Worry Wise: Recognising and Responding to Worry (Stress Less, Strategise More series)

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okay that was just Ella who's helping me to run the session for today so um what
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I'm going to do is uh share my slides and we will get
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underway so CA um I'm uh Steve Kernney i'm the chief mental health officer for
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the NZDF um so my job in the NZDF is to kind of think and and help think about
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and help us as an organization to get better at dealing with and resp and and responding to and supporting and
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enabling mental health in our workforce uh primarily focused on military but also obviously a very important
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component of um of our workforce is our civilian workforce as well so today's session is focused on worry and uh and
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responding and recognizing to that now I know uh can I just again comms check can
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if you can see my slides can you just again hit the thumbs up and the reactions button um sweet as so everyone
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looks like most people can see that that's great um excellent so we're all on track for
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that much appreciated team so um I've been in defense uh I'm a clinical
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psychologist by by background wasn't always a clin psych for a long time I was a a defense psychologist focusing on
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performance and helping people be at their best in their in their roles in defense um but and so and so the topic
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today worry is one that is relevant to both of those kind of applications so one of the things that often gets on top
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of or in the way of high performance is getting pulled into worry and distraction and distracted by worry and
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and so to the point where it gets in the way and then similarly for some people worry is so overwhelming that it starts
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to starts to look and feel like a a a syndrome or a disorder right and so
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we're going to spend a bit of time um today just giving you some basic tips and trips tricks and some understanding
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of kind of how worry happens and what you can do when it shows up for you so
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I've been in the army on and off 20 plus years now and so um uh I've learned that
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sometimes during psychologist brief people people their attention drips so
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uh I like to give the bottom line up front so that's the bluff and the bluff for today is really well captured by
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this um by this fakati or or proverb from Taii
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Hima which is the translation of which broadly speaking goes something like
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ignore small matters uh and direct your efforts towards something important um
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so that's kind of what we're focusing on today if um another way to put it is
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this ancient sort of Buddhist apherism the mind is a good servant but a poor
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master right if we get trapped in our own minds uh or if we're a slave to our own minds sometimes that can be be
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unhelpful alternate an alternate phrasing of that is one uh by Dan Harris
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who was a uh news anchor in the US who became a kind of a Buddhist and and undertook meditation practice has
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written a good book if you're interested in meditation and mindfulness called 10% happier and his framing of that Buddhist
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apherism is your mind is an or can be an if you get stuck with it yeah now in terms of the sort of
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rules of engagement for today um if you have any questions please use the Q&A
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function through through teams uh and uh one of the star one of the people
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helping me out today Ella will kind of have a look through those and we'll and we'll sort them and they'll try and keep
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an eye on them as we go through the session today um in fact I'll open them
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up right now in front of me here on my on my phone on my device and uh so if
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you've got any questions or any problems um put them through there there will be also be times today when I ask you to uh
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provide some input and interact a bit with things so if you put that into the into the Q&A and I'll get Ella to push
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those across so everyone can see them as well um uh there'll be time to at the end for
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for answering any questions that pop up but I'll try and keep one eye on that as we go through the session today um so
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that I can answer any questions in the moment yeah cool uh we are recording
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today's session um any we we'll edit out the questions or anything that might be
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kind of personal or um uh specific to anyone um and then that'll be made
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available online later on so um if you do miss today if your connection drops out if you've got other tasks to get
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pulled away to and you feel like or you feel like you want to go over it again to refresh your memory all of those are
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going to be options and those the link to that will be distributed uh in due course cool uh so here's the plan for
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today we're going to talk a bit about what worry is uh we're going to talk about why we worry and why human beings
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worry noting that uh every human being does our brains are built that way it is
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the nature of it is kind of a curse of of being a human being uh some of us
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it's worse than others and sometimes in our lives it's harder than others and there's no magic bullets for getting rid
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of it but there are some things we can do when we notice that it's creating a
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problem for us and uh and also um some practical we so we're going to go over
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those practical things today yep um if uh you want to know more about any
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of the stuff that I talk about today then it's all googleable and so I'll try
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and give you as we go through the reference for the thing to Google uh and everything we talk about today is based
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on a a particular approach to therapy and to and to kind of well-being called
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acceptance and commitment therapy acceptance and commitment therapy is one of the kind of most sciencebacked
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approaches to therapy or approaches to mental health um and so once again if
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you're interested you can Google that and at the end I'll give you maybe a couple of if you want some books or anything any kind of clean sort of
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signal resources to go back to um we'll talk about that as at the end of the session today as well cool
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so uh when it in order to understand what worry is it's useful to understand
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what the human mind does and evolve to do essentially
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the human mind evolved as a prediction and reflection engine our mind is
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designed to cast into the future and to create futures and then to help us
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navigate toward away from unwanted futures and towards preferred futures or
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wanted futures right so that is a thing that only a human mind can do no other
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species barring arguably some apes and some dolphins has the ability to create
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alternate futures in their head and imagine things other mammals have the ability to learn from the past and to
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spot patterns and pick up on patterns but they don't have the ability to create new futures and solve problems
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before they've happened that is something only human beings can do and that is why only human beings get worry
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why only human beings are able to kind of worry in the way that human beings worry and just as kind of how prolific
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and how in how um uh busy that prediction engine is evidence you know
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in research suggests that we have about 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day so when you
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track people's thoughts when you get them to kind of count or follow or or report their thoughts as they go through
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the day between 60 so our minds are just constantly throwing thoughts
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ideas futures predictions all that kind of stuff is popping up now the other
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thing that is really important to understand about that prediction engine that is our brain is that it is oriented
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towards negative stuff so uh we evolved
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our our evolutionary ancestors when they were
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uh going wandering across the savannah our a and they faced you know the
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proverbial saber-tooth tigers um and uh threats in the jungle and threats in the
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bush the ones that noticed and attended and predicted threatening outcomes
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tended to be the ones that prepared for those outcomes and tended to be the one that avoided those threats and because
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they avoided those threats they survived and went on to have more children and
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are our ancestors and so the human mind has a bias towards noticing and
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attending to worrying futures to threatening futures that is particularly so when we
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are already stressed so when then we have a background in our the threat
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detection engine in our brain is already fired up because we're stressed about
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stuff at home or we at home or we haven't slept well or um uh other parts of our lives
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aren't going well for all of those reasons if we're already stressed or
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we're all already worried our brain is already primed to attend to threats even
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more and that can then become a self-licking ice cream where we get a bit worried our brain brain starts
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finding more things to worry about and it just goes around and around in circles
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cool um and then uh most of those thoughts are redundant right most of
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those thoughts don't actually aren't actually important or meaningful and
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many of them are repetitious you'll notice and as we go through today I'll get you to practice noticing kind of
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your frequent flyer thoughts the ones that flitter through your awareness regularly yep
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cool i'll just stop there does anyone have any questions they want to put into the into the chat at this stage just let
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us pause there does anyone have any questions
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okay if they do uh if you do feel free to just chuck them in the Q&A and then
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Ella will push them across to me cool a discussion potentially cool um so here
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are the kind of things that our mind does as part of its projection and reflection stuff worries dwells on the
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past fantasizes analyzing yourself analyzing other people blaming yourself blaming
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other people these are all the kind of things that your mind does and it does those things because often in the short
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term they offer a payoff so for instance um fantasizing about the future often in
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the short term makes us feel good because we imagine a kind of way out of whatever difficult situation we're in at
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the moment so that's the payoff and what the hook is for your why you why your mind might keep doing it even though
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it's not helpful but often in the long term fantasizing about the future means
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we get distracted from doing things in the here and now it means that we we pro
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um procrastinate on things that might be helpful in the here and now and potentially we avoid dealing with some
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of the stressors and pressures or difficult things in the here and now so often time these habits of mind can be
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helpful in the short term because they give us a sense of control they distract our attention they um feel like they
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lead us to feel or they lead us to kind of distract us from our own anxiety and and pull us into what feels like problem
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solving but in the long term they don't actually help us move forward with our
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lives or with the problems that we're trying to deal with okay
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so when we think about in psychology when we think about a behavior that in
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some environments and to a certain extent is helpful or is healthy but then
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in other contexts or when taken to extremes is unhealthy we often think about that in terms of addiction right
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so a little a glass of wine on a Friday night that's perfectly healthy and and can be useful for kind of unwinding but
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a bottle of wine most nights that starts to become a problem right that's an addiction and it's interfering with your
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life likewise um
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uh prescription drugs whatever it is right so a little bit can be helpful too much can be can be harmful and is
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exactly the same with with thinking and with worry and so it can be useful to
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think about like if we frame thinking as a potential addiction if we're addicted
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to worry here are some of the things that we that might help us determine whether it's become a problem so just
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have a look down the list there and see whether whether worry for you has become
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an addiction for instance do you notice that you find
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yourself thinking more and more and spending longer times stretches of time
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thinking has it led to problems with your physical health or your psychological health have you tried to
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stop worrying and then found you couldn't if so it may be that you are
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addicted to thinking and if that is true welcome to the human race many of us are
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addicted to thinking and uh to the point where it interferes with our ability to
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deal with the things that are important to us in the here and now whether that
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means interfering with your sleep whether that means not being present with the people in your life that matter
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to you whether that means kind of impacts on your physical health because
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you feel that sense of churn and that sense of butterflies in your stomach all the time whether that means that you're
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you don't chase after opportunities because your mind is so focused on how things could go wrong all of those
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things are very human normal common experiences associated with worry and so
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what we're going to talk about today is how to notice when those are getting in the way and when it's really becoming a problem and some things you might do
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instead to help with that so what I'd like you to do now and Ella I'll get you to um to shove these across into the
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published u but if you jump into the Q&A section you jump into the Q&A and just
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start to put in what are some of the thoughts the worries that show up for
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you a lot uh what are your frequent flyers so let's just start with that and
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we all have so for me this would be you know I've had knee injuries most of my adult life so I worry about my knees
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finally giving out and that having an impact on my career i worry about how my kids are going to go at school i worry
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about um repairs and maintenance on the house and whether I should get ahead of that staff a bit more and all those
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little things so what are some worries if you put that in the Q&A section that show up for
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you see if I can get that working and don't make them like a 10
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out of 10 we don't want to trigger anyone here in the session so let's make them kind of like five out of 10 worries
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so they that you notice them when they show up they capture you a little bit when you when they show up but they're
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not kind of wholly derailing we go we got some new
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posts worry about what I have going on at work keeps me awake every night welcome welcome that's very very common
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I think very true for me what else shows up when you when you're um not good
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enough at my job very common yeah job security definitely you know
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very pertinent at the moment across the public sector and the private sector what else shows up health issues totally
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yep definitely what else what other thoughts what are some other frequent
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flyers uh retirement really interesting actually very common thing for people to
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worry about natural disasters yep particularly in Wellington and particularly we've had experience that
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in the past house needs painting both the cost and the balls aching task that
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is painting the house all that kind of stuff yeah will my children be okay very
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common one the people matter to us um that definitely shows up world politics and climate change
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yeah very pertinent at the moment with certain kind of world leaders making some big decisions where I get posted
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will it be wudoo that's always a constant anxiety of mine and being able to make payments that I need to make
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totally so finances all that kind of stuff will show up now so one of the
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takeaways from today is maybe start to notice what shows up for you what are
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your frequent flyers and then we'll start to talk about some things you might do that would be helpful for uh
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when those show up and they're getting in the way of you being able to do the stuff that isant important to you with
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the people that is important that are important to you yeah so now I'd like to
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talk about kind of I'd like you to kind of just think about which of these three
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needs do those worries map onto so if we look at some of those we can see that
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most of them will map onto one of these core needs so human beings evolved with
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our brains evolved around three core things the first one was to get stuff
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done in the world right human beings move forward because we can achieve stuff we take control of our environment
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and we do things to change our situation and when we feel like we're
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not able to do that we're not competent to do that that triggers our brain to
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see that as a threat so often our worry focuses around our competence our
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ability to do the things we need to do and that are important to us well the
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second core need is connection so human beings we don't have teeth we don't have
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claws we don't have armor what we have is the ability to work with other people
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and to and to be part of a crew and a tribe when we're part of a crew and a tribe
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and we feel like we belong then then we sleep better we our body gets less
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stressed physically we downregulate we become less activated we just we evolve
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to feel settled and to feel more uh comfortable when we know we're we're
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with other people and other people are with us so when we feel disconnection when we
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feel isolated when we feel separated from others that triggers a threat response in our brain and our brain
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starts to worry about that and then lastly the idea that our world is safe
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uh and that our f and that our current situation is safe and for many of us that will get triggered in the modern
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world by financial stuff and a sense of kind of financial security so if we look
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at through most of those uh um worries that you guys shared
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you'll see that they'll tick one or more of those three boxes and this can be a useful exercise right for you many of us
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will cluster around one or more of those needs those yearnings those core beliefs
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uh so for me to be honest often it shows up around competence and feeling like I'm good enough at my job at being a dad
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at being a partner all these kinds of things and sometimes it can be helpful to notice okay I know I know that I'm
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that I'm prone to worry about things that push this button and so that's what's happening right
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now does that make sense just give me just a bit of a sanity check does that make sense for people people just use
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your thumbs up thing if you wouldn't mind just use your thumbs
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up cool okay we got a few that's good all right so that's that's making sense to people so that's your first tip is
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figure out and put it in a bit of a box which of the my worry which of these is it connecting to because it's very human
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and normal for these to get triggered okay so here's what I'd like you to do now is
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put into the into the Q&A and again I'll get Allet to push these across to
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publish so everyone can see them what is some bad advice what is some some
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advice you've been given for dealing with worry so what have people told you when they've noticed you got caught up
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in worry let's have a let's have a have a look at
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that chuck that in the Q&A
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what we got harden up oh very very a go-to
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military piece of advice definitely um but not just military don't worry why
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are you worried so being told not to just to put it behind you or having the kind of validity of that questioned time
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will make it better just kind of live with it and let it get on think positively focus on the things that are
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you know that are going well that kind of jazz um oh yeah when I was a sergeant
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I missed all the anniversaries and birthdays just get over it put it behind you let it go all these very helpful
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uses of advice that's life in a blue suit very common one right welcome to the military
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welcome to the defense force everything will get better after a good night's sleep just don't worry all these are
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very common bits of advice right they tend to cluster around just stop doing it uh put it behind you it'll get better
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uh all of these kind of kind of um uh things that sound simple but are really
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hard to do uh in the moment okay oh and then we've got also go what
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I would do if I was giving you advice if I was you here's what I would do or say that kind of a very very kind of uh
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common response in our solution focused defense force as well so here's and I've talked about
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this a little bit but to understand why all that advice doesn't work or fails us
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sometimes anyway is because there are some very good reasons why we worry and
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they and why they and how worry can be addictive the first is it feels like
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problem solving so in the moment when you're doing it it feels like problem
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solving what often on reflection it actually is is you just playing disaster
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scenarios over and over in your head on a loop without actually progressing to
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doing things differently making changes taking actions on the things you can action so for me my brain likes to do
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this at 3:00 a.m typically what it'll do is it'll wake it up at 3:00 a.m and it'll start playing some disaster
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catastrophe over in my head um that's coming downstream then when the when I and that'll cost me a couple of hours
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sleep and then when I do wake up the next morning and the sun is up and I can feel the wind on my face uh it all feels
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feels like a nothingness right but in the moment at 3:30 it felt like problem
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solving so that's one hook and one trap the second things is that we tell
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ourselves that we might find a way to see this upsetting future that isn't so
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upsetting um so we might find a different perspective if we keep playing it on a loop another version of that is
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that I'll be prepared for it it won't be so such a surprise if I keep playing it
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on a loop and so that's why I play it over on a loop in my head to help myself feel more prepared for it if it does
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happen uh it shifts our attention often from our unbearable feelings to our brain so
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for just we might be feeling anxious and in an effort to kind of distract ourselves from that feeling of anxiety
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we come up into our head and we play stuff on a loop and our attention goes stuff goes to our head rather than to
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the kind of feeling of anxiety and that in that moment our we feel a bit better
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so it feels like it's helping and we keep doing it um because some sometimes we worry
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because because there's something precious in in that pain that we don't want to let go of so we for for me I
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noticed this in myself when it comes to worrying about my kids sometimes worrying about my kids is a way of
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staying connected to what's going on for them yeah it's not boring as well so
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worry many of us will choose um predicting a dramatic future over
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staying in the here and now when that here and now is boring um and so sometimes worry can just be a way of
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adding a bit of excitement to your life and then finally we might feel validated
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or we feel right so we cast into the future and it helps us to feel we play a
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future where things were as we predicted and that leads us to feel like we were
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right we are right we are um we we feel
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um some righteous indignation about that things happening and that keeps us stuck
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in that loop as well any comments on that does that I'm curious like on a scale of 1 to 10 10 being those feel
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like they're um um they make sense and
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one being I'm really confused can I get everyone just to kind of chuck some numbers in the Q&A please 1 to 10 10
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being ping i kind of get that one being I have no idea what you're talking about Steve can we just get some numbers in
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the Q&A just so I know that I'm on track okay
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okay so we're making sense that's all right so far anyway
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good okay excellent yeah good so that's why we do it right so and
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it can be useful to pay attention to which of those might be true for you or
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if there's another reason that what you you you kind of get pulled into worry
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and it's hard to extract yourself because there's always a reason we do these things there's a payoff somewhere
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so so what is that for you and that'll make it easier for you to notice in the future and for you to decide whether
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it's a good way to spend your time right here and now or whether it's perhaps something you should step back from and
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we'll talk about how you can do that in a moment so what are some of the things
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you do do at the moment when you start to worry again put them in the chat please in the Q&A what are some things
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you currently do to stop yourself from worrying to disrupt
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that healthy or unhealthy either one is fine have a drink sweet so in New
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Zealand that's a very common way of dealing with worry uh a drink is fine
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eight drinks is potentially going to create problems going to the gym is great um a bit of PT is actually really
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effective for flushing out anxiety and resetting your brain part of the reason for that is that because of that
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evolutionary history and when you have a threat or we have some intense activity physical activity after our threat our
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body sort of tells our brain that we're out of that situation now so it's a way of kind of stepping unwinding that
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threat response what else do you do when you uh doom scroll yeah very common
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modern kind of strategy just distract yourself with uh with your phone going
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for a walk is a great one um time with TV spending time at work
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burying yourself in work that is a common one as well right sometimes that's helpful sometimes it's not
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putting your mind in neutral that can help that can help creating distractions TV or whatever commit to an action so
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trying to do something and that's a key thing we'll talk about today is a healthy and helpful
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strategy yeah recognize when you're worrying and force yourself to refocus okay forcing ourselves to do that can be
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difficult but we are going to talk today about some tools and strategies around that playing with your cats great i love
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it play is a great way of pulling yourself out of worry and uh here's a
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tip I got given given by my clients and I use this regularly at home is uh by one of my clients is uh there is it's
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very difficult to worry or stay in a bad mood if you're having a Nerf fight with your children so periodically me and my
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children will have a and it will initiate a Nerf ambush and just spend five minutes flushing that out and it's
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that's a great strategy for distracting yourself from worrying but we'll talk about some more serious and scientifically oriented ones in a moment
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cool so those all great great examples right so some of those work and some of
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them don't right some of them work some of the time like for instance drinking a little bit having a glass of wine with
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your with your mates or with your partner that works drinking eight glasses of wine
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less so right it creates more problems than it solves so the thing about worry is that
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uh and this is the big lie when thoughts happen and what they are about is often
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a lot harder to control than we believe it is and so the skill is not getting is
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not not having thoughts it's very difficult to switch our minds off like that what we're going to talk about
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instead is what what you can do when those thoughts show up to notice that
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they're getting in the way of the things and the people that matter to you and how you can bring your awareness and
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your attention back to the things that are important to you here and now and one of the key messages from today will
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be practice makes for progress right so there are no magic bullets there is no
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instantaneous fix for worry your mind is built to worry that is okay and human
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but every time we notice that it's getting in the way and we do something that is genuinely helpful our mind gets
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a bit better at that and it gets easier just the next time just a little bit easier to come back to the here and now
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and to do things that that are going to be helpful and uh that part of your
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brain that does that that switches your attention and harnesses your attention is like a muscle so the more you do that
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the physically larger that attentional control part of your brain becomes so
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practicing that in whatever way works for you is really is really helpful and
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so we're going to talk about a three-step process the first step is
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opening up and being real with yourself about those thoughts and feelings because if your mind keeps throwing them
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at you often that's because it doesn't feel like you've really registered them so anxieties about the bills anxiety
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about the kids worries about um other things in your life and people
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in your life that are important your mind will keep throwing them at you until it feels like you've registered
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them and so there are a number of tools for acknowledging and opening up to
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whatever your mind is throwing at you now these are all googleable um if you
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Google any of these you'll you'll start to kind of get more detail on them um so
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and some of them are well forms of mindfulness so if you Google leaves on a stream you'll get a mindfulness exercise
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that builds a metaphor around watching your worries come and go like leaves on
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a stream the one we're going to do today that we're going to just talk about in a bit
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more detail is imagining your time as a mind as an as you're sorry your mind as
33:22
a time machine so what I'd like you to do is just take your mind uh let your
33:28
mind just kind of settle for a moment on that worry that you talk thought about before that five out of 10 worry that I
33:34
asked you to write down and now I'd like to let you just to take a moment just to let your mind settle on that worry and
33:41
just let it go wherever it wants and notice uh where it goes on this timeline
33:48
so uh for many of us it'll be in the immediate future right it'll go so as an
33:54
example if I'm worried about my knees giving out uh as they're a bit as they're a bit sore at the moment then my
34:01
mind goes to kind of that moment when I'm going up some stairs and they and they tweak and some I can feel them go
34:07
and then my mind will go to the distant future where I'm having a conversation with my military MO about my medgrading
34:15
and what that might mean for my career and then will my mind will go backwards to a conversation I had with my
34:22
headmaster backwards out of school when things weren't going well at school and then my mind will bounce back to uh a
34:29
job interview I had before I joined the military that didn't go well and my mind will just bounce around all typically
34:35
these disaster scenarios and it will just build on itself and with every step I get pulled further out of the here and
34:42
now further away from things that I can do to change my situation and address my
34:48
situation and I spend time just uh in other places that aren't here and now so
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I'll just give you a few seconds maybe 30 seconds just to do that for yourself
34:59
just to notice and you might even draw a line on a piece of paper in front of you and just let your pen bounce up and down
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the timeline noticing where it goes i'll just give you a moment a few a few
35:10
seconds just to do that just let your mind settle and then track it as it bounces
35:20
around just let it go wherever it wants to go your mind will do
35:25
that so just noticing where's it going
35:41
just allowing it to and noticing it as it does that is it going where is it taking
35:51
you and then there might be a moment where it sort of runs out of juice it
35:57
sort of runs out of places to go to and when that happens I'd invite you to just
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come back to the present moment to come back to the here and now maybe look out the
36:10
window maybe take a breath and just anchor your attention and your awareness
36:16
right here in this moment so for some people some of the time for
36:23
some worries this little tool can be helpful for kind of reorienting themselves and coming and been doing
36:30
stuff in the here and now uh so if you if that feels like it might be worth exploring for you I'd encourage you just
36:36
to kind of write that draw that line in your diary and then um and then when you
36:42
notice your mind getting caught up in worry just let it track and then when there's a breath when there's a pause
36:49
come back to the here and now focus on the things you can do in the here and now any comments or just actually maybe
36:55
a thumbs up or an emoji and maybe another emoji if there's one that's more appropriate kind of give me a sense of
37:02
what you think about that or what your reaction to that one is yeah
37:08
okay sweet as well we're getting hand claps and thumbs up so obviously the people that
37:14
have drifted off have uh not putting anything in so that's great sweet ass so that's one little tool you can use okay
37:22
the next tool you can use is just to write it down now here's why this makes a difference the part of your brain that
37:28
is good at panicking is the part of your brain that is
37:34
um that is um uh uh in the the right at the base of
37:40
your skull right at the bottom of your skull the part of your brain that writes stuff down and solves problems is the
37:47
part of your brain at the front here called your prefrontal cortex only that part of your brain can write stuff down
37:53
so oftent times as soon as we start writing stuff down it gets a little bit
37:58
easier to get perspective on it now sometimes as we write stuff down it
38:04
might feel a bit more real and we will see a little spike experience a little spike in anxiety which can make it hard
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to put pen to paper initially i would encourage you to give it a go and try
38:15
and persist through that because often times when that passes things get a bit
38:20
easier and a way to make that even just a bit easier is to write down in front
38:26
of that thought I notice the thought that so I'm going to ask you to do that now with the thought that you wrote down
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earlier um that five out of 10 worry i want you to take a pen or paper and just
38:39
write that down in front of you now but before you do it write down or in front of it write down I notice the thought
38:45
that I'm worried about my knees getting out i notice the thought that I
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uh I'm worried about paying the bills i notice the thought that the kids don't
38:59
seem happy in school whatever it is all right and just see and pay attention to
39:06
what is the same and what is different as you wrote write write that down in front now for some people some of the
39:13
time for some problems or for some worries that allows them just to get a
39:18
bit more space and a bit more perspective so the worry doesn't feel quite so allencompassing and and it's a
39:26
bit easier to kind of look at it as a thought rather than a fact and you can
39:33
do this at night if you notice like me that you tend to wake up at 3:00 a.m and just get caught in your worries it can
39:38
be keep a pad and paper by the bed and just write down I notice the thought that and whatever the worry is that is
39:44
going through your head sometimes that can make a difference for people as a small thing and here's a little kind of
39:51
question what do you think or who do you think is doing the noticing in the writing as soon as you start to notice
39:59
your own thoughts as soon as you put them out here part of you steps back right part of you is no
40:08
longer caught up in those thoughts and as soon as you do that it makes it just a bit easier to do you have more freedom
40:16
of maneuver more freedom to get perspective
40:23
the trap is that the more we try not to think about stuff the stickier it gets
40:30
our brains as I said your your brain will throw it at you and will keep throwing it at you until you acknowledge
40:37
it so by allowing time and space by allowing your brain to acknowledge it by
40:42
either noticing that thought writing it down tracking where it's going allowing
40:47
it to come and go that tends to mean that it has less immediate influence
40:54
over your actions and it tends to mean that your brain is less chucking it at
40:59
you quite so hard so the next step is as I said
41:04
before kind of come back to the present moment now there are a couple of ways you can do this in defense we teach people tactical
41:10
breathing uh we aren't going to do that here because we haven't got time today but if you want to Google something you
41:16
can Google box breathing which is a great way if you're feeling really trapped by worry and overwhelmed by
41:22
worry to just anchor your awareness in the present moment similarly um it's
41:27
useful to have like it can be useful to have like a little phrase that helps you anchor your awareness in the present moment so for instance as an example the
41:34
Navy Seals have a little verbal anchor which is work the problem so when they notice themselves getting overwhelmed
41:40
they say to themselves work the problem and that brings your attention to the here and now so they can focus on the
41:46
problem in the here and now one easy thing you can do as well is just ground yourself in your senses so for me what I
41:53
like to do is just to go outside and feel the wind on my face for me that
41:58
pulls me into the here and now so if there's something like that for you might be washing hands in some cold water splashing some cold water on your
42:05
face those kinds of things can be really helpful if you feel like that worry is just coming is is coming right over the
42:12
top of you and then the last kind of step in our kind of process allowing yourself to
42:19
notice those thoughts letting them come and go and bringing your awareness to the here and now is about choosing what
42:25
you're going to do and engaging in things that are going to make a difference so one really useful tool for
42:32
this is separating the world into things I'm concerned about and things I'm what
42:37
I can control what I like to do with clients and for myself is I get Post-it
42:43
notes and I write down all of the things that I'm worried about in my head on Post-it notes and I sort them into two
42:50
piles i sort them into this row this column is things I'm concerned about but
42:55
can't control and then this column here is things I'm concerned about that I can actually
43:01
influence so I can't I can't my arthritis ridden knees i can't do
43:07
anything about my arthritis but I can do things like do physio to strengthen my stabilizing muscles right i can't
43:15
control my kids school environment but I can make sure they can talk to me about
43:20
the things they're worried about does that make sense and then if you are going to worry about something at 3:00
43:26
a.m you have a ready list of things that is perhaps worth paying attention to cuz you can do something about them this
43:33
stuff over here is normal and human the stuff over here is actually what I want
43:39
to spend my time and attention on does that make sense cool
43:45
okay so that's kind of um all the time we had for today team so um if you want
43:52
to know more about or want some tips around resources and things uh headsp space is a great option likewise calm so
43:59
the advantage of headsp space and calm what they do is they coach you through the skill of noticing your thoughts and
44:07
noticing when they're capturing your attention and awareness um more than is
44:12
helpful uh there's another good book if this feels like a topic that you want to explore more called mindfulness and
44:18
acceptance for anxiety it's really good it's in most public libraries it's very practical very sensible there's also
44:24
some research around even just do using that book has made a meaningful difference to people there's another
44:30
really nice little titled practical book called Can't Stop Thinking uh and then there's a book called Reality Slap by a
44:36
guy called Russell Russ Harris from Australia and that's particularly when there are big things that happen all of
44:41
a sudden and reality just gives you a a smack around the head it's got some really useful kind of ways of
44:47
approaching that problem for those of you that are not afraid of a bit of spicy language The Subtle Art of Not
44:53
Giving a is a really good book and particularly that seems to resonate better for males than females males
44:59
typically don't read self-help books but that book appears to land more comfortably with males than than other
45:06
self-help books so I'll stop sharing there team and I will um just close off
45:13
uh the kind of formal presentation there but I am happy to answer any questions
45:18
uh in the Q&A if anything is not clear or is um um another recommendation from
45:26
um text is why zebras don't get ulcers so that is a good book actually and it
45:31
talks to this point of why only human beings can can worry any questions or queries in in the
45:39
in the final as we close things off let's
45:46
wait so uh we'll promulgate access to the recording uh to be honest I don't know how we're going to do that just yet
45:52
and we just need to make sure there's nothing in there that is going to compromise ideally myself um or or
45:58
anyone else but we'll push that out when that's available any other questions
46:10
okay okay so that'll do us team um there is also some good good information on
46:17
the NZDF health hub so that's an intra interet uh resource if you go to
46:23
health.nzdf.mmill.nz or you just Google NZDFHub it'll pop up there's bunch of
46:29
little tips and tricks in there there's guidance around worry is to talk around measuring whether worry has got too much
46:36
um for you and and whether you should do it um yeah so that's meeting uh look I wish
46:44
you all the best and I hope this has been useful for you uh and I appreciate your attention and time throughout the
46:50
course of this um this seminar so I hope you enjoy the rest of your Friday maybe
46:55
get out and then feel the wind on your face uh take a moment just to anchor in
47:00
the here and now coming out of the back of this presentation