The following are answers to questions I have received about worry and parenting.
Questions 1. So why are some people more prone to worrying than others?
Have you ever been watching your child at play, feeling love and joy and all of a sudden find your thoughts spinning off into all sorts of worry? Has one worrisome thought ever brought on a terrible cycle of more fearful thoughts? If this has happened you are not alone.
There are many reasons for the different ways people respond to the world they live in. An event that hardly creates a ripple in one person’s life can completely distress another person. People react differently because of deeply rooted emotions and beliefs, which become filters for their perceptions and the way they interpret events. A person’s past experiences will “color” their current interpretation and reactions to events, sometimes in positive ways, but also in less than helpful ones. When a person reacts to an event, it is often not just the present day situation they are reacting to, but an entire chain of emotions going back all the way to childhood.
As children, we form beliefs that continue to run into adulthood. We also develop patterns and coping techniques intended to help us deal with stress or protect us from danger. Although these patterns and beliefs may serve a positive purpose at the time they were formed, they are no longer useful for the adult.
For example, I had a client who felt that if she didn’t worry something bad would happen. She had a number of experiences in her very traumatic childhood where she learned that it wasn’t safe to just be, she had to run every possible consequence through her mind to keep her safe from her alcoholic parent. She learned that worry protected her, so that even as an adult, she still found herself consumed with worry. The circumstances had changed, but the thought pattern hadn’t. Instead of serving her by protecting her from harm, worry was actually getting in the way of her living her life to the fullest.
Fortunately, through the use of hypnosis, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, time line and vibrational healing my clients have found that they can change these thought patterns at the subconscious root from which they spring. Adjust the thought pattern, and unnecessary worry disappears.
Question 2. Is worrying ever a good thing? Some of us are very talented at it!
Sometimes worry is a fleeting feeling of concern. This is a natural part of being a parent trying to protect your child from harm. For parents of children who have special needs it is understandable that worry can take on a whole new meaning. The reality is that your child has to overcome additional hardships. As a parent, you are constantly dealing with the extra stress that comes with wanting to protect your child and at times feeling helpless or unsure what the future will hold.
Let’s look at the positive purpose of worry. Despite all the negative feelings attached to it, worry can serve a positive function when it prepares you for possible future difficulties. It can alert you to things that need to be taken care of, or of consequences of certain actions. Worry can keep you watchful for symptoms that indicate a possible life-threatening problem, or it can motivate you to take positive action to improve the quality of your child’s life.
However, once you have done everything in your power to anticipate and prepare for possible future problems, worry ceases to serve a positive function. When your thoughts cycle into negative, scary future possibilities about things that are outside of your control, it is time to learn techniques to stop worry from putting another hardship in your life.
3. Got any simple techniques for stopping worry in its tracks?
There are many different techniques that can be used to stop worry and the stress that results from it. Choosing the most effective one depends on which part of the stress cycle you are in: the cognitive, physical or the emotional.
Many times the cognitive part of the cycle is where worry begins. It relates to the way you are filtering information, and the stories you are telling yourself based on your perceptions. The emotional part relates to the subconscious feelings that anchor these perceptions. One way to think of this is like looking at an event through a stained glass window. The cognitive part relates to the direction in which you fix your gaze, what you choose to look at, and what you think about it. The physical/emotional part is the window itself, the specific tint of the stained glass colors that affects everything you see.
Cognitively, the feeling of worry does not come from the event itself. It comes from the stories we tell ourselves about the event: both stories about scary possibilities we imagine for the future, and stories about traumatic experiences we remember from the past.
If you want to break the cognitive part of the stress cycle and stop negative thoughts, there is an excellent exercise called the “2 for 1″ technique. It draws upon the same powerful imagination that you use to create negative stories but instead you use it to create positive thoughts instead.
This technique gives you a potent way to consciously transforming negative thoughts into positive ones. By practicing it consistently, you cannot only begin to change the cognitive thought cycles that are causing your worry, but also adjusts the unconscious assumptions that keep the cycles alive.
Next time you find yourself spinning into a worry cycle, start by paying attention to the thoughts and stories that are going through your mind, and then do the following:
Step 1: Write down the facts of the event. What is actually happening right now in the present moment?
Step 2: Make a list of each thought, picture or story that is triggered by this event. Stay in a curious state, letting all the negative thoughts come to the surface. These may be fears that you have for the future, or past traumatic experiences that this event brings back to you. As you write down these thoughts you will start to realize that no matter how much you might believe the thoughts to be true, they are still just one possible way things might happen.
Once you have a list of the negative thoughts, stories and pictures you are ready for the next step.
Step 3: Cross out the first negative thought you have written down, and write down two possible positive thoughts or possible positive outcomes in its place. Repeat this for each negative thought on the list, until all your negative thoughts are crossed out and replaced by positive ones.
Most of us are far more used to telling ourselves negative stories than positive ones. So it may feel a little strange at first to accept these positive thoughts as readily as you did the negative ones. So at first the “2 for 1″ technique may take some conscious effort. With practice, you will find that the positive thoughts start to pop up on their own, just as the negative ones once did. By harnessing the power of the same powerful imagination that created the negative stories, you can create a whole range of positive possibilities, which replace the cycle of worry with one of hope and potential.
4. I’d love to hear an example of a woman you recently worked with who effectively put one of your techniques to use – a success story, if you will.
Here is an example one parent I worked with. I am sure this story will resonate with all parents. Her son had recently lost part of his hand in a fireworks accident, and as she watched him struggling to tie his shoe with one hand, she found herself spinning into a terrible worry cycle.
In her imagination, she was moving from the facts of the present moment, to a whole range of terrible thoughts and worries for the future: Will he be able to function in a job? Will he be accepted? Will this accident change he cheerful personality? She also found herself remembering traumas from the past—remembering how other people had looked at him in the emergency room, and even thinking about how she’d been teased as a child and worrying that it would be even worse for him.
Fortunately, before she allowed this cycle of worry to overtake her, she remembered the “2 for 1″ exercise. She started with the facts of the present event. Her son was struggling to tie his shoe. She then wrote down all the negative thoughts that were passing through her mind, and replaced them with positive ones. She thought about the things he did well, his keen mind, his energy, his goofy sense of humor, she imagined him playing with his friends, thought about jobs in which he could be successful, even imagined him graduating from college and getting married.
And as she did so and stopped the cycle of worry, she noticed something that surprised her: the proud smile on her son’s face as he bounded up to her, his sneakers tied in a perfect knot.
It was then that she realized, at this moment, it wasn’t her son who was struggling. It was her.
During our sessions together, we built on this realization using a combination of advanced hypnotic, NLP and time-line techniques. As a result we were able to change this emotional part of the cycle: the “stained glass” window of worry that was obscuring her perception, by releasing the deep-rooted emotions and adjusting the old thought patterns that were fueling her worry.
5. What if I really believe that the thoughts I have might come true in the future, is there anything I can do about that?
Both the positive and negative thoughts you create about possible future events are fictional. The problem with negative thoughts and pictures you create, in your mind, is that even though they possibly will never happen, the unconscious mind nevertheless accepts them as if they are true. And you react with fear in the present moment to something that hasn’t even happened.
In just the same way, when you create positive thoughts, the unconscious mind also accepts them as true, creating a reaction that opens you to the positive possibilities.
Positive and negative thoughts both spring from the same place: your imagination. They are simply stories. You have the power of your own mind. So as long as you make up stories, you might as well choose ones that can serve you in a positive way.
6. What’s your best piece of advice for parents of children with special needs?
Parents of special needs children have many stressors that never even enter the minds of other parents. In fact, many times it is the parent that suffers more than the child, as they struggle to reconcile their dreams for their child with the struggles of everyday life. Amazingly, children have a way of taking even the most difficult, frustrating situations in stride. The best thing you can do for your child is what you are already doing, being proud of each accomplishment, celebrating what is unique about your child, and continuing to find and celebrate each wonderful gift.
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