Andy worries about everything…if his future in-laws will like his family, if he will develop a thyroid problem like his mother, if the occasional palpitations mean that he has heart trouble. To others Andy’s just a chronic worrier. Although he denies it, Andy believes that if he’s worrying, he’s doing something and this insulates him from anything “bad” happening in his life.
Obviously, some worry is reasonable; it’s a good thing to wonder if you’ve turned the oven off.
But… chronic worry is generally a need for control. It also puts unnecessary strain on your heart and compromises your ability to cope with stress.
Here’s how: a region in our brains called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) helps organize the conversation between what we feel and what we know.
Our ACC is typically activated by a sudden thought or startling situation like a loud bang in the kitchen just as you’re about to drift off to sleep!
Picture a clear light tube with red blips of light running back and forth; on one end, the light alerts our consciousness, and on the other end, it signals our muscles to prepare us to act. The more we agonize the faster the light travels back and forth – the faster it travels – the higher our heart rate goes!
If we give every problem, every decision… the same amount of worry and its, say a 10 on a scale from (0 to 10) then WE are keeping our hearts in an unnecessary state of strain.
After my electrocution, I worried all the time because I was trying to figure out what happened to my memory and my heart. My situation was so unusual and I couldn’t ask anyone about it because they didn’t know either.
So, over the years I learned to rely on FOUR thoughts that help me; I hope they’ll help you too:
1. Ask yourself – Will I Ever Know the Answer?
2. Ask yourself – Can I Change Anything?
3. Prioritize Your Worries – Rank them from 0 to 10 (after I rank a worry, often times I can stop because I see that the thing on my mind just isn’t worth worrying about).
4. Give Yourself Necessary Time – (if my worry is real then I give it the time it deserves, I plan a day and time hopefully without interruption and I think about it AND I let myself feel it; no TV, radio or phone, just me and my plan for the situation I’m worried about.
Most of us have something important that deserves our attention but we’re afraid to just be with it. Maybe it’s sad or maybe we are fearful that we don’t have the resources to change it so we try not to think about it…but, we really ARE thinking about it – we’re holding it just beside our consciousness all day long until it wears us out!
We all worry: help your heart by worrying about what matters.