Get worrying under control

Nation's Business, March, 1988 by William Hoffer

Get Worrying Under Control

Worry gets in the way of getting things done," laments Richard Garrett, owner of University Screen Printing Company, a $500,000-a-year Durham, N.C., firm. "But when you're in business for yourself, you worry a lot more."

Garrett enumerates the worries: "Personnel. Trying to figure out what customers want. Getting supplies on time. Probably the biggest problem is getting people to pay you. Then there's the unexpected--you can plan all you want to, but someone comes in and wants something done by the next day."

Add personal problems to the normal load of business worries and you have a recipe for stress. Three years ago Garrett ran into an unforeseen family problem and, he says, "the business took a dive. When I did manage to work, it took me twice as long as normal to accomplish anything. I had to find some way to separate worry from work."

He eventually found out about some simple worry-confining techniques generated by a team of Pennsylvania State University professors and graduate students.

The Penn State worry-reduction program consists of these five steps:

1. Establish a half-hour worry period to occur at the same time each day and in the same place.

2. Monitor your worries during the day, learning to identify as soon as possible the beginning of any worry episode.

3. Postpone your worrying as soon as you notice it beginning.

4. Focus your attention on the present moment and the task at hand.

5. Make use of your worry period to worry intensely about your concerns.

Their test subjects report a 40 percent decrease in the amount of time spent in counterproductive worry.

To understand how the techniques work, the worrier must understand what worry is and how it disrupts life.

"When I worry, I'm thinking about future possible disasters that might happen to me, so I'm creating images that produce fear," says Thomas D. Borkovec, professor of psychology at Penn State.

"Worry generates a reality in our minds that doesn't exist right now. It's future-oriented."

Too much worry can activate a primitive alarm system known as the "fight or flight" response. Early humans, in order to survive in the wild, needed the ability to react instantly to danger. Modern humans rarely face imminent physical crisis, yet the alarm system remains intact. Excessive worry can replace the reality of the attacking beast and activate the "fight or flight" response. The body goes on alert, pumps adrenalin into the bloodstream, raising blood pressure and stimulating the heart rate. But remember, worry is a mental image of a future, nonexistent event. The worrier cannot fight against it or flee from it. The result is potentially unhealthy behavior and nonproductive behavior, such as Richard Garrett experienced.

No one chooses to be a chronic worrier. Rather, worries seem to seek out the individual, bombarding him or her with images of disaster.

What brings about an epidemic of worry, and what can be done about it? To find out, Dr. Borkovec established the Worry Group, a cadre of professors and graduate students that has been meeting on Friday afternoons for six years at a pub just off the Penn State campus.

While recognizing that some worry is part of the human condition, the group has focused on what it calls the Super Worrier, an individual whose life is severely disrupted by worrying patterns.

In severe cases, Super Worriers suffer from an inability to function. Even operating at their least bothered level, these people's days are shrouded in gloom.

Super Worriers fret about an incredible number of things. And once one worrisome issue is resolved, another takes its place. Super Worriers need to find, or at least expect to find, something else to worry about as soon as they find themselves briefly free of worry.

"I think what's going on here is a failure to recognize lack of control," Dr. Borkovec says. "It is impossible to control the future, but Super Worriers can't admit that."

Instead of plunging ahead with their lives, Super Worriers waste time trying to fashion a perfect future--and that, of course, is impossible. "They hesitate, procrastinate and ruminate over and over, trying to look at every angle," says Dr. Borkovec.

One might expect the Super Worrier's thoughts to be composed of concrete threats, such as nuclear war, unpaid bills or cancer. However, what the Super Worrier fears most is what other people think of him, the Penn State research shows. Examples include: fear of feeling self-conscious, of making mistakes, of being criticized or of meeting someone for the first time.

"If I'm secure, if I know who I am and am confident, I can handle any situation that comes up, I'm not going to worry about anything," Dr. Borkovec muses. "But if I'm insecure, if I depend a great deal on other people's opinions, if I'm afraid to make mistakes, if I'm afraid of failure, of being criticized, then the world out there--the future world, the unknown--is very threatening, because I might make a mistake and get rejected and disapproved."