Mental Health Matters Here Anxiety

Strategy 2. Dealing with worry

Anxious people can spend a lot of time worrying, but worry is only useful when it reminds you to do something – otherwise it’s just your thoughts getting stuck in an unhelpful loop. One of the most frustrating things about anxiety is that it can make you feel like you have no control over how much you worry. Managing how much you worry can lower your anxiety.

One way you can do this is to set aside 'worry time' – this can help you to feel in control of your worry, so it doesn’t feel overwhelming.

Worry time:

Setting time aside when you’re going to do nothing but worrying can help you to let go of your worries for the rest of the day. There are lots of ways to make time for worrying, but you could try:

Set 10-30 minutes aside each day to focus on your worries, this could be first thing in the morning or later in the evening.

When it’s time to focus on your worries, write them all down, big and small. Try to think of as many worries you have as possible.
Decide which worries are the biggest, and write down some ideas of small things you could do to help with it the next day. This could be telling someone about it, or doing something to help. For example, if you’re worried about the amount of homework to do, plan to do some of it tomorrow.
Take your ideas to help and choose one thing to try, whatever happens, try to write about how it felt doing it.
Keep making time to focus on your worries every day, it can sometimes help to set a reminder for when you should start.

If you start worrying at other times, you can write down a reminder of what’s bothering you so you can focus on it later. Sometimes it can help to keep anything you write down in a worry box. This is a box that you put all of your worries in, and that you only open when it’s time to worry.

Watch this video (the link opens in a new tab).

Introduction

Signs and symptoms of anxiety

How do you know if you are anxious?

Strategies for dealing with anxiety

Strategy 1. Dealing with negative thoughts

Strategy 2. Dealing with worry

Strategy 3. Grounding

Strategy 4. Breathing exercises

Organisations