How to Reassure Your Inner Worrier
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If you’re prone to chronic worry, it can be exhausting. Your mind grabs hold of a problem, like a dog with a bone, then won’t let go. The worries keep circling through your head, over and over, making you stressed and leaving you wrung out. This is especially tough if you’re prone to worry in the early hours, because your sleep is probably disrupted on a regular basis, making you sleep-deprived and shattered the next day. Understandably, you may hate your worrying brain, or wish you had a big red button you could press to stop it plaguing you with stress-inducing thoughts ever again.
But viewed through an internal family systems (IFS) lens, there is a better way to solve this problem. Because once you understand that there is not just one you – one Dan, say – but many versions of you, everything changes. This is called ‘multiplicity of self’ and this theory is at the cutting edge of psychology, neuroscience and our current understanding of the mind. In IFS, the Worrier is just one part of you – a protective part that is trying to shield you from upcoming threats. That’s why worries are always future-focused. We never worry about the past. And they are always linked to anxiety, because those uncomfortable feelings are coming from a young, anxious part which the Worrier is working overtime to protect.
How protectors protect you
Dr Richard Schwartz, founder of IFS, teaches that there are two types of protective parts: managers and firefighters. The latter kind are reactive, trying to put out the fires of emotional pain by any means necessary. They are the parts that make you drink, smoke, eat junk food, game, binge-watch Netflix, or spend hours scrolling on your phone. Any substance or activity that will help you numb, distract or avoid will do. Firefighters mean well – they just want to ease your pain, which can’t be a bad thing. But they can cause all kinds of chaos in your life, so they are clearly tricky.
Managers do the same job with very different strategies. These inner busy bees are hardworking, diligent, perfectionistic and determined to manage your life, so nothing bad ever happens. They are proactive, attempting to anticipate and avoid pain in the future. Your Critic is a manager. So is your Perfectionist. And the Worrier is, in a way, the quintessential manager, because it works so hard to keep you safe. Psychologists call worries ‘What if…’ thoughts because the Worrier makes you think things like, ‘What if my date goes horribly/what if I get fired/what if my kids get bullied at school/what if this pain in my chest means I have heart disease.’
What’s important to understand is that, even though it might drive you crazy – especially at 3am – this part is just trying to help. Its intention is noble and good. And in IFS therapy we help this part by first getting to know it, understanding why it’s so active for you, what it is worried would happen if it gave up its job, and whom it’s protecting. This last part is key, because protectors are always protecting at least one young part (an ‘exile’ in IFS-speak). If we can make contact with and heal this anxious young part, then the Worrier can relax, stand down, take a different role inside, just become something different.
I hope you can see what a paradigm shift this is. We are moving from the mainstream view of worry in psychology – it’s bad and needs to be stopped – to a warm, understanding, compassionate stance. This alone helps protectors soften. They feel they have been fighting for so long, desperately trying to help, but nobody understood that and just stigmatised or even demonised them. Getting some validation and appreciation can be deeply moving for these parts, so that alone is a powerful step.
If you would like to start working with your Worrier in this way, try my six-day Insight Timer course, Easing Worry & Anxiety with Internal Family Systems. You will learn all about why we feel anxiety and then how the brain goes into worry mode to try and help with that. And you will get to experience some of my IFS practices designed to help with these problems. Over 2,000 students have taken the course so far and it gets overwhelmingly positive feedback, which warms my heart. Just click on the button below to check out the course now.
Love,
Dan ❤️