A FRIEND RECENTLY SHARED a coping strategy she learned from her grandmother. When her grandmother had more than one serious worry, she intentionally chose to turn her thoughts to one concern and exclude all the others. Though she was free to exchange one worry for another, the rule was that she could only fret about one thing at a time. Her grandmother even had a name for her approach, calling it “the theory of competing antagonists.”
I’ve taught this approach to several of my clients who have cancer, and many have found that the conscious act of shutting the door on one fear—for example, anxiety about an upcoming scan instead of worry about a son who is about to lose his job—enables them to put both issues aside. It is difficult to explain why this works, but teaching people to reframe and control their worries somehow allows them to gain power over these feelings.
Read More -Choose Your Worry: Deciding when and what to worry about can help with gaining control over fear.
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