What To Do If You Worry Too Much

Some tips from Ad Kerkhof, a Dutch pyschologist who has worked in the field of suicide prevention for 30 years. I found them in the book Time Warped and quote below from the book.

• Deliberately imagine the worst-case scenario concerning your worry, followed by the best possible scenario. The real outcome probably lies somewhere in between.
• If you find yourself awake in the middle of night worrying, with thoughts whirling round repeatedly in your head, imagine there’s a box under your bed. This is your worry box. As soon as you spot thoughts that are worries, imagine taking those individual worries, putting them into the box and closing the lid. They are then to remain in the box under the bed until you decide to get them out again. If the worries recur, remind yourself that they are in the box and won’t be attended to until later on.
• Your worries relate to real and practical problems in your life, so you cannot rid yourself of them altogether, but you can learn to control when you think about them. Set aside 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening to do nothing but worry about the future. Sit at a table, make a list of all your problems and then think about them. But as soon as the time is up you must stop worrying, and whenever those worries come back into your head remind yourself that you can’t contemplate them again until your next worry time. You have given yourself permission to postpone your worrying until the time of your choice. Remarkably, it can work. It puts you in control.