How to Make Peace with Worry

Dec 21, 2020

We parents of autistic young adults can worry. A lot.

It’s painful to experience.

We project worst-case scenarios on every part of the future. We have lots of reasons to back us up.

We think we cannot tolerate the worst case scenario. Especially when somebody dies, or somebody takes their own life, or when we die.

We Create Our Negative Emotion

Except the worst part about any of those tragedies is the negative emotion we experience.

We know from STEAR Mapping that we feel worry because of what we think.

Let’s allow the worry in the beginning because it is a normal emotion.

Then we can find the thoughts behind the worry.

Are they useful?
Do they fuel us to take action that is productive?

Worry is a sneaky emotion because it appears to be necessary, but it doesn’t change the outcome and often leaves us stuck.

Events that happen outside of us are out of our control. We must remind ourselves that what we make them mean is in our control.

Only we can take a step back and look at these thoughts and determine if worry is serving us.

It’s totally ok if it is, but know that worry is one option. There are other options also available for us to choose.

Living in Fear Is Worse

Let’s look at the alternative to feeling the negative emotion.

Situation: Read articles about bad reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Thought: We could have severe reactions including anaphylaxis and Gillain-Barre syndrome.
Emotion: Worry
Actions: Ruminate, think about possible reactions, worry if they could happen, buffer, not motivated to complete tasks, keep checking the news, don’t sleep well, search for more information.
Result: Stop living and worry my life away.

It makes sense. But the result not really what we want.

Living in fear is still living in negative emotion.

The difference is that we make the thinking error that worry will somehow prevent future negative emotion. Unfortunately it doesn’t.

All it does is create negative emotion in advance. It blocks our creative problem solving and critical thinking.

The part of our brains that give us the best odds at solving problems isn’t fueled by worry and fear. It operates in openness, calm and peace.

Fear of physical pain is another worst case scenario. Yet we know that, in most cases, physical pain comes and goes. It usually isn’t long lasting.

When we add negative emotion on top of the physical pain, we can feel worse.

Remember when we exercise and feel “progress pain?” Yes, we feel the pain but our thoughts process it as positive, “I’m getting stronger. This pain means I’m working out at the right intensity.” Notice how our thoughts create an emotion that serves us better.

Processing Negative Emotion Gets Us Through It

So, what’s the alternative?

Let’s process the emotion. Here’s how:

Practice pausing and get present because right now everything is okay.

Use our senses: what do we see, smell, taste, hear, feel inside?

Scan our body to recognize our toes on the ground, our legs, our seat in the chair, our shoulders, arms, neck, face, forehead.

Narrate what is going on inside.

“Ok, this is worry. That’s what this is. I feel it moving in circles in my chest, rising up into my head. It’s red and pulsing. There it is. That’s what worry feels like. It’s a burning chemical and it’s pretty intense. It tightens up my neck and shoulders. I can do worry. Worry is here because of sentences in my brain. I can do this. I can do worry.”

That’s what worry sounds like inside our heads. We’re processing worry. We might act out a little bit while it’s happening. That’s fine. Try to stay with the emotion while it’s happening.

We can pre-coach ourselves in situations that we expect we'll feel worry like when someone we love is listening to news articles about topics we worry about so we don’t resist the emotion.

We need to practice feeling it so we recognize it when it happens again.

What would happen if we became really good at processing worry?

Then it wouldn’t impact us if we didn’t want it to affect us. How awesome would we be then!

Sometimes Our Future Self Can Help Us

Our future self is someone who has already dealt with the negative emotion like dealing with a reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine.

What would she say to us? What advice would she give us? Would she suggest that we don’t need to worry? That we’ll get through this just fine?

If we create a STEAR Map, we can see what alternative thoughts can create for us.

S: Adverse reaction to COVID-19 vaccination.
T: We will get through this.
E: Determination
A: We feel the fear and do it anyway. We follow the CDC guidelines and our doctor’s advice. Rest. Recuperate.
R: We are stronger and more experienced in handling adversity.

We Can Talk Back to Our Brain

When our brains are in the habit of offering worry thoughts, our work is to identify a thought we want to direct our brain to practice.

“What a minute, brain. I need to be right here where I can solve any problem.”
“This is a thought error, and I know exactly what to do.”
“I’m human and think thoughts. Nothing has gone wrong here.”

Practicing thoughts like these help us practice compassion for ourselves and others.

When we remember that our emotions can’t hurt us we can find peace. Emotions are our body’s way of dealing with the physiological change create by the hormones our brains tell us to create when we think thoughts.

We are made to process those hormones. We got this.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

We get better and better each time we practice getting present, processing our emotions and intentionally selecting thoughts that create a life we love that works.

Then we can teach our young adults how to make peace with worry. We will watch our compassion bubble up for them as we identify with their struggles.

We’re all human. Life is good. All of it.