The Invisible Epidemic Worry

are you worrying about anything right

now

or have you worried about anything in

the last couple of weeks

or do you think it’s even likely you

might worry about something in the next

couple of weeks

if the answer to any of these questions

is yes

then there’s something in my talk for

you

since covet began i’ve spent my entire

life working with the employees of my

clients to help them deal with the

significant stress

and pressure that everybody is feeling

as a result of the changes of the

pandemic

i’ve put more than two thousand people

through programs in the last six months

after a recent program a young lady

stayed behind to ask my advice

let’s call her anna anna told me that

she was

blessed to be married to a man who loved

her every bit as much as she loved him

had beautiful two and a half year old

twins had the job she loves

in a company where she’s considered to

be a top performer so life in general

was pretty good or at least it was until

coveted

now anna finds her work herself working

from home

so was her husband so herself her

husband

and the two and a half year old twins

are spending most of their waking hours

in the confines of their one bedroom

department which

anna told me is starting to feel really

really small

anna confided that this has put a

pressure on the relationship that was

never there before and they find

themselves falling into rouse

on a more frequent basis so much so that

she finds herself

with a pattern of thought that sometimes

wakes her up in the middle of night

thinking what if we break up

and what if i raise the twins alone and

what if i lose my job and i can’t pay

the mortgage and what if

and what if and what if

the purpose of my talk today is to share

with you just one small part of the

advice

that i give people like anna to help

them overcome the tyranny

of the what if question that’s driving

an invisible epidemic of worry

that’s doing almost as much damage as

the pandemic

to understand the way worry affects us

mentally and physically

it’s important to understand the way the

brain processes

fear and threats if you were to take a

pen

and stick it in your eye and take

another one and stick it in your ear and

please

don’t do this at home well then where it

crosses would be on the soak

in the middle of the so-called emotional

brain specifically on a small

almond-shaped object called the amygdala

and your brain has two of these a big

delay on either side of the brain

and you can think of them as being for

all the world like the smoke alarm of

the brain

continually sniffing out to your eyes

and your ears

for anything that constitutes a threat

now for the emotional brain a threat has

a very broad definition

it’s anything it hasn’t seen before

anything it doesn’t understand anything

it doesn’t have control over

anything that brings any uncertainty or

anything which is a genuine clear

and present threat like going outside in

a group and contracting covet

and if it detects one of these threats

it starts an amazing and extraordinary

survival sequence that runs completely

on autopilot

without involving your thinking brain

completely under control of the

emotional brain

it gets your heart beating faster your

lungs breathing more deeply and more

quickly

to get oxygen rich blood around your

body to your arms and legs which are now

like

charged springs ready to fight that

threat or run away from it

now when that response evolved a couple

of hundred million years ago it was

really apt

for the threats we faced think

saber-toothed tigers

but today the threats we face tend to be

more subtle

think of a a letter from the tax

authorities or

an angry email from the boss or the

threat of going outside and contracting

covet

the response is a little less

appropriate but

brains evolve really really

slowly and we’re stuck with this

response we have to work with it

additionally this response switches

off your digestive system switches off

your immune system

and kills your sex drive it also jams

you

full of stress hormones like cortisol

and

adrenaline that get you hyped up so that

you’re faster

stronger smarter more focused more awake

more alert

and more twitchy than you’ve ever been

in your life

that’s why when you’re under stress when

you’re feeling threatened

you’ll often find that you’ve got pains

and muscles you didn’t exercise

you got more stomach aches than they

ever did before you catch flus and minor

infections more easily

sex is just not interesting that

collection

of symptoms and sensations that

we experience when we’re under threat is

something called

anxiety and it all begins with that

amygdala

the amygdala again it could also be

thought of as a fortune teller trying to

foretell the future because after all if

we can predict the future

and there’s a threat there well then we

can plan to avoid it

but the reality is we’ve never been very

good

at predicting the future but

sometimes when we’re under the pressure

and the stress that we have in times

like

this the brain gets tricked into

thinking that it can

and when it does it responds with the

brain’s equivalent of

hyperventilating producing an endless

cascade of thoughts

none of which contribute anything useful

or positive and all of which seem to be

focused upon

the worst case possibilities what might

happen

if everything went really really badly

wrong and sometimes when that happens

we begin to believe that these are real

and the brain responds them as if they

are

genuine threats with the anxiety and the

stress

that you would experience if your life

was in danger

when that happens that can suck the life

from your your life suck the color out

of your life

and your br your your entire life

becomes focused around worry

when that happens it’s time to interrupt

that pattern of thoughts

and to stop the tyranny of that what if

question

that is draining so much from so many of

us during this difficult period

a couple of years ago you may recall a

u.s airways jet crash landed on the

hudson river in new york

and it a a couple of minutes after it

took off geese flew into the engines

and the captain of that jet sully

was hailed as a hero for the so-called

miracle on the hudson

because he saved his 150 passengers

the real hero in that situation was a

checklist

that sully went through with his

co-pilot when they discovered that they

were in under difficulty

all over the world pilots rehearse with

checklists for emergencies so that they

know exactly what they’re going to be

doing

when they find themselves under the

pressure of an emergency because they

know

that when that happens their thinking

brain is not going to be switched on

they’re going to be operating from the

emotional brain and they’re going to be

under anxiety

and if they don’t rehearse they don’t

know what they’re going to going to be

doing

when you find yourself under intense

worry

you don’t know what you’re going to be

doing when you’re experiencing that

anxiety

unless you have rehearsed beforehand

over the last several months i’ve

synthesized a checklist

that you can use to prepare so that

when you find yourself under the

pressure of where you know exactly what

you’re going to be doing

and it comes with the very handy

mnemonic of

nail and the first step of nail

is notice now the first time you notice

that what if question you need to say to

yourself

i’m beginning to worry that may seem

counterintuitive

because none of us want to acknowledge

that but the moment that you notice the

moment you say i’m beginning to worry

you trigger the thinking brain into

action and it starts immediately

to down regulate the response of the

emotional brain

turning off that cascade of thoughts and

starting to help you get things into

perspective

the second step is allow brains

worry it’s one of those things they do

you can’t stop it you can’t push it back

you can’t resist it

you can’t suppress it so the best thing

you can do

is allow it to be you may not like it

so say to yourself i don’t care for this

much

but it’s a normal reaction i’m going to

let it be

and then move on to the eye step the i

step is investigate

what when you hear the first what if

question

ask yourself what is actually

going on here is there anything i can do

about it the answer is yes

then just do it if the answer is no

you’re probably worrying about something

that hasn’t yet happened

and like 85 percent of the the things

that we worry about will probably

never happen so you can move straight on

to last step

l which is leave it until later

set a worry appointment in your diary

put in a specific time

specific date for a specific period of

time and when it comes keep that

appointment

sit down with a pen and paper and work

through all of the possible solutions to

what’s bothering you

and when the appointment is over do

exactly

what you do at every other appointment

let it go and move on with your life

and if you feel you haven’t gotten to

the back of it well then

set another appointment for the

following day another one for the

following day

until you’re feeling happy with it now

this is not a silver bullet you’re

always going to worry and a certain

amount of worry actually keeps you

focused

on getting done those things that are

important to you but when

worry starts to take over your life

why not have it that you’ve rehearsed

with a checklist

that allows you to nail worry before it

nails you

now that’s an idea word spreading

you