by Sissy Goff
So schedule a daily worry time, at least in the beginning as you’re learning to take the thoughts captive. Don’t make it while you’re lying in bed, though, or it will be hard to stop and fall asleep. Make it on the way home from school, or at a time you when can just sit and think.
The CBT name for worry time is containment. It’s a little like if you literally were taking a person captive. The first thing you would do is put handcuffs on them. Contain them. With worry time, you’re putting handcuffs on your Worry Whisperer. Set a time that works for you. Talk through it with your mom or dad, if you’d like. At the end, I want you to pray. It’s how we do the second part of 2 Corinthians 10:5. We take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. Pray and then get up and do something else.
Go for a walk. Read a book. Play with your dog. Talk to your parents. FaceTime a friend. The doing something else is called changing the channel in cognitive behavioral therapy. Give yourself a set period of time, pray, and then change the worry channel. When you do, you’re teaching the Worry Whisperer that he’s not in charge, but you and God are.
Find the Evidence
Have you ever read the Nancy Drew books? They were my favorite when I was growing up. This tool is all about bringing your best girl detective skills to the game. It’s where we turn his tricks back on him and ask those questions:
Anticipation: “What really is the likelihood that this is going to happen?”
Perspective: “Could there be more to the story?”
Rumination: “Is my thinking/talking helping or making things worse?”
Catastrophization: “Is it really as bad as I’m making it out to be?”
Underestimation: “How prepared am I?” Or you could ask, “What would Sissy say about me now?”
Forgetfulness: “What have I done lately that’s brave?”
So you’ve taken the thoughts captive, and you’ve made them obedient to Christ. And now you’ve proven them to be false. It’s our own version of a fact check.
Name the Thoughts
Back in the first chapter, we gave the Worry Whisperer his name. Do you remember how we talked about him being like the mole in the whac-a-mole game? How he comes back in different ways as you get older, basically as the scariest thing you can imagine at that particular age?
I wanted you to name him so you would learn to recognize him as separate from you. Like we’ve talked about, it’s the most natural thing in the world for us to think the voice in our head is true. When you learn to recognize that voice as the Worry Whisperer, though, you know it’s not true. You know he’s a liar. And when his voice is separate from yours, it doesn’t have nearly as much power.
There’s another reason I wanted you to name him. Because when he comes back, I want you to recognize him in whatever form he comes. I want you to be able to say, “Mom, that Worry Whisperer has been trying to get at me again lately. This time, he’s bugging me about friends.” Or college. Or whatever he thinks will most likely get you looping.
Here’s the really great news: The same tools work. He picks new ways to try to trick you, but the tools you’re learning now will work with whatever way he picks. It doesn’t matter if it’s about throwing up or failing a test. When he starts to tell you that the problem is bigger and you’re smaller, you can respond by telling him exactly what he can do with those messages.
Boss Back
If you were sitting in my office, I’d scoot an empty chair up next to you. I’d have you pretend the Worry Whisperer was sitting there, and I’d have you say exactly what you wanted to say to him, using your strongest, most sarcastic voice. Okay, okay, I wouldn’t really do that. That’s a counseling technique we learn in graduate school called the empty chair technique, but it’s not so much my style. I think I’d feel even more awkward than you would. But I want you to learn to do that in your head.
When he starts to bug you with his tricks, I want you to call the Worry Whisperer by name and tell him exactly what you think about him.
When he talks, I want you to talk back.
When he tells you that you can’t, I want you to tell him that you can and to shut up.
When he tells you that you’re a failure, I want you to tell him that he’s failed. Again.
If he tells you that you’ve never done anything brave before, I want you to remind him of the brave things you remember. If he tells you that you’re not smart enough, I want you to remind him of how wrong he is and how smart you are. With the little girls, I call it bossing back. You can even flash back to your sassiest little girl voice and stomp your foot and shake your finger, at least in your own head. Basically, I want to strengthen your voice in this fight. I want you to know and experience that your voice is stronger than his.
Psychology books call them coping thoughts. Let’s call them truth, because that’s exactly what they are. You are stronger than your worries. You’re braver than any anxiety that can come your way. He’s going to do his best to tell you something different, but your best is better. Practice. Take every one of his thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ and to the truth of who Christ has made you to be. Those are the kinds of thoughts I want you to fill your head with. They’re the kinds of thoughts that can literally change your cortex. They’re the thoughts that will free you to be the brave person that you are.
What are ten truths you can remind yourself of when the Worry Whisperer starts talking?
Hang those truths up in your bathroom and copy them in your phone so you can look back at them whenever his voice starts to try to drown yours out. You are stronger, smarter, and braver. Don’t forget.
What are five things you’ve learned in this chapter that you want to remember?
What are five things you would tell a friend?
A Few Brave Things
to Remember
The two pathways to anxiety are by way of the amygdala and the cortex. The amygdala reacts, and the cortex thinks. The cortex anticipates, ruminates, and catastrophizes, making those worried thoughts become not only our perception, but our reality.
Worry is an overestimation of the problem and an underestimation of ourselves.
We can take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), both spiritually, through prayer and memorizing Scripture, and neurologically, with tools from this chapter. Practicing the tools literally rewires our brain to reduce anxiety.
Our tools for the mind include expecting worry, making worry time, finding the evidence, naming the thoughts, and bossing the Worry Whisperer back.
The more you expect worry, the more you recognize his voice when he resurfaces. Sooner is stronger in your fight against worry.
Set aside time for worry. That time will help you process your worry, but in a way that helps you know you’re in control of your worries, rather than your worries being in control of you.
Find the evidence against each of the Worry Whisperer’s tricks. Are they true? How likely is the scary thing to happen, really? Use your detective skills to disprove his tricks and strengthen your confidence.
Use your strong voice to talk back to the Worry Whisperer and remind him that he’s not the boss of you.
6. Help for Your Heart
With each chapter of this “Help” section, we’ve gone a little deeper. We started with your body, where things are more automatic and more on the surface of who you are. They don’t have a ton to do with you—just the way God designed your body to react to a threat. Then we went a little deeper and talked about your mind, the thoughts the Worry Whisperer tries to drop there, and how you can take those thoughts captive. If we were in counseling, though, I’d want you to keep going deeper. And by this time, I’d feel like I knew you well enough to try. I’d want to help you get out of your head and into your heart. Not just “What are you thinking?” but “What are you feeling?”
I told you this before, but I believe you’re really kind. I’m not even sure that I’ve ever met a girl who’s anxious and unkind. I think being kind is part of the deal.
You care deeply about others. I think you feel deeply. I think you see and take things in that (1) others often don’t notice and (2) others have no idea that you’re seeing, noticing, and feeling. I think it’s part of why you worry, but I absolutely believe it’s something God wants to use.
Do you remember our quote about you being the only you? It’s one that Melissa, who started Daystar, uses often, and I think it’s one that bears repeating, because it’s so true about you. “You are the only you this world will know, and something about your life is meant to make something about God known in a way no one else can do.”1 I think that “something about you” that God wants to use is your heart. And your heart is the last place the Worry Whisperer comes after you. It’s kind of his last-ditch effort to defeat you. And I believe your heart is the most important tool you have in this fight, because it’s the key to what this book is about: finding you.
This book is about being brave and learning to fight your Worry Whisperer. But more than that, it’s about discovering the you that God made you to be . . . down deep in your heart. The Worry Whisperer is going to try to do everything he can to stop that from happening. I think he has a little inkling of the difference you’re going to make in this world, so he’s going to try one last place to stop it. But we’re wise to his tricks. He just doesn’t know it yet.
The Worry Whisperer’s Tricks for Your Heart
“Anxiety is a method of seeking two experiences: certainty and comfort. The problem is that it wants these two outcomes immediately and continually,” according to the authors of Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents.2 Can you relate to that statement? This may sound a little brutal, but one of the things that I tell parents a lot is that anxious kids and teenagers are some of the most controlling people I know. Ouch. Sorry.
It’s true of me too. We anxious adults are pretty controlling ourselves. We all want certainty, comfort, and control. If we can’t find those things, we’ll hop right on over to avoidance. And those are four of the Worry Whisperer’s biggest tricks in his fight against your heart. The truth that we know is that none of them work for long. It sounds like bad news, but it’s actually good. When we can let go of our drive for certainty, comfort, control, and avoidance, we find ourselves in a place that’s wide open to what God wants us to experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, we need to understand each of these tricks and why we believe our survival is dependent on them taking place. Or at least why the Worry Whisperer tries to make us believe that’s so.
Certainty
I remember one of the things I hated the most when I was a little girl was when my mom would use the word maybe. I’d ask if I could have a friend over. “Maybe.” I’d ask if we were going to see my grandmother, Hedy. “Maybe.” I’d ask if we could go out to eat for dinner. “Maybe.” I still remember the frustration rising inside of me at just that one word. I didn’t want maybe. I wanted certainty.
It wasn’t just because I wanted what I wanted, though that might have been the case a little. It was more because I didn’t like the dangling unknown. I still don’t. I have to stop myself from making plans weeks in advance and remind myself that other people don’t seem to have the same need I do to know all that’s coming. But I would guess that you might. Certainty makes us feel safe. When we know what’s coming, what’s expected of us, and how things are going to turn out.
Write out a few things you like to know.
The only thing is that we don’t know. We can’t predict the future, and it wouldn’t help if we could. I’m going to let you in on a little parenting secret. One of the ways I tell parents they can recognize anxiety in their kids is when their kids ask endless questions. “What time are you going out? When will you be home? Who are you going with? What am I going to do while you’re gone? When will you be home?” Those kinds of endless questions. You might have been an endless-question asker when you were little. I also tell parents not to answer more than five questions about the same topic. It’s one of the things I learned in my research on anxiety. Answering every question doesn’t help. It’s not about the questions anyway. It’s about certainty. In those Endless Question moments, the Worry Whisperer is telling you that if you don’t have certainty, you won’t be okay.
You’ve lived long enough at this point to know that certainty isn’t always possible. You can be okay and not be certain of what’s coming.
Comfort
In asking those questions, kids aren’t just wanting answers and certainty. They’re wanting reassurance. They’re wanting their parents to respond in a way that brings comfort.
I know a girl named Anne. Anne is really smart. She’s funny and kind and super enjoyable to be around. You’d like her. Anne also has panic attacks. She’s a junior in high school and has panic attacks whenever she has to be away from home overnight. It happens on school trips. It happens before summer camp. She doesn’t even like to have sleepovers with friends, because it happens then. We talked about it not too long ago in my office, and she said something I’ll never forget.
“I realized recently that my mom and I are the closest when I have panic attacks. It’s when she’s the most nurturing to me. I hadn’t thought about it before, but maybe that’s part of it. It’s not why I have them. But maybe it’s why sometimes I don’t stop myself from having them once they start, when I really do know how.”
Anne has a great mom. She’s strong and smart and funny—she’s just not the most comforting mom in the world. But she is when Anne has panic attacks. Anne wants comfort, as we all do.
I know girls who find comfort in every area imaginable. I remember a girl who, when she worried, only found comfort if she touched things. She’d have to touch a book, and then she’d have to touch the table that the book was touching. Then, she’d have to touch the rug that the table was touching. I know other girls who have to tap on opposite sides of their bodies equally to find a sense of comfort. You may have some type of what is referred to as a ritual that brings you comfort when you’re anxious.
I want you to think back for a moment about bedtime when you were younger. Did you have any kind of routine? I sure did. I would have my mom look under my bed and in my closet (because, you know . . . monsters). She would then sit on my bed, and we would have to say the same prayer the same way every night. Then I had to say, “Sweet dreams. God bless. Night, night. I love you.” And she had to say it back. Every night. I had no idea at the time why we had to follow that routine, but now I understand. It brought me comfort when I felt anxious. Many girls I talk to wouldn’t use the word comfort. They’d say things don’t feel “right” until they follow a certain routine. It’s not the same as feeling comforted by someone you care about when you’re said—it’s comfort in that those routines seem to hold our anxiety at bay.
We all have things we do that bring us that type of comfort when we’re anxious. Maybe it’s eating or exercising. Maybe it’s spending time with a friend or petting your dog. Maybe it’s a routine or some type of ritual. None of those things are problematic in themselves. The problem comes when we feel like we have to do it or we won’t be okay. That’s when anything can become more compulsion than comfort. And as you know, those compulsive rituals don’t work for long either. Or maybe they work, but it becomes so complicated to do them that we end up more anxious than we started.
What are three things you believe you need or need to do that bring comfort?
You’re okay. Right now and when you’re anxious. And even when you don’t have or don’t do the thing you believe brings the most comfort.
Control
How would you say you do with unpredictability? What about change? If those are not your favorite things, then you might lean toward control or wanting to control. Control might sound like too strong of a word to you. I wouldn’t necessarily say I want to be in control. I just don’t want to be out of it. I don’t do well with chaos. Even a lot of noise and voices and commotion is unsettling to me. Unless, of course, it’s Disney World. Then I can
take every bit of chaos that Mickey and Mary Poppins can throw at me.
Being in control involves both certainty and comfort. I know what’s going to happen because I’m going to make sure that it does. I also know what brings me comfort and how to get it. I’m in control.
I remember sitting in a car on a date with a boy in high school and making myself wait for him to ask me a question. Silence makes me uncomfortable when I don’t know the person very well, so I typically ask a lot of questions and keep the conversation going. I wasn’t trying to be controlling or trying to dominate the conversation. I was trying to be kind, and I didn’t want things to be awkward, but I think it might have come out as control.
I also hated group projects. If I could do the project by myself, I could do the work. I could get the grade I wanted—or at least close to it. But with a group, there was always that one kid who wouldn’t do the work and you couldn’t control him or her (but let’s face it, it was usually a him). It still makes me frustrated thinking about it.
What are some areas where you find yourself trying to stay in control?
I’m afraid control is just like certainty and comfort. We can’t actually control things, or we can’t keep them under control for very long. Not if we live in a family. Or have relationships with people . . . both of which we do want to happen. But other people aren’t under our control, no matter how much we try. Life isn’t under our control. Control doesn’t work either. And sometimes, the more control we get, the more controlling we become. And that’s certainly not what we want.
You can be okay and not be in control.
The other problem with every one of those ideas is that we learn to trust the certainty, comfort, or control more than we trust ourselves. And I absolutely want you to learn to trust yourself. For now, trust me. We’re going to get there. But we’ve got one more of the Worry Whisperer’s tricks we’ve gotta talk about first.
