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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Breaking the worry loop
Making a study timetable is useful once. Making it for the fourth time is worry wearing the clothes of work. The test is not how serious the topic is but whether the next round would change anything. Write the plan down where you can see it, so that when the thought comes back you can point at the paper rather than start again.
when you have decided on a course of action, put your trust in God (Quran 3:159). Consulting comes first, then a decision, then trust: the stopping rule the loop is missing.
آل عمران
فَبِمَا رَحۡمَةࣲ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ لِنتَ لَهُمۡۖ وَلَوۡ كُنتَ فَظًّا غَلِيظَ ٱلۡقَلۡبِ لَٱنفَضُّواْ مِنۡ حَوۡلِكَۖ فَٱعۡفُ عَنۡهُمۡ وَٱسۡتَغۡفِرۡ لَهُمۡ وَشَاوِرۡهُمۡ فِي ٱلۡأَمۡرِۖ فَإِذَا عَزَمۡتَ فَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُتَوَكِّلِينَ
By an act of mercy from God, you [Prophet] were gentle in your dealings with them- had you been harsh, or hard-hearted, they would have dispersed and left you- so pardon them and ask forgiveness for them. Consult with them about matters, then, when you have decided on a course of action, put your trust in God: God loves those who put their trust in Him
Qur’an 3:159read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial of internet delivered therapy for mixed anxiety and depression, improvement was carried by reductions in repetitive negative thinking and in the belief that worrying is useful. The belief that all this thinking is productive is part of what keeps it running. Because this was a mediation analysis, it tracks what changed alongside improvement rather than proving the order of cause.
Newby JM, Williams AD, Andrews G. (2014). Reductions in negative repetitive thinking and metacognitive beliefs during transdiagnostic internet cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) for mixed anxiety and depression.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Planning finishes a real question, while replanning only feeds the loop that keeps asking it.
Three moves, in this order: notice what is happening, settle the body, then put your attention somewhere useful. Short enough to remember when you are already going.
Do not tell a child their thinking is wrong, and do not hand them the better thought. Ask the questions and let them arrive at it themselves.
Sometimes there really is evidence for the fear. Say so. The balance comes from the other column being fuller, not from pretending the first column is empty.