No Worries by Ashley Conway

Author:Ashley Conway [Ashley Conway]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780723426
Publisher: Short Books
Published: 2017-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

Michelle typed up the list and brought two copies to her next session with Sally. She felt a little nervous as she passed Sally her copy. Was the list too long? Were there too many things on it? Would Sally think that she had too many problems for them to deal with? The response she got surprised her:

“Michelle, this is fantastic! You have done exactly what we agreed. You have made a list of what you want. It’s clear and specific. Gosh, I wish all of my clients could do so well with the first session!”

Michelle smiled, and the seeds of her confidence began to sprout.

Over the next few months they met regularly and Sally helped Michelle to look at her existing beliefs and behaviours, and explore ways of change that moved her towards her goals. Often Sally would give Michelle homework tasks, asking her to write things down, to pay attention to her thinking patterns, notice what was going on when her worrying started, identify any specific triggers to worrying, to consider the worst outcomes, to put things in perspective, and notice the connections with what she was doing and how she was feeling.

Michelle was an enthusiastic and conscientious student. She learned a lot. She learned about the connections between her thinking and her feeling, and how this could become a vicious circle. She learned how her worrying could sometimes become self-fulfilling – that worrying about a job at work the next day meant that she slept badly, and the tiredness the next day meant that she found it harder to concentrate on the task. She learned to differentiate between worries that she could do something about and those that she could not.

Sometimes they would work on particular examples: Michelle had invited a few of her old friends to a barbecue the following weekend. What if it rained? That would spoil everything. Michelle could not influence whether it would rain on the day of her barbecue, but she could influence whether it would spoil everything. She developed a Plan B, what she would do if it rained. She could move the barbecue to the French windows at the back of the living room, and lean out and cook while she and her friends sat inside. It would be fun!

Recognising that worrying about things that she could do nothing about was completely unproductive helped her to let go of these concerns. Recognising that worrying about things that she could do something about could be productive helped her take more control and plan ahead.

With Sally she learned to ask herself, “Is there anything useful about this worry?” Sometimes the answer would be: “yes, because I can take some action to make things better” (like develop a Plan B for the barbecue), but most of the time the answer would be no. Somehow, recognising that the worry was not useful helped Michelle to let go of it.

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