Hi, everyone. So today, I'm going to talk a bit more about worry management and rumination management. We did a previous recording on disrupting patterns of rumination and worry by just noticing times when we're more likely to do it, and yeah, essentially altering our focus and disturbing the behaviours by replacing them with other behaviours, which are perhaps more helpful to you. So today, it's going to be a bit more of a cognitive approach. And I'm gonna introduce you to a technique called the worry tree, which is great for what I call these sort of surface level worries - the what if's, will I's will they's and why's. It's probably not that great for sort of really negative self-critical thinking, or some of life's larger problems. But it's great for those sorts of worried thoughts that pop in throughout the day.

Okay, so we've already talked about how it's really, really common for us to try and solve uncertainty by overthinking, trying to essentially think ourselves certain. And we tend to do that, as we mentioned before, by asking hypothetical questions or questions that have no answer. So here it is, we're doing a video today so you can see it visually. As you can see, it's really quite simple. It's like a little flowchart. And I'd like you all to have a go at this if you can, essentially, what we want you to do is just notice the worry. Ask yourself the question, What am I worrying about? Is this worry about a current problem or a hypothetical situation? Remember, we've talked about that, it's about sort of noticing if you're trying to worry in hypotheticals and looking to try and change those questions to how, because how becomes solution focused. So the key question here with the worry tree is, can I do something about this?

If the answer is no, and I'm willing to bet for many of you, that will be the case! If the answer is no, then that is a hypothetical situation or something that hasn't happened yet. So I want you to sort of label it as such. And then let it go and change focus of attention. Now, I'm not just saying let it go, don't worry about it. But actually, human beings really love to find homes for things, what we're looking to do is find a home for your worry or rumination or ruminatory thought. So can I do something about this? If the answer is hypothetical, if it's no, then it's hypothetical. Or it hasn't happened yet. Then label it as such, let it go change focus of attention. Now, if the thought comes back again, which it's quite likely to do just remind yourself no I've dealt with that, that's hypothetical, I found a home for that already. If the answer is yes, can I do something about this? Then make a plan. Ask yourself the question what, where, when and how can I action that plan? If you can do it now, then do it. If you can't do it now, because you're doing something else, like listening to this audio, for example, then you have to do it later.

So if you can do it now, do it, and let the worry go. Change focus of attention. Okay. So it's like I've done everything I can, Let's park that and let's move on, focus on something else. If you can't do it now, because I'm busy, then do it later. schedule that worry, schedule a time to think about that. Let it go, change focus of attention. And one of the benefits of doing that is that you either might forget about it because it's not important. Or sometimes what can happen is that the problem can solve itself. Okay, so we're looking to put the worry or ruminatory thought in one of these three categories, one of these three boxes, all right. I thought about this quite a bit. And another way of explaining it if you're more of a visual person and you struggle to hold that in your mind is to do something that I call the worry desk where you imagine yourself almost going to a place in your mind to do some worry admin. Yeah, I'm worrying a lot. So I'm going to do some worry admin now.

Imagine a desk with four items on it. And in the tray, which is full of your hypotheticals and your worries and your what if's, et cetera and pull each worry out at a time. And then visually imagine putting it in one of the next three places. So if it's a hypothetical, imagine shredding it. If it's something you can do now, do it and then place that in the do it now tray. And if it's something you can't do until later and you have to schedule it, then schedule it and put it in the Do It Later tray. So that's more of a visual representation, another way of managing worry and rumination. I hope that's helpful to you.

I'm just going to leave you with a quick quote which I found the other day which I rather liked. And that is a quote by Michel de Montaigne. "My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened".