Coffee Talk

Scheduling time to worry. If you’re a worrier like me then you should try this strategy I recently learned about to free up your mental space from worry. I know it seems like an incredibly strange concept to schedule time to worry but it’s been tremendously constructive to me and to others I’ve shared this with. I can easily be up in the middle of the night worrying about big things like weathering our first holiday without dad to small things like asking for time out of the office for appointments or vacation in the far future. So for worries that aren’t on the immediate horizon, I tell myself that I’ll worry about them when the events are closer to occurring and set a timeframe like the month or week before the event. It’s sort of the “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there” mentality.

The other type of worry I struggle with is when my plate is overflowing with many things happening at once. For example, I recently had a terribly busy week of work travel but also needed to squeeze into my schedule bringing a meal to a new mom, dropping my car off at the shop for some urgent repairs, completing and mailing tons of paperwork, a doctor appointment and the list goes on. I can overwhelm myself worrying all day about how and when I can possibly accomplish everything. To tackle this type of worry I have to carve out specific time to productively think through and plan for all of the things that need to be done. So instead of worrying all the time, I schedule and limit my worries to my drive to work or with a glass of wine in the tub.

Got any worrier tips? Leave them in the comments!