nailed it if you answered “What if…?”

  Now I say this is an advantage, because these two words can point out to you that you’re being lured into worry as surely as the sound of a starter pistol indicates the start of a race, or the siren of an ambulance behind you indicates the need to pull over.

  Maybe you don’t think that’s an advantage! You might be so accustomed to trying to suppress and ignore your worrisome thoughts that anything that brings attention to them seems unhelpful. It might seem to you that you’ve been barely holding back the tide of unwanted worry, and that you’d be better off keeping it out of your awareness.

  And yet, we saw in chapter 3 that “anti-worry” techniques usually make the problem of chronic worry more chronic and severe. Such techniques look like helpful solutions, but they’re actually wolves in sheepdog’s clothing. So bear with me! Suspend any disbelief on this point, at least until you’ve digested this chapter.

  The “what if” words are a useful signal. However, if you’re like most chronic worriers, you probably don’t often notice them, and you may well underestimate how often this phrase appears in your thoughts and conversation.

  “What if” probably sneaks around your attention the same way a pickpocket does. You’re more likely to notice, and react to, the phrase that comes after the “what if…?” That’s where all the upset of chronic worry comes from. “What if” is the bait that gets you to bite into something that will give you a real bellyache.

  You can’t change your relationship with worry if it catches you unawares. So it will probably be real helpful for you to get better at noticing the “what if” words and taking in their meaning. That will set the stage for you to start training yourself to respond differently to the worry, and developing a new way of relating to it. If this sounds like the opposite of what you’ve been trying—well, this is why we have the Rule of Opposites!

  Let’s start this work by diagramming the typical worry sentence. It’s no longer part of the standard grade school curriculum, but when I attended grade school, we learned grammar by diagramming sentences. We’ll do something similar here.

  Diagram the Worry Sentence

  Here’s the actual structure of the overwhelming majority of chronic worries. It’s composed of two clauses.

  What if… ? (Insert catastrophe here)

  It starts with the “what if?” clause. It’s followed by the catastrophe clause.

  Let’s consider the “what if” clause for a moment. What does the “what if” clause mean here? What are we trying to convey when we say “what if”? What meaning does it add to the sentence?

  You might not be so sure of what I’m getting at here, so let me explain. Think about when we’re likely to get into “what if” thinking. If a dog comes up and bites me, how likely am I to say, or think, “What if a dog bites me?” Not very likely, right? I’m just gonna say, “Ouch!”

  If a dog comes up to me and growls, fur on end, showing teeth, and in every way looking like a dog about to attack, how likely am I to be thinking, What if this dog bites me? Still not very likely, right? I’m much more likely to be looking around for the dog’s owner, or a stick I can use to defend myself, a fence I can hop, or a tree I can climb. I’m going to be focused on protecting myself any way I can.

  So when do I say (or think), “What if a dog bites me?” What do you think?

  I think the answer is: when I’m neither being bitten nor about to be bitten. I don’t say it when a dog has his teeth on my leg. I don’t say it when a dog is in front of me, preparing to attack. I’m too busy protecting myself to be thinking much of anything! I say, or think, “What if a dog bites me?” when I’m not being threatened by a dog; I say it, or think it, when my cerebral cortex has center stage, and my amygdala is on standby in the background. For instance, if I had a dog phobia, I might have this thought just as I was ready to leave the house, ready to walk a few blocks to catch my train. However, if a dog actually charges me while I’m walking to the train, my amygdala will take charge, silence the blabbing of my cortex, and fill me with the energy and the urgency I need to protect myself. That conversation with the committee of old guys will have to wait until I’m no longer threatened by the dog!

  Dog attacks don’t cause worrying—they cause self-protection!

  So what meaning does the “what if” clause add to our sentence?

  It means “let’s pretend.”

  Does that work for you? Does that describe the meaning of “what if” that appears in your worries? “Here’s something that’s not happening in the external world now, and let’s pretend it is.”

  It’s actually more specific than that. When’s the last time you found yourself thinking, What if I wake up tomorrow, feeling real good, happy with myself and my place in the world, love in my heart for everyone, knowing that those feelings will last for the rest of my life?

  Not so recently, right? In fact, probably never! People generally don’t “what if” about good stuff. It’s all about negative, terrible, dreadful things that could possibly happen in the future.

  So “what if” really means “Let’s pretend something bad.”

  Maybe, though, you’re thinking it really means “This could happen,
” or “It’s possible that…” You might think that this could be an important signal about some bad thing that is possible. If this is the case, I have another question for you.

  What would be some things that are clearly, irrefutably impossible?

  Take your time, but I don’t think you’ll come up with much. There’s really nothing that seems impossible if we think about it long enough. That’s one of the differences between your internal world and the external world. In the external world, there are rules that govern reality. In our minds, there are no rules. We can imagine anything, no matter how improbable or impossible, and be unable to prove that it’s impossible.

  This doesn’t give you much guidance to live by. And our “what if” thoughts don’t cover all the things that seem possible—just the really bad ones. This is how my wife and I ended up so concerned with my son’s jaundice, as I explained in chapter 1.

  What goes in the catastrophe clause? Whatever you happen to be most worried about that day, week, month, or year. It’s a fill-in-the-blank choice, and if you’re presently most worried about your job, or your health, or your spouse, or your furnace, that’s what’s going to show up there.

  So here’s what we have:

  Let’s pretend… . (Some catastrophe)

  The “what if” part of chronic worry is all about pretending. When chronic worry tricks you into pretending something is true, it doesn’t matter how important or unimportant that pretend content is. Pretending is like multiplying by zero! It doesn’t matter how big a number is, when you multiply by zero, you still end up with nothing.

  Worrying About “What If?” Is Like a Game

  Do you know the game Mad Libs? It’s a party game that became real popular in the 1960s. It was a book full of very short stories that had words missing. You’d get a bunch of your friends together and then you’d ask them to give you the words you needed to complete the story, without letting them see the story. You’d tell them “give me an adverb—a color—a number—a proper noun,” and so on. You’d write these words in where they were needed, and then you’d read the completed story to your friends. Then they’d laugh, especially if you had served plenty of beer beforehand. This is what we did for fun before the Internet.

  So, this “what if” sentence, this statement of chronic worry, this is the Mad Libs of anxiety. It’s just as arbitrary, as random, as that. You can fill in a catastrophe here, any catastrophe. It doesn’t matter what you pick. You have your usual choices—your “favorite” worries—but they all fit! They all fit because you have “Let’s pretend” in front.

  The problem is, after a while you forget that you’re pretending.

  If you’re like most people with chronic worry, over time you get so used to these thoughts that you stop noticing the pretend part. You probably don’t even notice the “what if” clause after a while. The only part of the thought you consciously notice is the inflammatory and exaggerated catastrophe clause.

  When you don’t notice the “what if” clause, you get this steady drumbeat of ideas in your mind that suggest disaster. You don’t notice the part that tells you it’s pretend! No wonder people can get so anxious and depressed in response to worry. It’s like a cable TV channel devoted exclusively to bad news, beamed directly into your mind.

  When you don’t notice the “what if” clause, this drumbeat of ideas sounds like this:

  What if…I GET CANCER?

  What if…MY SPOUSE LEAVES ME?

  What if… I FREAK OUT DURING MY PRESENTATION?

  What if…I GET SO NERVOUS, THEY THINK I’M A TERRORIST?

  What if…I LOSE MY MIND AT THE RESTAURANT OVER LUNCH?

  The effect of the worry is strengthened even more by the fact that it often occurs while you’re multitasking. Even if you noticed the “what if” part, you don’t have the opportunity to give it your full attention and resolve it. You’re too busy checking your text messages while eating your lunch and scanning your schedule. This thought has a lot of subliminal power. We don’t stop to notice that we’re experiencing this particular thought and respond to the thought as just that, a thought. Instead, we skip right past the “what if” part, focus in on the catastrophe clause, and absorb its message as if it were true.

  This is one of the obstacles you face in dealing with the problem of worry. As a society, we value thought, and usually think of thought as one of our characteristics that sets us apart from animals, one of the highlights of billions of years of evolution. We value human thought. And most of us are vain enough to put a particularly high value on our own thought. Thought is good, powerful, and important, we believe, and my thoughts are especially good, powerful, and important. We certainly act this way in responding to worry. If we didn’t take these thoughts to be important, they wouldn’t cause us so much grief!

  Our brains are wonderful problem-solving tools. More than any other factor (except perhaps opposable thumbs), it’s our brains that have enabled us to become the top predator of the planet. Our brains have produced the wheel, speech and writing, and the calculations necessary to land a ship on a comet.

  But the brain is still a problem-solving organ, looking for problems to solve. And, especially when there’s no urgent problem (like an attacking dog) to solve, the brain will make up some problems, just to have something to do. So it doesn’t matter how smart you are. A certain amount of your thoughts will just be noisy nonsense.

  How Worry Baits You

  This “what if” clause is like that red flag to a bull that I mentioned in chapter 4. Imagine if you could have a heart-to-heart conversation with a bull, just before a bullfight. I think it would go something like this.

  Listen, bull, I know how you feel when you see that red flag. Your blood boils, right? You want to paw the ground, snort real loud, then race over and flatten that flag, and the guy holding it, too. But remember what happened to your cousin, Toro? He ran over to that flag, and while he was attacking it, some guys stuck short knives in his side. Then another guy waved it again, and when Toro ran at him, the guy stabbed him in the neck with a sword. It was a trick! They bait you with that red flag, man! So the best thing for you to do, when they start waving that thing at you, is remember it’s a trick! Lie down and eat some daisies! Don’t take the bait! Don’t get suckered!

  It would be real hard to train a bull to do that. But you can train yourself to take a pass on the “what if” bait, to notice the “what if” and respond differently. You can train yourself to remember that it is, in fact, a bunch of bull.

  The first step is to get better at consciously noticing the “what if” clause. This is the part that says “Let’s pretend (something bad),” and when you don’t notice this clause, it’s easy to lose sight of the pretending. Generally, the catastrophe clause that follows seems so upsetting and ominous that it’s easy to forget about the “what if” part, especially when you barely noticed it to begin with.

  So here’s a way to become more aware of the “what if” clause.

  Count Your Worries

  Get yourself some bottles of Tic Tacs, or any kind of mint that comes in fixed quantities. Tic Tacs, for instance, come in bottles of sixty and one hundred (except in Australia, where they come in bottles of fifty—go figure!), but any kind of mint or candy that comes in a fixed number per bottle will do. Keep it with you at all times, in your pocket, purse, or briefcase.

  Get into this habit. Whenever you notice a “what if” thought (or you hear yourself saying it out loud), take out your bottle of Tic Tacs. Take one out. You can eat it, or you can flick it onto the street, or toss it in the garbage. Whatever you do with it is fine, just remove one from the bottle and close the bottle.

  You can use this as a way to track, and count, the number of times you experience a What if…? thought during the week. If you prefer, you could use some other method, like a clicker. I like the Tic Tacs, though, because they are more likely to interrupt you in your mental “business as usual.” And, if you feel self-conscious ab
out doing this kind of self-monitoring, no one will notice a thing—just a person eating a mint!

  Practice makes permanent. Do this for a couple of weeks, and you will make a pretty permanent change in your ability to notice the “what if” thoughts. They will no longer be subliminal, slipping into your mind unnoticed the way a pickpocket gets your wallet without drawing your attention. Now you will become more and more aware of the habit. And it will start to lose some of its power to fool you.

  Most people quickly come to recognize how central these “what if” words are. Occasionally I meet someone who discovers they use a variation on this phrase, such as “Suppose,” “Isn’t it possible,” or other words that contain the same invitation to imagine bad stuff happening in the future. If you discover that your worry bait comes in a slightly different wording, you can use Tic Tacs to observe that wording as well.

  One more thing before you start. As you start using the Tic Tacs, you might be displeased when you notice how many times you catch yourself in the act of “what if”-ing. You might feel overwhelmed when you realize how often this thought occurs to you. You might feel, initially, that you would have much preferred that I hadn’t ever brought it to your attention.

  Don’t be fooled. This is the good news, when you notice all those “what if”s, even though you may initially feel dismayed and discouraged. It’s the good news because you’ve been having all those thoughts for some time, long before you started this book. All that’s different now is that you’re noticing them. That’s the good news, because noticing them is a new skill that will help you.