My clients often tell me that they feel worried. And, while I understand what they mean, I always tell them that worry is not a feeling – it’s a thinking process linked to the feeling of anxiety. So, really, what they are telling me is that they feel anxious about something and have gone into worry mode to try and think their way out of the anxiety.

In schema therapy, the part that feels anxious is your Vulnerable Child mode – Little Jane or James. This is the emotional part of you, which gets triggered whenever you feel sad, anxious, stressed, hurt, upset, down… It’s also the part of you that holds all your painful memories from childhood and can get triggered when you feel threatened by something – especially if that reminds you of a stressful event from childhood.

Worry is a symptom

Let me give you an example. *Helen comes to see me because she can’t stop worrying. It’s driving her crazy, because she worries about every little thing. ‘If I have a meeting at work, I worry beforehand, about what I’ll say, whether my boss is annoyed with me, whether my colleagues like me, what I’m wearing, what I say in the meeting… You name it, I’m worrying about it,’ she tells me.

And this worry is exhausting for Helen. It makes her feel stressed before, during and after the meeting. She just can’t stop thinking about these problems. It’s like her mind is a vice – it grips on to the problems and won’t let go. ‘The other problem is that it’s driving my husband crazy,’ she adds. ‘He tries to reassure me but it doesn’t work, so I go on and on about these petty things until we’re both ratty and exhausted.’

Of course I feel for Helen – her worry is causing huge problems in her life. It maintains her low self-esteem, because she doesn’t believe she will ever do anything well enough, and that people think she’s rubbish at her job, even that she will get fired because her boss doesn’t rate her. But in our first session, I tell her something surprising and counterintuitive – even though it’s driving her nuts, worry is not the problem. It’s a symptom. And the root cause of her worry is anxious Little Helen.

Anxiety warns us about threats

I ask her to tell me more about her boss, to see if he reminds her of anyone from her past. She thinks about it, then has one of those lightbulb moments. ‘Ohhh,’ she says, ‘He is just like my dad!’ Helen goes on to tell me that her dad was highly critical when she as a child, telling her that nothing was ever good enough. If she got a B on a test, he would ask impatiently why it wasn’t an A. If she came second in a cross-country race, he would berate her for not being first. And so on.

So when she goes for a meeting with her boss, Little Helen feels highly anxious – just like she did around her dad as a child. And that’s what anxiety is for – it’s an alarm-bell emotion that warns us about potential threats. Her Worrier part then kicks in, with lots of ‘what if…’ thoughts to try and problem-solve the threats. ‘What if you say the wrong thing?’ ‘What if your boss criticises you?’ ‘What if you get fired?’

Trying to help. Trying to protect her from this nit-picking, critical, perfectionistic boss who is just like her dad. Not mean, or horrible, but trying to help Helen deal with the anxiety-provoking situation.

Comforting your little self

In order to help Helen, in schema therapy we do a few things. First, we work with the Worrier, helping Helen see where it came from, what its function is, the pros and cons of worrying, and so on until we can help it calm down a bit. Second, we help Little Helen feel safe, comforted and genuinely, deep-down reassured (not the temporary fix of reassurance that worry provides). There are many ways to do this – plenty of which are provided in this blog – but a simple first step is to use this self-compassion practice to help your little self feel calmer and more at peace.

Third, we build up Helen’s Healthy Adult, so she feels stronger, more rational, having better perspective – seeing the big picture rather than obsessing about the details. If you are a worrier by nature, you need to do all three things, rather than just focusing on the worry. Otherwise, you’re treating the symptom, not the cause, so the worry will just keep coming back.

Warm wishes,

Dan

*All of the case studies on this blog are composites of actual people – I would never reveal any personal or identifying information about my clients.