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