Re:Anxiety and burnout: why kids are consumed with worry
by ethbro on Friday January 11, 2019 @06:47PM
(#18888338)
For me, something that really helped was mindfulness.
Sure, being aware of everything good in your life too (classic mindfulness). But more importantly, asking two simple questions:
"What actions can I take about this worry? And on what timescale?"
For a large number of my worries, if I was honest, there was either nothing I could do, nothing more I could do, or nothing more I could do at this time.
And if the answer was nothing, then I decided to stop thinking about it. I was surprised how many worries fell into this category. Or how exercising this ability influenced how I deal with new worries. (Now, it seems much easier, and harder to just let fears run away with me)
For the optimizer, the way I backdoored into this was realizing "Worrying, in many situations, makes me less effective."
Sure, being aware of everything good in your life too (classic mindfulness). But more importantly, asking two simple questions:
"What actions can I take about this worry? And on what timescale?"
For a large number of my worries, if I was honest, there was either nothing I could do, nothing more I could do, or nothing more I could do at this time.
And if the answer was nothing, then I decided to stop thinking about it. I was surprised how many worries fell into this category. Or how exercising this ability influenced how I deal with new worries. (Now, it seems much easier, and harder to just let fears run away with me)
For the optimizer, the way I backdoored into this was realizing "Worrying, in many situations, makes me less effective."