DO worry, be happy :-)

Worry is an essential psychological signal just as pain is a physical one.

It works and is felt and experienced in many ways. It is healthy and natural. Suppressing worry without dealing with the causes contributes to the ill-effects of worry. What causes problems is not worrying, it is not being able to identify what to do with worries. ‘Don’t worry’ is about as much use as ‘don’t feel pain’, an attempt to suppress a basic protective human attribute. This is not wise. Part of our human gift is the ability to forecast. Forecasting inaccurately or unreasonably dwelling on negative aspects is the problem.

Now when I say worrying is a good and natural thing I mean it is a helpful and protective thing to work through scenarios mentally to forecast outcomes; just not when this becomes catastrophically obsessional, which is a state of panic where reasonably considered helpful outcomes are given less room than they should. Some refer to this as a ‘doom loop’. It is a form of transference – the giving at attributes to new situations or people which have manifested in others.

Serenity

The AA serenity prayer is possibly the wisest and most helpful plea ever written: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. All of human mental and emotional response is contained in these few words. A state of serenity must be surely be our desire as it is where we are at our happiest and healthiest; it is where we are least burdened. In our world however there are things about which we care, and it is these things which cause us to worry. Of course, they do. We want the best for and from them.

So, when we worry, when we experience anxiety, we are forecasting the future of our concerns and are concerns are another word for our cares, that about which and about whom we care. Therefore, when we are worried (a signal of concern about our cares) being able to decern what we can change and have the courage to do so; or to accept what we cannot, must be the solution to the ill-effects of our worrying i.e. our loss of function, clouded judgement, dis-clarity of thought and lack of clear decisive judgement.

For the spiritually aware one of the routes to serenity is ‘handing over’ to a God or Gods, Saints or a higher power. That which we cannot or have not solved is handed over and trust and faith put in the knowledge that the right thing will manifest. For the humanists and atheists, the same is available in the form of deciding to allow experiences and connectivity or the sub-conscious deal with the problem which has not been solved by battling with it in ‘front of mind’. Agnostics… I guess could try either… In any case, we are heading in the direction of serenity. One of my favourite jokes is about this very thing. If you’ve got here and would like to hear the joke, drop me a line ??

Help

There are therapeutic methods which help the ill-effects of worry: Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) is a favourite ‘go to’ of mine – it’s a forerunner of many modern therapies used by psychologists and counsellors. In my view, it works perfectly well without myriad modifications. It involves identifying the space between action and reaction and inserting reasonable, rational alternatives to our reactive thoughts. REBT works well with schema therapy (how we view ourselves and what we tell ourselves about ourselves). There are many more, but you do need the training in psychology to access them and typically, business, or industrial psychologists do not have this training.

Not all psychologists are created equal.

Coaches

Psychology! psychologists! counsellors! Therapy! Not for ‘normal’ people right? Not for you huh! WRONG!

A cautionary note: In avoiding all the nasty sounding words many will use a ‘coach’. I call myself a coach for this reason, but I did train as a psychologist (yes, it’s a shameful self-advertisement but all that training has to count for something extra, right?). Just make sure you have one with the right psychological training or they can get into areas they don’t know how to back out of. Not good if you are relying on them for emotional and psychological support.

Anxiety, panic and complacency

Anxiety is good, worry is good. Only people with serious psychological and emotional issues do not experience these things and often this leads such individuals to make poor decisions. Certainly they will make un-empathetic decisions. A heightened state of anxiety, sometimes, not all the time, is a highly creative state. When my clients are stuck I use anxiety amongst other things, to get them into a creative state of mind. Panic or complacency sit either side of normal, healthy anxiety and worry and these two states stifle the creativity which is otherwise protective and productive. Wallowing and fretting is what most people actually mean by ‘worrying’. These states are symptomatic of panic and this has a somatic reaction born of biochemistry. In these states REBT schema therapy and some others work very well.

Do worry

Don’t worry about worrying but learning the ‘trick of the trade’ to identify the usefulness of worry, re-framing it as a natural protective form of forecasting is a useful skill. Having a professional on your side to remind you as also a very good idea.

Paul King is a personal and leadership development coach at the Icehouse, New Zealand’s foremost business services, leadership and education provider https://www.theicehouse.co.nz/coach/paul-king and owner/ operator of his own coaching and personal and leadership development service https://csuitepsych.com