Areas › Worry and anxiety › Breaking the worry loop
Being told not to worry has never once stopped anybody worrying, including you. If a friend said it to you tomorrow you would carry straight on.
This is worth saying to a parent who feels they are failing at comforting their child. They are not bad at it. The words simply do not do that job for anyone. What does help is staying nearby, taking the fear seriously enough to hear it once, and then going on with the evening rather than negotiating with it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
I am near. I respond to those who call Me (Quran 2:186). What is offered is nearness and a response, not a promise that nothing will go wrong.
وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌۖ أُجِيبُ دَعۡوَةَ ٱلدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِۖ فَلۡيَسۡتَجِيبُواْ لِي وَلۡيُؤۡمِنُواْ بِي لَعَلَّهُمۡ يَرۡشُدُونَ
[Prophet], if My servants ask you about Me, I am near. I respond to those who call Me, so let them respond to Me, and believe in Me, so that they may be guided
Qur’an 2:186read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A pilot randomised trial in 20 outpatients compared metacognitive therapy, which works on a person's beliefs about worrying rather than on the worries themselves, with applied relaxation, and it came out well with nobody dropping out. The interesting part is where it aimed. It was a very small pilot, so it points a direction rather than settling anything.
Wells A, Welford M, King P, Papageorgiou C, Wisely J, Mendel E. (2010). A pilot randomized trial of metacognitive therapy vs applied relaxation in the treatment of adults with generalized anxiety disorder.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Comforting words aim at the content of a worry, which is not the part that keeps it running.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Short sessions spread over days beat one long night. The settling of what you learned happens after you stop, and a short night undoes a good deal of the day's work.
Slow breathing and loosening your muscles are not decoration. A body that is braced keeps telling the mind there is something to brace for, so unbracing it takes away part of the evidence.
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.