Understanding The Worry Tree ?
For many people, this is a worrying time. The wave of mass protests across the United Kingdom will almost certainly set off new chains of infection for the novel coronavirus. With that said, it’s time for change and the worry tree can help people understand their choices.
Worry is a particular problem in Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). The worry tree helps us deal with Type 1 worries which are the worrying thoughts that seem to happen all the time.
Type 1 worries can be separated into two further categories:
-Hypothetical situations
-Current problems
Hypothetical situations are those “what if…?” thoughts about some terrible event that might happen. “My girlfriend said she would be back from the protest hours ago – has she been arrested?” These kind of worries then, cause us a lot of anxiety, when there is perhaps little or nothing we can do about that situation, and we are over-estimating the odds of these things happening.
Current problems are those worries that relate to a real situation, that we can do something about. In which case, we can decide what to do, when and how – which will be much more helpful than just continually worrying about it.