We know that chronic worry is a very unpleasant experience. Your heart races and the ‘what-if’ thoughts spin in your mind like a heavy wash cycle. It feels like you can’t escape your own thoughts. You may feel paralyzed and indecisive, like a hiker staring into the eyes of an angry bear. When you finally manage to calm down you may feel fatigued or even depressed.
And after all that you may not have accomplished anything. The situation that seemed to kick off the worry is exactly as it was before.
The trance of worry is an altered state, casting the worst-case scenario as the most likely, and diminishing all the positives to the point that they become invisible. All those things that you can’t control suddenly feel like things that you have to manage on your own. The stress can be overwhelming.
So how can you snap out of the trance, start doing the real work of life and reclaim your happiness?
A healthy gratitude practice might be just the thing you need.
Gratitude keeps us humble
Any major stressor can be a trigger for chronic worry. You may have encountered a series of surprise debts that have thrown off your expectation of security for the next several months. The first few days or weeks of the situation were spent analyzing the problem in a state of distress. But even after you’ve taken certain steps to help yourself you find yourself falling into the trance of worry nearly every day.
Part of the trance of worry is that we obsess over things that are beyond our control. Your financial worries may expand to thoughts like: ‘What if I get laid off from my job?’, ‘What if my friend won’t repay me that money he owes me?’ or ‘What if I get into an accident and have to pay for the damages?’.
Taking a few moments to write down the things in life that you are grateful for will help to keep you humble in the face of your worry. This will help you to shift your focus away from all the things that you can’t control.
If you’re thankful that you live in a nice home, then you may be reminded of all the external forces that helped you to buy and maintain that home. Your parents may have supported you during your college years so that you could get that degree and then a job that pays well. Your spouse may have signed on the loan with you to ensure that a nice place to live was within your means. You may have been blessed with native intelligence to help you complete your education and perform at your job.
Focusing on the good things in our lives by extension reminds us of all the native gifts and good people who helped us along the way. This reminds us that we are not as all-powerful as the worry trance would have us believe. We are part of an interconnected web of life and our circumstances are largely determined by factors outside ourselves that we do not control.
This is how gratitude reminds us to be humble. And we realize that we don’t have to take responsibility for everything that we can’t control.
Gratitude helps us to think positive
In the simplest terms, gratitude can be defined as an affirmation of goodness. It may seem obvious that listing the good things in your life would help you to think more positively about your situation, but you would be surprised at how long-lasting those positive effects can be.
The psychological tendency to assign more weight to evidence that supports our existing beliefs is known as confirmation bias. Shifting our focus to the good things that we have can renew our belief that good things do happen all the time.
While you’re in the middle of the worry trance you may see those surprise debts as evidence that you’ll never be able to manage money well again. You may even think that you’ve always been bad with money. You just never realized it before.
Taking a few moments to list the things that you’re grateful for can help you to snap out of the worry trance by reminding you how often the best outcome does happen and how rare the worst-case scenario truly is.
You might be grateful that your spouse nursed you back to health when you had the flu. You could even be grateful that you’re simply healthy enough to take a walk outside and feel the sun on your face.
With a healthy gratitude practice, you can reaffirm your belief in goodness. Then next time you face a big stressor you will be less likely to expect the worst-case scenario. The practice only builds on itself as each time you affirm the good you believe in it a little bit more.
Conclusion
“Everything we do is infused with the energy in which we do it. If we’re frantic, life will be frantic. If we’re peaceful, life will be peaceful.”
— Marianne Williamson
When you’re caught up in the trance of worry it distorts your sense of reality. You may try to take responsibility for things that are well beyond your control. You may be treating the worst-case scenario as the most likely outcome.
Starting a daily gratitude practice can help you to reconnect with what’s real. When you list the good things in your life you will find yourself reminded of all the positive forces and people who have contributed to your happiness in the past. This will serve as a potent reminder to be humble in the face of adversity. You will not have to take responsibility for everything that is beyond your control. Listing things that you are grateful for will also help you to affirm the goodness of the world. This will put your situation into perspective and help you to realize that the worst-case scenario is most often not the most likely.
You may have experienced a very real stressor but for some reason, the worry continues long after the initial shock has subsided. One of the best ways to snap out of the trance of worry is to begin your gratitude practice. You may be surprised at how much better you feel.
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Previously Published on medium
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The post How Gratitude Can Help You Stop Worrying appeared first on The Good Men Project.
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