Refocusing your attention When you have written down a hypothetical worry, refocusing externally helps you to break the cycle of worry and reconnect with what is happening around you. Using your senses to focus on a task is a great way to do this.
A task that you really have to focus upon is best. For example, if you were watching TV when you were worrying, write down your hypothetical worry and then refocus your attention, listening to a conversation on screen. To really refocus, add a task that means you need to pay more attention that you would normally do. You could listen out for how often the people speaking use the neutral word ‘and’ or perhaps keep a tally of words spoken that start with the initial of your name. Then, after a few minutes change the neutral word or initial, then switch it back. If you are listening to music, focus your attention in on just one instrument such as the drums or baseline for a few minutes and try to zone out the other instruments, then switch and try to focus on the piano or guitar for example. This really helps you to learn to focus your attention. It is a skill that needs practice, so you can also do this at other times to strengthen your ability to do it. The same worry may keep popping back into your mind. That is OK and may happen for a while, due to the nature of hypothetical worries. When a hypothetical worry comes back, just write it down again and refocus, as often as you need to. Remember worry time takes practice, as does learning to refocus your attention on the present. Over time, your worries will become less frequent and bothersome. The last part of worry time is to take out your list of hypothetical worries that you have written down since after your last scheduled worry time. Then, for the full amount of time you set aside, you are going to do nothing but worry about the things you wrote down. Read through the worries on your list and purposefully worry about each one in turn. Keep your attention focused on the worry. Ask yourself how you felt at the time when you wrote down the worry and how you feel about it now. Did what you were worrying about happen? If it did, how did you manage it? If it is no longer a worry for you, why is that? What would have happened differently if you had worried about them at the time instead of using worry time? At the end of your planned worry time, throw your worry list away. Then spend a few minutes reflecting upon how your worry time went. Did you need all the time you set aside? Was it enough time? Have you noticed anything with how you are managing your worries or how you feel able to deal with them? What other things have you done in your day as result that you may not have otherwise been able to do? Then get a new worry list out and ready. Always start again with a blank worry list after your worry time. Any worries you have afterwards or that night belong in the next day’s worry time.
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© Marie Chellingsworth (2020). The CBT Resource.
