Glasgow Anxiety Therapy

One of the things that distinguishes cognitive behavioural therapy from the sort of therapy you see in American films, is that we focus on the here and now. We don't bother too much about what might have happened in your childhood. We are much more interested in how to make your life better now. More of an action focus than an analytical one.

Similarly, one of the things that distinguishes humans from animals is our ability to contemplate the future and reflect on the past. This is helpful. It allows us to plan for the future, and learn from the past. This helps us to solve problems. But it is also unhelpful, because this ability to contemplate and reflect also means that we worry about the future and go over the past again and again, ruminating on what we might have done better or what someone who said something really meant.

These worries and ruminations are not much help. They tend to just go round and round on the same old stuff. Worries are in some nebulous, imaginary and usually rather scary future. Ruminating and groaning about the past is not much help either. The past is over and done with.

But we can relearn how to use this amazing ability to contemplate and reflect in a way that is helpful. We can plan for the future in a realistic and helpful way.  We can look to see how things that went wrong might be avoided if we take certain action. And this frees up a  mass of time so that we can spend more time in the here and now, enjoying life, immersing ourselves in activity, getting involved with other people.

So rather than analysing everything, give my sort of cognitive behavioural therapy a go. The addition of hypnosis will excite you once again to possibilities and delight!

Some worriers do their worry work before something happens and others do the stewing afterwards.

This takes the form of bemoaning how silly your behaviour must have been, how dreadful your clothes were as well as going over in detail what everyone said to you, in your presence or about you. These internal analyses can go on for hours and hours. Days even.

There is nothing useful to be gained from this. Despite the effort involved in the analysis, no useful conclusions can be drawn from this kind of thinking. It won't give any insights into how to do things better in the future or how to stop worrying. It just makes you worry more, feel more anxious and closes down your ability to take helpful action.

So as soon as you notice the ruminations coming on, the If onlys starting, the I wonder what he meant bys coming on, then STOP!!

Do something to distract yourself. Go for a walk, phone a friend, watch a film, do some work. This kind of thinking is of no value to you whatsoever. A complete waste of your time.