Putting a Stop to Worry

Here are three different recommendations for you to help you stop worryingand sometimes all three are required:

1. Develop practical tools for protecting against worry and its effects. For example, simply talking to someone can help you get certain fears off your chest. Often worriers keep things in because they are afraid to reveal their vulnerability. When you do reveal whats on your mind, you will tend to relax.

2. Embrace the fear. This can be challenging. The raw emotion of fear is beneath all the thoughts that you are churning over in your head. When you are worried, you are basically fearful. What can help is shining a light on that fearuncovering its origin and ultimately embracing it as part of yourself. Ironically, embracing the fear will tend to allay it. Denying your fear tends to exaggerate it, as though your worry is a voice that will cry louder and louder until it feels it is being heard .

3. Work at enhancing your self-esteem. When you have high self-esteem, you tend to worry less. You are more likely to have faith in your ability to deal with lifes challenges. The bad news is that the impulse to worry will still arise. We never say good-bye to this impulse. But the good news is that with high self-esteem there can be a remarkable decrease in the amount and severity of the worrying.

Lets look at each of these three approaches in more detail.