Scheduling worry time every day to work through worries and woes may help put an end to the stress-out cycle, a new study by researchers in the Netherlands found.
When people with adjustment disorders, burnout or severe work problems used techniques to confine their worrying a single, scheduled 30- minute period each day, they were better able to cope with their problems.
The study made use of a technique, called "stimulus control," that researchers have studied for almost 30 years.
People can reduce worries by compartmentalizing worry — that is, setting aside a specific half-hour period each day to think about worries and consider solutions.
Deliberately avoiding thinking about those issues the rest of the day also helped people to ultimately reduce those worries, research has shown.
Tom Borkovec is a professor emeritus of psychology at Penn State University, who was not involved in the new research.
However, Borkovec was part of the group that developed stimulus control therapy for worry in the early 1980s.
He said, "When we're engaged in worry, it doesn't really help us for someone to tell us to stop worrying.”
"If you tell someone to postpone it for a while, we are able to actually do that,” Borkovec said.
The new study was small, beginning with 62 patients, before a number of them dropped out.
Researchers found that people who used worry reduction techniques before beginning therapy regimens reduced their anxiety, stress and depressive symptoms significantly.
Their symptoms were reduced significantly more than people using only standard anxiety treatments.
Four steps are involved in the stimulus control therapy to reduce worrying, according to Borkovec.
Firstly, patients must identify and realize when they are worrying. Secondly, they must set aside a time and place to think about these worries.
Thirdly, when they catch themselves worrying, they must postpone worrying, and instead focus on the task at hand.
Finally, patients are told to use the time they've set aside for worrying to try and solve the problems their worries present.
In the Dutch study, even patients who only performed the first step did better than those who only received the treatments for their anxiety disorders, the study showed.
The findings "raise the idea that some treatments may be more effective if you help people to get a little bit over their worry," Borkovec said.
He also noted that the study should be repeated with larger groups of people.
The new study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
