How to Control Anxiety and Worry: Top 3 Ways

In this series of articles, I have spent some time going through the three symptom groups of anxiety that seem to be common factors of those who struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I have found that there are many tools to help my clients learn how to control anxiety, however, the strategies work best when they are applied to the specific problematic symptom group.

I covered Body Management as a way to address those distressing physical arousal issues that come with anxiety and panic. Next, I talked about Going in the Back Door as a way to alternatively combat chronic body stress and tension. The suggested techniques might have seemed counter-intuitive by not directly addressing a worrying problem or circumstance, but focused on bringing relief through emotional exploration, relaxation, and joy-filled experiences.

The final group of symptoms I want to cover with this article is called Ruminating Worry. I will explore several ways to retrain your brain out of ruminating worry.

Ruminating Worry

An anxious brain is a brain that loves to worry. It’s a one-track sort of mind that feels programmed to go down the same thoughts of worry all the time. It isn’t so much about the specific worries or problems, but more about the fact that biologically the brain is in the habit of producing worrying thoughts. It keeps worry running along in the background, and the result is feelings of tension, stress, stomach discomfort, and lack of concentration.

One of my clients constantly reports feeling distracted by the thoughts in her mind and she goes over and over the problems of the day. Yet, she can’t seem to shut them off. She is describing ruminating worry, and it keeps her from enjoying and being present in the things of life that she cares about.

Another painful side effect of rumination is that clients often seek reassurance to address the problem they are trying to work out. They will go to friends and family to feel reassured that this issue isn’t a big deal, or if they could just do _______ (fill in the blank), they would feel better.

Unfortunately, the problem isn’t the specific issue, but the brain’s pattern of generating worrying thoughts. Once reassurance has been sought, another distressing thought pops up and replaces the one just reassured, or the same thought returns in stronger force, thus continuing the ongoing cycle of worry.

A good metaphor for the ruminating brain is an engine stuck in the wrong gear and starting to get overheated. The engine needs to turn off and rest so it can resume regular functioning.

The following methods involve shutting down the patterns of rumination by retraining the brain, giving the brain a chance to restart and get back on track. The more that we interrupt rumination, the less likely the brain will continue to use it.

1. Interrupt the Worry

A ruminating brain often feels like it’s taking over every other thought you have. One client describes how she was starting a new job and was trying to connect with her new coworkers but felt constantly detached and distracted, because her mind could only focus on her worry of the day.

A very common and useful cognitive behavioral technique for this is thought-stopping. You don’t explore the worry in question, or how to solve it, you simply recognize it as a ruminating thought and you stop it. The key to successfully interrupting the worry is that it must be interrupted every time. At first, it takes many attempts. Clients often give up after they’ve tried five or ten times, but it could realistically take up to a thousand times in one day to interrupt that worry thought and retrain your brain.

It helps to think of it as exercise. Retraining the brain doesn’t just involve starting a new set of patterns, it also involves digging oneself out of some old patterns first. That is why persistence in interruption of the worry is key. It helps clients to know they’re not doing something wrong because this tool “doesn’t seem to be working.” It simply takes persistence.

Rumination itself is a determined pattern in your brain, so it takes determination on your part to beat it. My client who got used to habitually stopping worry thoughts when they popped up reported that while she had to work at it often in the week between our meetings, she noticed the pervasiveness of her worry was starting to decrease.

2. Worry Well, But Only Once

One of my client’s had a father who was very ill, and his condition had her extremely stressed and worried, thinking about all that could go wrong and what she could do to help. It was distracting her at work and leaving her feeling overwhelmed and depressed when at home. She really needed some resolution with this issue.

The problem wasn’t the cause of her anxiety symptoms, but her anxiety was interfering with her ability to cope with the situation. Teaching her to worry well but only once was a helpful tool for her. This method allows for a timed amount of worry on an issue that legitimately needs attention and solving but still is geared toward retraining the brain by setting limits on how much the mind is allowed to focus on the worry.

This method involves 5 simple steps:

Step 1: Set a small time limit for worrying. Usually 10 minutes is a good place to start. Clients often find that they don’t even worry for the entire 10 minutes, which results in them feeling more in control than they previously thought.

Step 2: Worry through all of the issues. Both big and small issues fit in here. You try to hit all the subjects.

Step 3: Act now: If there is something that can be done right away, get it done now.

Step 4: Pick a time when the worry will need to be addressed again and set a reminder to do so.

Step 5: Resist thinking about the problem again until the set time. Tell yourself you’ve already worried and you have a time to come back to it later if needed, then diverting your thoughts elsewhere is necessary.

Giving yourself permission and space to really think through a problem and worry well and then stopping the rumination after only allowing it once puts you in control and trains your brain to listen to yourself. You really have worried through the issue and now you can leave it alone.

3. Plan, Don’t Worry

This method is simple and goes along the same lines as the section on worrying well, but only once. A good plan doesn’t need constant tweaking and adjustments. When clients know how to plan well, they can really engage the thought-stopping technique and leave the rumination behind. But what typically happens is clients believe they are planning well by going over and over the problem in their minds. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Thinking through outcomes, pros and cons, and landing on a choice goes a long way in removing the temptation to re-think things or seek reassurance.

Some simple steps to making a good plan:

1. Concretely identify the problem.

2. List out all the problem solving solutions you can think of and the pros and cons of each.

3. Pick one of the solutions and write down your plan of action.

This method is so simple it seems too easy. What makes it challenging is the temptation to tweak and re-think the plan. This is when the method of interrupting the worry we discussed earlier comes in handy.

Resist the urge to keep going over the plan. Also, take some action steps for the plan if necessary: Tell a friend, look up pertinent info, etc. This plan and any action steps that follow become more proof that you really don’t need to continue worrying and you can tell rumination, “Stop! I already have a plan.”

The techniques covered in this article series are not at all complex and very easy to employ. They give my clients the control over their anxiety that they have been looking for and the relief from the symptoms that often feel and are overwhelming and distressing. When we spend some time working in therapy on these strategies, my clients feel empowered in their own healing and see real results. They also have them in their toolbox for life. This frees us up to do any deeper psychological work that is necessary.