How to stop constantly worrying about the future

there's nothing i can do to increase your certainty for the future however there are things that you can do to increase your tolerance of uncertainty lucklin this is dr alan matu welcome to the psych show oh it's a pleasure to be on you treat a lot of people like with anxiety and all that sort of stuff and whilst i wouldn't necessarily say i'm someone who suffers from it to like an extreme degree i was just sort of um curious what sort of like advice you'd have to offer to someone who i'm the sort of person who sort of gets caught up in like fear of the future or anxiety of the future and i'm just sort of like wondering what sort of thoughts you think are best to sort of mediate like those worries so that's a great question and that's a concern that comes up all the time anxiety is it's the most common uh mental illness out there and it's also if you just step back it's if you look at people who might struggle with it but not to the degree where they might need to seek professional help for it it's one of the most common emotions that people struggle with so you're in good company my friend so i got a quick question for you and then we'll get into this discussion do these worries you have about the future or some of the self-sabotaging thoughts you're talking about do they ever um cause you problems do they ever get in the way of your life oh yeah yeah definitely because it's it's worrying to like a degree where it's kind of just like or it can be like you know paralyzing to some degree i'd say you know because i'll be so worried about something that it makes it harder to sort of um act on it right right so um do you have a recent example that you'd be comfortable sharing so as of like you know uni enrollments and all that sort of stuff occur in like early february and so i was really like deliberating over what i wanted to do over whether i wanted to study like psychology or whether i wanted to do audio engineering and you know i sort of like said to myself i'll do audio engineering i'll do audio engineering and i deliberated for so long and i couldn't like come to my decision that it led to me uh in the end i was like oh well i'm not going to do audio i i want to do psych you know what i mean and then um but then i missed like enrollments and stuff like that so now i have to wait and for a longer period of time to elapse to get into it yeah yeah but my sense is from what you've described this is probably a good example of the kind of problem that you have often where you have to make a decision and you might hold off on making that decision you're dealing with a lot of stress a lot of anxiety while you're trying to make that decision and then maybe not making that decision actually causes more problems like in this case you can't you can't register again until when you said it's it's like uh next year or a few months down until like mid-year you know i've been reading um a lot of books lately and i read there's this term metacognition and it's you know the act of thinking about thinking yeah and i don't think that there's a better term like for me to have come across because i'm i always am thinking about my own thinking it's it's anxiety and that's what happens to with especially with people who really struggle with their worries so you're kind of thinking about your thoughts you're you're kind of getting stuck in that loop we talked about one thing that happens which is indecision uh some other things that might happen and i just want to check in with you about do you uh try to get a lot of reassurance like do you try to look up a lot of information like oh audio engineering versus like psychology do you do a lot of that or talking to a lot of people yeah hey let me let me throw this by you what do you think what do you think oh yeah for sure i'm very much like i'm very hands-on like i write a lot like i jot down my thoughts i read like a ton i try and do like a lot of research like you know like i'm i look into like the career prospects on both sides a lot like i i definitely put a lot of thought into the decision and i do i do i discuss it with people a lot as well so getting back to audio engineering versus um versus psychology and this kind of example you gave me how often do you struggle in this same way with everyday decisions or everyday worries so i'm talking about waking up the kind of stuff i have to do during the day the the tasks on my list during the day the the worries about about your health the health of other people um that kind of stuff um your finances things like that how much does this kind of pattern play out with these other everyday kind of situations so i i wouldn't say it's always like a sort of severe thing like it's not always like acid like top like tip of my mind you know what i mean but definitely it feels like most of the time there's always that sort of underlying feeling of like this sort of like slight dread in regards to like oh i've got to make sure i've got everything worked out for my future like i'm definitely i'm the sort of person i far more i fear the future far more than i like would regret anything in the past you know what i mean what are you afraid of hmm well i i think i think i'm most afraid of sort of just like not achieving like comfort sort of like not achieving sort of like a comfortable lifestyle and being like secure i'm afraid of like a lack of security and then in turn sort of like if i am like failing career-wise you know what i mean like i think it's sort of a thing where i'm like potentially afraid of like you know not being able to like maintain like relationships with like friends like romantic relationships all that sort of like all that sort of stuff i just have a fear of sort of losing it all you know what i mean like yeah you know it's just the sort of fear of like not being like financially stable sort of not really making much of myself and sort of just like you know lingering around i gotta tell you that's that's a fear that a lot of folks i work with who have um who struggle with worries that's one of the big common worries is i don't want to fail i don't want to let myself down i don't want to let the people near me down i don't want to be in a really catastrophic type of situation in in terms of my life the kind of fear that you have um it is about these future consequences these future situations and the thing about the future is it's uh as yoda said it's it's always in motion it's always changing um we don't quite know what's going to happen so there's a lot of uncertainty about the future well uncertainty is the thing that fuels worries you know what what happens when you have this type of anxiety is your mind wants to get more certainty it wants to read more articles it wants to talk to more people it wants to spend more time thinking about possible solutions but there's there's no way you can think yourself out of this so what your mind wants to do in these situations is try to minimize uncertainty as much as it can but the thing with these kind of worries are they're worries about the future and you are never gonna have certainty i don't know what's gonna happen tonight and i don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow for you so every day we are dealing with uncertainty and every day we we accept a certain amount of uncertainty there's something about these situations though that make it harder for you to accept more certainty um or i'm sorry except more uncertainty what do you think it is i mean i really i really resonates with me what you said about the whole you can't like you know think your way out of it because i've read like countless sort of like books and all those sorts of things not necessarily just like self-help ones but like you know all the social psychology and just lots of like literature anything to sort of help me grasp um those that you know that sort of like oh what can i do to like you know really work my way out of it i think it's so like sort of programmed within me to want like a logical um sort of like you know progression to understand where i'm headed i think i've just got sort of like a bit of a fear of not knowing like where i'm headed and so you know i think also the pessimist in me sort of says like uh oh well you know if you don't know where you're headed then it's probably for the worst there's a great term uh to look up if you haven't come across this in your research already defensive pessimists for uh this is my wife 100 so for some people when you're facing a stressful situation it can actually be helpful to be optimistic about it and um that that actually helps you to prepare and it helps you to face that situation for other people for people who are more defensive pessimists they need to think about what can go wrong in order to prepare for it and that is actually what helps them alleviate stress and anxiety i think you're someone who is wired to experience more anxiety related to the unknown and the future and that's okay because in some industries and jobs and roles that is a very good thing i want the people working in space programs who are planning the next launch to be highly anxious about all the consequences of what might be happening you know i want i want the people who are doing big scale planning for the future to to be more anxious about this kind of stuff right so in in some situations that's really helpful where it seems to be getting in the way for you is when you do need to move forward and you don't you get blocked you get stuck because of your own anxiety um am i summarizing things right so far am i is yeah yeah definitely i would say so okay so here's what we got to do there's nothing i can do to increase your um your certainty for the future however there are things that you can do to increase your tolerance of uncertainty so i i want you to think about it like um like this uh do you have any allergies i've got a brother who's allergic to like chicken like you know anaphylactic to chicken and all the peanuts okay okay so that's a good example here um so if your brother eats chicken his body thinks that this is some kind of foreign um invader some kind of infection and it starts fighting it off to the point where he goes into anaphylactic shock it sounds like yeah okay so that's that's how allergies work when you someone who has an allergy they eat or get exposed to or touch a everyday thing whether it's pollen or a type of food or or a type of animal right and those things are not dangerous to that person but your body thinks they are so it starts fighting them off but that fighting is what causes the problem it's what causes the allergy whether it's your eyes get poofy your throat starts to close up you start to sneeze whatever the allergy response is your body doesn't need to be doing that so this healthy mechanism is now causing problems that's the same thing with your worries my friend it is natural for us to get worried when we're facing uncertainty but for you when you face uncertainty it's like your body having an allergic reaction it's worrying more than it probably needs to it is seeking more reassurance it is it has a drive to gain more knowledge and it has a drive towards trying to focus all your attention on this thing and the reason why it's probably happening more for you at night is you have less things kind of uh consuming your attention less things absorbing your mind um you're probably more tired too or or maybe you're you're you have more reminders of this decision you have to make that kind of stuff so when you're experiencing worries to this degree it's like an allergic reaction to uncertainty that's what's going on um okay yeah that's a good analogy does that does that kind of resonate that kind of fits so yeah yeah no definitely definitely so we have to build up your ability to tolerate that uncertainty we have to build up the ability for you to actually experience whatever it is that's causing you an allergy and the reason why i like this analogy so much is that's what some of the experimental treatments of allergies actually do like for peanut allergies the experimental trials they're getting your body slightly exposed to the peanut allergen and over time that slight exposure actually uh helps your body to understand i don't need to fight this thing this is i can i can deal with this i can deal with this inside that's kind of what we have to do for you we have to find that version of it for you so what that means all right is you have to be aware when you're going into um above and beyond anxiety mode so when you're worrying about something more than what most people would when you're seeking more reassurance than most people would when you're trying to get more information than most people would number one you got to recognize that that okay i'm going into this place now so one thing that can help is to think about 10 people in your life what would they do in this situation would they um spend a few hours thinking about this now if it's a a very big life situation then yeah they might but if it's something you've already spent a ton of hours thinking about then maybe they won't so i like to think about 10 people in your life or if that's that's too hard think about five people in your life if that doesn't work ask three people you're close to could be a family member someone you work with or someone you go to school with and a friend and ask them hey let me check in with you i just want to know if i'm being reasonable here or from sort of uh being unreasonable what would you do in this situation is does this sound like something you would do or does this sound like this might be more my anxiety so number one get get a check of your anxiety and know if this is common or if this is less common so that's one place where i would start yeah yeah that sounds like a good idea yeah okay so then let's say you get check-in with your friends and and they're like oh yeah no i would totally i would totally be researching this this is a big decision uh this is totally common i do the same thing then great keep doing that because that's where you should be but if you get feedback that this is actually not where most people are then i want you to find ways of tolerating uncertainty so that number one that probably means stop doing your research stop looking up more information stop trying to get more data because you're not going to get more data one of the things that i was just talking to someone else about this you apply for something or you send an email and then you keep rechecking your email or you keep looking online to see if they've sent out stuff about those applications you got to stop that because that will just keep you stuck in the loop of anxiety it's not gonna it's you're not gonna get anywhere so that's number two is minimize the data if if you're in anxiety land then minimize looking up more information and that also means minimize getting reassurance from other people minimize asking that asking them is it okay um should i be should i be doing this should i not be doing this you want to you want to hold off on that the next thing i want you to do is what are my values here what's important to me what do i care about and um if you're unsure of those things the the quickest way to get a sense of your values i wish we had more time we could actually do this but um the quickest way to get a sense of your values is think about your 100th birthday like who's there what are the stories that that they're sharing about you um what is it that you want to be known for basically the things you're afraid of my guess is the things that you want to be known for is is um really working towards something that made a difference or having these relationships that you really care about that that you weren't a failure but you you made a positive impact in your community and that you um you really cared about the people you're close to i'm guessing it's something something along those lines um yeah definitely yeah like what would you say are the important values that you have to you right now like what yeah what's valuable uh i do like you know i it's what i think most people would hope for but i definitely want to like excel in whatever field i go into you know what i mean i want to do well and i want to like make a difference within it and do something interesting within it yeah so it's important for you to excel to work hard to really make a difference in whatever field you go into and then to be there for other people to be able to help them to be able to to do more for them my friend the only way to do that is to be able to take risks if you want to achieve and excel that also means taking risks when i started this youtube channel it was a big big risk for me i didn't know what was going to happen and i had i had a bunch of dud episodes that i spent so much time making um and struggling with and episodes that like no one like watched no one cared about those things um you are going to fail that is going to happen if you're working hard and you want to make a difference in a field you're going to have setbacks whether it's audio engineering or psychology you're going to have setbacks but as long as you learn from those that's actually how you get better so this is where sports psychology is really um uh very eye-opening for me anyone who trains athletes professional athletes um they have to help those athletes get very good at setbacks um the times where uh they don't have a good game or they don't have a good match you have to be able to learn from those and see what you can prove you you can't improve and get to a point where you are competing at a high level without failing without dealing with setbacks and all of that sort of stuff that means you got to take risks you got to face some uncertainty so for you yeah when you're facing these unknowns i want you to think about these values i want to make a difference i want to excel i want to be i want to be the guy who's there for other people and make a decision based on that like what will help you right now take one step forward towards that goal what's going to help you right now to make a decision that's consistent with these values that you have that's what you got to move forward the values you're talking about means you have to be able to accept more risk you have to be able to try more so hopefully you get to a point there where you kind of are leaning towards a decision and if you're not get back to your values help those to to help you decide what decision to make and then i want you to make a commitment to facing that uncertainty for a small period of time doesn't mean you're making a decision that's going to impact your whole life it does mean you're making a decision that impacts the next month or the next three months or the next six months or the next 12 months like however long a period of time of uncertainty you're willing to take on i want you to take on a piece of that uncertainty like this decision that you have about what path to go down academically a year from now could you change that decision yeah yeah i suppose i could so what are we afraid of then because if if you yeah exactly like so what i'm asking you to do then is take on uncertainty for the near future take some of those courses see how this is going for you and then if it's not going well you can change you can totally change yeah yeah definitely yeah i don't know i don't know what it's so strange to have it like you know put into like these sorts of terms that makes you just look at it so differently so quickly uh almost as if that's my job like i i i was like the other thing here is once you've made that decision once you've um moving forward with it you're still gonna have some worries like did i make the right decision yeah and that's where um that's where this connects with sleep the periods of time that you're really vulnerable to these worries i want you to have some go-to activities things that really absorb your mind and make it a little bit easier for you to tolerate that uncertainty i'll give you an example for me when i'm really dealing with a lot of worries and there's just nothing i can do i've i've kind of done my due dil i've done my due diligence and i'm just kind of waiting for this thing to happen now um it's going to be movies or hanging out with a friend and having conversations about stuff that's not related to this thing i'm stressed about and then the last thing i'll say about sleep is make sure you're only going to bed when you're actually tired um if you're not tired it's it's going to be it's going to make it really hard for you to fall asleep so um if you and if you go to bed you're tired but then you're kind of waking up get out of bed do something relaxing and then get back in bed and try that again we want we want ben to be a calming calming place how you feeling about all this quite good quite good it's always very relieving to have a nice sort of extensive conversation about you know all these sorts of issues and like trying to put it all into like perspective here's a cool thing about this is um your life my life there isn't one path forward um just because it feels like you're moving one step forward towards one path doesn't mean another path might not emerge or that other path that you're considering is gone forever all i'm asking you to do is to take on a little bit of uncertainty for a little period of time and then in the future you can check in and see if this still makes sense for you and if not you can switch gears yeah i very much yeah i definitely like that way of looking at it awesome awesome do you struggle with worries have you been dealing with uh difficulty making decisions i know this is something that happens to me anytime i'm at a restaurant and the menu is full of like hundreds of items i can't decide i don't know what to get um do you struggle with this kind of stuff let me know in the comments below laklam thank you for being on this call um it was not a problem it's been a pleasure yeah thank you thank you

Channel: Doctor Ali Mattu

Views: 33,649

Keywords: ali mattu, psychologist, psychology, the psych show, clinical psychology, mental health, mental illness, cognitive behavioral therapy, new york city, cbt, therapist, therapy

Id: QRMs85Z6Poo

Length: 24min 42sec (1482 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021