Before I start breaking down some anxiety strategies and worry management strategies for you, I just want to bring you back to a previous recording, which highlighted that the typical CBT five areas approach if you recall that we in CBT believe that different situations evoke different thoughts, thoughts generate feelings, we don't have a feeling without a thought. And that in turn leads to physiological change, which in turn influences behaviour and behaviour influences, more thoughts, etc, etc, very cyclical.

So, I just want to get you to hold that in mind before we talk a bit more about worry and rumination. Now, rumination comes from cows, rumination technically means that we sort of go round and round and round and tend to go over things sort of looping around obsessively in our thoughts. And worry generally tends to be more present or future-focused, events that we're concerned about. Now, I tend to ignore those differences a little bit because A, I believe that you can go round and round around about the future or the present. And also, we tend to kind of treat the two the same.

So I'd like you to think for a moment about why is it that we worry? Why do we ruminate? Why do we go round and round in our thoughts? And the answer is, generally because humans don't tend to tolerate uncertainty very well. And so commonly, what people do is they try to worry themselves more certain, or ruminate over something until they find an answer. Now, if you really think about that, how often does that actually happen? How often do we worry ourselves more certain, you'd probably be right in thinking that actually, we tend to worry ourselves more uncertain or ruminate ourselves into a place of greater uncertainty.

But it's rather like a slot machine. If a slot machine never paid out, would people put money into it? Of course, they wouldn't, they would quickly learn that that would be a pointless endeavour and an expensive one and stop doing it. Whereas rather like a fruit machine, the brain pays out just enough, the process of worry and rumination, pays out just enough to keep us interested, we think of something new, we have a new idea, we think of a past event from a different angle. And that validates the behaviour and validates the process. So we tend to do it more and more.

Some people they do that an enormous amount. And of course that can become deeply unhelpful. Now, rumination actually comes from cows, because cows have four stomachs. So they chew things over and over, hence the term chewing the cud, I believe. And that's what we do with thoughts, isn't it? Now people will often say, look, Steve, I want you to take away my worry, take away my anxiety. And, you know, I always sort of approached that with some caution, really, because some degree of anxiety is helpful. It's when it becomes unhelpful we need to learn to shut it down. And that's why we're going to do a series of recordings now looking at ways in which we can do that.

I want you to ask yourself though, how many of your thoughts that lead you to worry or rumination begin with the words: "what if" or "will I?" or "will they?" or "why?" So for example, what if I miss the train and then I don't get the job and my day is ruined, and then I'm skint!? Or will I be able to cope? Or what if they judge me? What if I act in a certain way, which leads to people judging me? Or why did I do that? Why did that have to happen, if only I hadn't done that. These are very, very common sorts of categories and types of worried and anxious and ruminatory type thoughts.

And as far as I can tell most of us do that to some degree. The more anxious you are, the more likely you are to do them to greater degrees. Now, looking at those categories, what if, will I, will they, and why, there's something that correlates them, other than the fact they all begin with a W. We just do that to kind of make it neat. Obviously, there are different ways of asking those questions. The thing that links them is that they are all questions.

Specifically, they are hypothetical questions, meaning that there is no real answer, or the answer hasn't presented itself yet. It hasn't happened yet. So effectively, what we're doing is we're trying to worry ourselves certain or ruminate ourselves certain by asking questions that have no answer. So we end up just looping round and round and round and round in our thoughts, and not really finding a solution. And guess what? That can cause quite extreme anxiety in certain situations.

Obviously, stronger thoughts, negative or anxious thoughts are going to create anxiety. But if you have a whole bunch of what-ifs, that anxiety cup is going to fill pretty quickly, isn't it? So the first thing I want you to try and do is notice when you are doing it. Some people tend to do it more at night or more first thing in the morning when they wake up. As soon as you notice, I want you to stop. Notice you're doing it, breathe. Regulate your breathing, calm your threat system. And then I want you to change the question to how rather than what if, to how, because how makes the question solution-focused, we immediately step outside of that loop. For example, how can I change this? How can I think differently about this?