Well, it’s just a fancy way of saying, change the environment or the situation in order to change your behavior.
See, worries can be triggered by SO many things! A person. A place. A situation. Even a smell!
But if we set aside a time and a place to worry, we are actually training our brains to reduce the triggers down to one, our worry time.
So, worry time helps you gain control over how often you worry AND by setting your worry time to 30 minutes or less, it helps you limit how long you worry too!
That means you get to free up your ‘mind time’ for the rest of the day and focus on more important things!
Like sleep 😴. Or work 👩🏽. Or fun! 🚴 Whatever YOU want 😀
That’s what Borkovec’s study and many studies since then have found.
Delaying worry until your worry time helps you worry less, reduce anxiety & stress and get some rest!
The OG paper:
Borkovec, T. D., Wilkinson, L., Folensbee, R., & Lerman, C. (1983). Stimulus control applications to the treatment of worry. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 21(3), 247-251.
View the paper
Two experiments comparing the number of worries that people had after a 4 week period with one group of worriers received no treatment & one group of worriers who tried 'worry time''. Guess what happened...
A paper on worry time & insomnia:
McGowan, S., & Behar, E. (2012). A preliminary investigation of stimulus control training for worry: Effects on anxiety and insomnia. Behavior Modification, 7(1), pp. 90-112.
View the paper
Stimulus Control, AKA worry time, reduced worry, anxiety, negative affect, and insomnia.
A paper on worry time & adolescents & health complaints:
Brosschot, J. F., & Van Der Doef, M. (2006). Daily worrying and somatic health complaints: Testing the effectiveness of a simple worry reduction intervention. Psychology & Health, 21(1), 19–31.
View the paper
High school students (age 16-17) with health worries who used worry time reported fewer worries at follow-up.
