4 Ways to Lower Anxiety & Stop Worrying — Transcript

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1. 0:00hi i'm material of uncommon knowledge
2. 0:01and welcome to four ways to help your
3. 0:04client stop worrying
4. 0:08[Music]
5. 0:13now
6. 0:14mark twain
7. 0:15said
8. 0:16drag your thoughts away from your
9. 0:18troubles
10. 0:19by the ears by the heels or any way you
11. 0:22can manage it
12. 0:24and he was under something of course
13. 0:26worrying and fretting and
14. 0:28catastrophizing make people miserable
15. 0:31the word worrying itself
16. 0:33comes from the old english expression
17. 0:35meaning to strangle
18. 0:37okay and people can feel suffocated by
19. 0:40their own concerns you know being in
20. 0:43their head all the time if you've ever
21. 0:45worried and most of us
22. 0:47will fall into chronic worrying to some
23. 0:49extent
24. 0:51some of the time you know how
25. 0:53appropriate the origin of the word is
26. 0:55when you can't stop worrying it really
27. 0:58can
28. 0:58feel hard to breathe sometimes you know
29. 1:01when people are worrying at night
30. 1:03and it feels overwhelming
31. 1:05and
32. 1:06worrying itself
33. 1:08can become habitual you know i've had
34. 1:10people say to me that if they didn't
35. 1:12worry they'd be worried because they'd
36. 1:15worry about not worrying so persistent
37. 1:18worrying can turn into an uncomfortable
38. 1:20habit that's so hard to shake off you
39. 1:23know chronic worries even worry when
40. 1:25they have nothing to worry about
41. 1:27and that shows us that the worrying
42. 1:30itself has just become a way of being
43. 1:32you know a habit some feel that if they
44. 1:34stop worrying then they're tempting fate
45. 1:37i remember one guy i worked with for
46. 1:39fear of flying
47. 1:40told me that he almost felt that it was
48. 1:43his worrying that kept the
49. 1:45airplane in the sky rather than say jet
50. 1:48propulsion you know
51. 1:49if he didn't worry then something bad
52. 1:51would happen to the flight okay
53. 1:53his wiring had some kind of magical
54. 1:56power worrying though isn't harmless it
55. 1:59has consequences and the more we worry
56. 2:02the more stress hormone we produce and
57. 2:04the more we dream at night okay
58. 2:07and in turn over dreaming
59. 2:10uh caused by unresolved worrying can
60. 2:12cause clinical depression so chronic
61. 2:15worrying can
62. 2:17be quite a bad depressive for people um
63. 2:19so helping your clients stop worrying
64. 2:22so much at least can have multiple
65. 2:25benefits and mean that they're less
66. 2:27likely to get depressed okay more likely
67. 2:29to get the slow wave type of sleep at
68. 2:31night
69. 2:31and feel more energized when they've
70. 2:33been sleeping now if we look at the role
71. 2:35of the imagination of course chronic
72. 2:37worrying has been called a thought
73. 2:39disorder
74. 2:40but it's perhaps more apt to
75. 2:43see it as a misuse of the imagination an
76. 2:45imagination disorder
77. 2:47and imagination is not just all in your
78. 2:51head it has measurable palpable effects
79. 2:55both physically and on people's behavior
80. 2:58another classic misuse of imagination is
81. 3:00of course chronic jealousy jealous
82. 3:02people
83. 3:03may imagine all kinds of negative things
84. 3:05about their partners actions and
85. 3:07intentions
86. 3:08often with no evidence to back their
87. 3:10suspicions up or perhaps only partial
88. 3:12evidence
89. 3:13so again the the person's going into the
90. 3:15imagination and misusing it to cause
91. 3:18them and the another people significant
92. 3:20problems now what people worry about
93. 3:22what they imagine
94. 3:23can significantly
95. 3:25affect the body can raise blood pressure
96. 3:28if you imagine something very
97. 3:29frightening then the hypnotic power of
98. 3:31that imagination can affect the body um
99. 3:34quite dramatically okay people can sweat
100. 3:37you know just imagining something that
101. 3:39they're scared of okay so that's a
102. 3:41profound physio biological um or
103. 3:44psychobiological
104. 3:46effect so hypnotherapy of course only
105. 3:48works because the imagination is so
106. 3:50powerful
107. 3:51we use the imagination and hypnosis to
108. 3:54alter physical phenomena for example
109. 3:56remove warts or improve immune response
110. 3:58or take away pain and behavioral
111. 4:01responses for example helping someone
112. 4:03stop smoking so that's what how we use
113. 4:05the imagination constructively
114. 4:08but the common denominator is the
115. 4:09imagination and whether a person uses it
116. 4:11constructively or destructively okay
117. 4:15so how do you get your clients to use
118. 4:17their imaginations more productively
119. 4:20than
120. 4:21simply worrying okay so here are four
121. 4:24powerful tips
122. 4:26number one get distance
123. 4:29from the worry i'll often talk about how
124. 4:31we're capable of imagining absolutely
125. 4:33anything but whether we buy into what we
126. 4:36imagine or not is another matter
127. 4:39altogether
128. 4:40stephen king
129. 4:41uses his imagination as do many writers
130. 4:44to create terrifying scenarios but he
131. 4:47produces all these scary ideas from his
132. 4:50imagination without being scared witless
133. 4:53by these ideas or imaginings himself
134. 4:56so he's got some distance on his own
135. 4:58imagination he can clearly separate
136. 5:00himself from what he's imagining okay
137. 5:03and that's the first step to controlling
138. 5:06worrying
139. 5:07simple as it sounds this is often a
140. 5:09completely new idea for many warriors
141. 5:13as i'm saying this i can quite vividly
142. 5:16imagine the ceiling
143. 5:18caving in on top of me i can imagine
144. 5:20that pretty vividly
145. 5:22while not believing for one second that
146. 5:23it's going to happen
147. 5:24okay an incredible youtube moment if it
148. 5:27actually did happen at the moment but i
149. 5:29don't believe it's going to happen but i
150. 5:30can really imagine it happening
151. 5:33so just because i can imagine it
152. 5:34happening doesn't mean it's likely so
153. 5:36rather than trying to get the person not
154. 5:37to think about something which is a
155. 5:39useless piece of advice we can teach our
156. 5:41clients to relax deeply whilst imagining
157. 5:44what scares them so we're taking the the
158. 5:46kinesthetic the feeling effect out of
159. 5:48the imagination they can hypnotically
160. 5:50see their worries in the distance over
161. 5:52there while feeling very relaxed over
162. 5:54here
163. 5:55okay so we're giving them some distance
164. 5:57on the workings of their own imagination
165. 6:00another thing i might do i might even
166. 6:02prescribe
167. 6:03set doses of worrying time
168. 6:06whilst relaxed for the
169. 6:08chronically worrying client
170. 6:11to do between sessions with me in effect
171. 6:13we're asking them to worry without
172. 6:15feeling worried i found this to be
173. 6:17surprisingly easy
174. 6:18and effective you know really emotion is
175. 6:20the neon sign yelling pay attention to
176. 6:23this
177. 6:24and when you diminish the emotion
178. 6:26the compulsive thoughts fade away and it
179. 6:28becomes much easier for your client to
180. 6:30stop worrying
181. 6:31after all why keep going back to an
182. 6:33imagination and imagine scenario
183. 6:36when there's no particular emotion
184. 6:37attached to it
185. 6:39number two organize the worry
186. 6:42so there's nothing like a timetable for
187. 6:44bringing things under control you know
188. 6:46worry tends to be intrusive you know
189. 6:49gate crashing your head when you're
190. 6:51trying to think about something else
191. 6:53when you're enjoying yourself or
192. 6:55concentrating on something um
193. 6:58outside of the world it barges its way
194. 7:00in prescribing worry time is a neat way
195. 7:03of prescribing the symptom and
196. 7:05organizing the destructive use of the
197. 7:06imagination as a prelude to getting rid
198. 7:08of it once and for all and of course
199. 7:10being able to worry sometimes is useful
200. 7:13for all of us so perhaps we don't want
201. 7:16to get rid of it completely just keep it
202. 7:19in its place okay
203. 7:21asking the client to select a specific
204. 7:24time of day to sit down and do nothing
205. 7:26but worry for a set period perhaps no
206. 7:29longer than 20 minutes gives them
207. 7:31permission to defer worrying okay so
208. 7:34worry comes into your hair do you think
209. 7:35well no i've agreed to do this at three
210. 7:37o'clock for 20 minutes
211. 7:38and i'll wait till then
212. 7:40when a troublesome thought occurs then
213. 7:42they're to say to themselves okay
214. 7:44there's there's a worrying thought there
215. 7:46i'll worry about that during my worry
216. 7:48time but not now and this soon shows the
217. 7:50client that worrying doesn't have the
218. 7:52hold over them that they
219. 7:55worried it did that they imagined it did
220. 7:58okay
221. 7:59you know we can control wires much more
222. 8:01than we assume we can
223. 8:02when they
224. 8:04have to do it for 20 minutes it gets
225. 8:06harder and harder to do
226. 8:08you know it becomes harder to worry
227. 8:11transforming its itself from something
228. 8:13that they can't help doing to something
229. 8:15that's a real nuisance to keep up it
230. 8:16becomes a chore to worry okay because we
231. 8:19prescribed it as a chore that you have
232. 8:21to do a certain time for a certain set
233. 8:23period
234. 8:25number three write down solution steps
235. 8:28so worrying that doesn't lead anywhere
236. 8:30is like a dog chasing its tail
237. 8:32and um you know it leads to a kind of
238. 8:35indigestion emotional indigestion the
239. 8:37pro where the food isn't processed you
240. 8:40know the emotional fuel isn't processed
241. 8:42it just goes around around it's been
242. 8:44shown that writing about emotional
243. 8:46issues lowers stress hormone levels
244. 8:48perhaps because writing requires us to
245. 8:50use other less emotional parts of the
246. 8:52brain okay in conjunction with imagining
247. 8:54what it is that we're worried about
248. 8:56but to be really effective writing needs
249. 8:59to be more than just venting
250. 9:01so get your worry clients to use this
251. 9:03practical writing technique so firstly
252. 9:05we need to get them to list
253. 9:07which means get getting them to write
254. 9:09down exactly and clearly just what they
255. 9:13are fearful of
256. 9:14making as full a list as possible
257. 9:17second we want them to split
258. 9:19which means mark each item on the list
259. 9:21as soluble or insoluble solvable or
260. 9:25insolvable for example worries about
261. 9:27situations that can't be immediately
262. 9:29changed or concerns over the
263. 9:30unchangeable past are things that can't
264. 9:33be practically solved
265. 9:35only solved in the way that we relate to
266. 9:37these
267. 9:37things next we have steps
268. 9:40copy all the
269. 9:42solvable items into a single column on
270. 9:45one side of the page
271. 9:47next to each item write some practical
272. 9:50steps that can be taken towards fixing
273. 9:53that problem next we have resolve
274. 9:56in which we ask them to copy all the
275. 9:58unsolvable items
276. 10:00into a single column on one
277. 10:03of side of another page
278. 10:05and beside each item describe how they
279. 10:08would need to feel differently about
280. 10:10these issues in order to resolve these
281. 10:12worries psychologically
282. 10:14for example you know i need to accept
283. 10:16that he's gone and won't be coming back
284. 10:18okay
285. 10:20and i need to process that emotion and
286. 10:23so forth so there's different ways of
287. 10:25solving worries either emotionally or
288. 10:27practically or both sometimes number
289. 10:29four throw your worries away writing
290. 10:31down bad memories and sealing the paper
291. 10:33in an envelope and then throwing it away
292. 10:35or putting it away for safe keeping
293. 10:38has been found to influence
294. 10:41memory
295. 10:42in research
296. 10:43recollection of the emotional details of
297. 10:46an event actually becomes weaker after
298. 10:49this metaphorical act
299. 10:51okay and see reference three in the
300. 10:52written article of this so i once had a
301. 10:54client who told me that she was worried
302. 10:56about certain things
303. 10:58she felt she couldn't talk to me about
304. 11:00okay and i didn't try to force her
305. 11:02to talk to to me about these things you
306. 11:04know i respected her privacy and i asked
307. 11:07her whether she could write them down so
308. 11:09we could dispose of them properly i
309. 11:11wasn't going to read them but you know
310. 11:13whether she could just write them down
311. 11:14and she did so
312. 11:15i then asked her to
313. 11:17take the sealed envelope and put it
314. 11:19through my paper shredder
315. 11:22we then talked about those things she
316. 11:24did feel able to discuss with me okay
317. 11:26and in a later session
318. 11:28she confided that since doing our ritual
319. 11:33she somehow felt much less concerned
320. 11:35about those secret secret worries that
321. 11:36she'd had okay this is a remarkable
322. 11:38thing
323. 11:39uh almost as if um you know
324. 11:42physicalizing them getting them out of
325. 11:44herself putting them away shredding them
326. 11:47had had a sort of metaphorically
327. 11:48powerful psychological effect now
328. 11:50ultimately worry should be a tool or a
329. 11:53signal that lets us know when something
330. 11:55might need addressing in our life you
331. 11:57know
332. 11:58so a worry should be something that's an
333. 12:01available tool for us not something that
334. 12:03uses us we shouldn't lose this tool
335. 12:05completely but no tool should ever be
336. 12:07allowed to enslave its owner so i hope
337. 12:10you found that useful and if you did
338. 12:12please hit like and subscribe and if you
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341. 12:19below this video
342. 12:21i'm mark terrell of uncommon knowledge
343. 12:22and if you'd like to subscribe to my
344. 12:24email newsletter you can find it over at
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346. 12:29blog and thanks for watching
347. 12:33[Music]
348. 12:39you