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Worry Time

Worry Time and Worry Tree

These are my personal notes from talking to a CBT professional. I am not a trained CBT professional so please do not blindly use these notes without speaking to someone who is.

In a nutshell worry time and worry tree techniques allow us to postpone worrying about stuff until later in the day at a specific time. If you find it inconvenient that your mind can completely sidetrack you during the day and you worry about stuff, this may be a useful technique.

Applying the Worry Tree During the Day

If you find yourself worrying during the day, the first thing is to refer to the Worry Tree process. The idea is to:

  1. immediately act on anything that you can (very small proportion of worries),
  2. plan to worry about stuff that is in your control but not immediately actionable later
  3. during "worry time" decide whether the thing is:
    1. A hypothetical that we can't control - if so we should let it go
    2. A practical concern that we can address. If so we can make a plan to deal with it

If Worries 

How to Run Worry time

For worries that have been postponed to worry time:

      1. Again there is an element of whether this is something we can deal with now or must deal with later and schedule
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