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Obviously, this post is about worry and how to handle it. This might sound very strange coming from someone whose blog is called “Perceptual Asymmetries”. However, something most of the people close to me know is that I am also an expert on worry! Not because I have researched that topic extensively, but just because I worry a lot. Based on this definition of worry, I would expect that many of you are also worry experts. Still, you cannot expect my expert advice based on my experience as a clinician. This post is actually about how I manage (most of the time) to keep my worrying under control.
I tried various ways to stop worrying but I just discovered recently one approach, or more a set of ways of thinking, that work for me. Strangely enough, this is not based on Beck’s latest work or even on the work of any lesser known psychologist. In reality, a book written by a salesman helped me with my worry! However, before I get to this, I will make a few observations based on my own experience with worry.
In my experience, worry is a habit. For starters, as a child, I watched my mom and dad worry and learned to view it as a coping mechanism for the curves life throws at me. From this perspective, you could say that worrying is what I have the most practice at. I have certainly spent more time worrying in my life than I spent reading textbooks! So, I am “used to worrying” and it likely has a reinforcing effect that leads to more worrying. To use a totally introspective analysis of why I worry, essentially, I get anxious about something (for example, “will my flight take off on time tomorrow?”) and obsessing over this question increases my anxiety. Still, what happens is that I feel compelled to keep thinking about my source of worry as some way to exert control over it. Essentially, it seems like my unconscious reasoning is that by worrying about it, it will help reduce the likelihood that it will happen! Talk about irrational thinking!
So, how do I get out of worrying? I looked into that question left, right, and center; on the web, in books, talking to people. Somehow, whatever I found did not sink in until I started reading a classic text, titled “How to stop worrying and start living”, originally published in the 1940s by failed fiction writer-turned-salesman-turned-teacher-turned-best-selling author Dale Carnegie. Whenever I mention this book to my clinician colleagues, they scoff! However, my sense is that they did not read it. If they had, they would discover that many of the principles that cognitive behavioral therapists would use are covered, even though the book is all based on reports from how other people beat their worry habits. You even get full name and address for many of these people! Carnegie did very careful research as a foundation for his book. It might not be strictly controlled empirical research but it is research!
What do you find in this book? Advice such as “Live in day tight compartments”, “Every day is a new day to a wise man”,” “Our thoughts make us what we are”, “Don’t saw sawdust”, and many more. In fact, the classic “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade” comes from this book. You will find some useful quotes at this web page http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/41052-how-to-stop-worrying-and-sta… and at this one https://experiencelife.com/article/how-to-stop-worrying/.
There are many passages that are clearly dated, for example, with mentions of “housewife” as the main role for a woman. The book is also geared toward businessmen. However, I found that replacing the irrelevant word (housewife, businessman, etc.) with “professor” worked for me. I am quite sure that anyone can fit their profession or name in there as well. I also should warn you not to expect political correctness in Carnegie’s book as it was written in a different time.
You might wonder why I am pushing this book. No, I did not buy the rights for it! In fact, you might not even need to buy the book to get the gist of it. One option is to borrow it from a library, of course. If you cannot find it that way, a Google search with “Dale Carnegie” and “worry” gave me 276,000 hits, many of which summarize the points made in the book. The reason why this blog post is about this book is that reading and applying the ideas it presents has worked for me when nothing else would. In fact, it worked so well that I decided that I should help others by spreading the word. After all, perhaps it will work for you as well.
Before you go read this book in a hurry and hope that it will be a miracle solution, you need to know that beating worry is a constant effort. In fact, I cannot say that I have stopped worrying. However, my life is much better now as I work very hard to apply the rules I learned from Carnegie’s book. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that it is not enough to read it once and forget about it. You will need to revisit it on a regular basis to refresh your memory on what to do. With this in mind, I wish all of you a worry-free life.
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A note on the picture that accompanies this blog: According to Wikimedia, it is a postcard that is in the public domain. It was later the inspiration for the mascot associated with a well-known magazine in which I did most of my reading in English as a teen (this explains a lot about me, although you should remember that French is my first language).
