Dr. Shadé Zahrai

Then at the end of the day, you want to actually schedule in your calendar about 10 minutes of worry time.

Not too close to bed because it might keep you up.

So a good time is, you know, around 5, 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, whenever works.

You schedule it in your calendar.

When that time comes, you set an alarm for 10 or 15 minutes.

You bring out your worry list and you allow yourself to worry.

Now, this does a few things.

It's called stimulus control for worry.

And research has found this is an incredibly effective technique.

It is?

It is.

Because I'll be honest, it sounds dumb.

It sounds completely dumb.

It sounds like what?

It sounds completely counterintuitive.

But what happens is when you're not worrying about something in the moment, the emotions attached to it when it initially came up are no longer there.

And when you're not worrying about it in the moment, when it comes up in the moment, it's driven largely by default areas in the brain.

There's greater activation in the threat detection centers, in the fear centers of the brain.

And so naturally, we don't have access to the front regions, which allows us to process that rationally.

But when you review it later, you suddenly, well, it shrinks the fear to size.