This was an interesting idea stolen from — er, I mean borrowed from — Slow Down…And Get More Done by Marshall J Cook.  He suggested that if you have an issue in your life that’s causing you to worry yourself into distraction, you should make an appointment with worry.  In this way, you get most of the worry out of your system.  In the way that colon cleansings are supposed to help remove toxins from the body, then an appointment with worry can help remove the toxin of worry from your day.  This is a lot like tensing up in order to relax.

Cook’s Idea

The original idea from Cook’s book was that you literally schedule an appointment with worry.  For two minutes, you’d worry your brains out — say, from 7 am to 7:02 AM.  If you had to, you’d worry about only one topic.  Then, the next day, your appointment would be with another topic.  In this way, you’d feel like you accomplished something, as well as purge the worry from your thoughts.  You could even check it off your to-do list, if you were making to-do lists. 

Take this advice with a very large grain of salt.  You know yourself better than Cook or I do.  If you know you have trouble shaking a worrisome thought once it’s introduced into your head, then perhaps making appointments with worry isn’t for you. 

The Worst Case Scenario

As for me, I’m still a worrier, but not as much as in my pre-Prozac days.  Being a lot older has helped me realize that some of the things I worried myself sick about are just not that bad.  Being a writer has helped me research and sometimes laugh at the answer to any worst case scenario. 

Sometimes, if I still get worried about a particular topic, like global thermal nuclear war (I grew up during the Cold War and worries are ingrained really deep), I ask myself, "What’s the worst that could happen?"  Well, I could look up how radiation sickness victims in Japan survived; I could look up survivalist manuals about how to live without electricity, indoor plumbing and Cheez-Its; I could also write a story about a father and son surviving such a disaster and learning about themselves in the process (wait…I think that’s been done before…)

The point is, I’m doing SOMETHING rather than just pull my hair out.  I’m trying to take channel my feelings of worry into self-empowerment through learning and through creativity.

Hope this helps.

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