Tired of Worrying? Make a Date With It

08/27/2009

We’ve all been there—up at 3 a.m. obsessing about every little problem. Here's my brain stream from a few nights ago:   How do I get the boys to stop peeing against neighbors’ trees? Man, that one woman looked mad. There's no way I'm going to find size-three yellow tops and green bottoms (ewww) in time for their first day of school.

Whoa. Did I pay my credit-card bill? Those late payments are evil. Dog hair. Way too much dog hair in the house. We're all wearing it like an accessory. Did I just miss a dentist appointment? God, hope I didn't hit reply-all on that e-mail where I called the sender a blowhard.

Is it time for a new toothbrush? Got to be time for a new toothbrush. Still not sure what I think about these newfangled motorized ones. Wonder if Saddam Hussein really is dead. What if health-care reform drags on through 2011? Got to figure out how to block those "grow your penis" e-mails. I'm not exactly the target audience. I swear someone used "geek" as a verb in one e-mail today. "He's geeking on that app." Guess we just verbed another noun.

Stop me any time. Just recalling this list is making me start worrying again. As it was, my mind seemed to revel in it. The more I fretted, the more I fretted, my brain darting from worry to worry like a frenzied mosquito: Hope self-tanner doesn't cause cancer. Are you supposed to recycle shampoo bottles?

Finally, I’d had enough. It was time for desperate measures: sheep-counting. Problem is, that technique has never worked for me. So I went with dachshunds instead. Bad move. The thought of all those wiener dogs brought up the 2006 Superbowl commercial where a farmer with lousy cell reception orders 200 oxen and instead gets 200 dachshunds (stampede!). Was that Sprint or Verizon? I couldn’t remember, so I was back to obsessing.

Turns out all my worry-induced insomnia could have been avoided. The next day I stumbled on a blog post that stopped me short: In it, clinical psychology graduate student Michael D. Anestis, of Florida State University, makes the case that a good way to stop yourself from worrying is to schedule time for—worrying.

Again, what the…?

Seems more than a little counterintuitive.   But according to clinical psychologists—and based on research—the technique can actually help conquer worry. Why? Because you control the worry, instead of the other way around. It’s like you’re saying, “Look worry, you miserable excuse for a human emotion, you need to stop getting all up in my grille. Just back right on down. And I’ll let YOU know when you get your 30 minutes.”

Now for some people, whom I envy a good deal, worrying is just not an issue. They do things, they move on, and that's it. Our dog, Simba, is a good model of this. You scold her for jumping on the couch—she's not going to worry that you don't like her any more. She just gets off the couch, and as soon as you leave the room, she jumps right back on it.

Worriers, on the other hand, can't stop freaking about what could possibly go wrong. So, if Simba were a worrier, her main concern would probably be, "OK, so just because they've BEEN feeding me doesn't mean they'll keep doing it. What if they suddenly stop? Where would I get my Alpo? OMG. OMG. OMG." But, no, Simba's totally focused on right now— "Food. Eat. Good." Also, well, she's a dog, so she's not burdened by an overdeveloped prefrontal cortex, the über hub of human worry.

Now, of course, there is a spectrum of worriers, from mild cases to the extreme form, Generalized Anxiety Disorder. And in the lingo of psychologists, worry—concern about "what ifs"—really should be distinguished from rumination—obsessing about past events and revisiting problems. Regardless, both forms of self-torture are more common among women. And both forms can wreak havoc on your health, interfering with sleep, eating, and energy levels. In fact, a study just out this month and led by Purdue University 's Daniel K. Mroczek, found an association between chronic worrying and early death.

Nice.

Hence, it appears that worry-containment techniques, like scheduling time to do it, can actually keep you alive longer. (And all this time I thought it was just about eating more broccoli.)

How does worry scheduling work? Worriers are pretty attached to the worry—in a worrier's mind, fixating on problems is how they get fixed. So you can't just cut off the worry cold turkey. But if you set aside, say, 20 to 30 minutes a day to worry, you still get to do it, albeit in concentrated form.

There is, however, an important rule to be obeyed: No worrying between worrying sessions!   No fretting at work, kvetching at family-members, or tossing and turning allowed. During the worry sessions, it's just the opposite: Think only the most negative, worrisome thoughts, and banish all positive ones. Initially, you'll make yourself completely miserable each session, experts say. But, ultimately, you'll get bored and run out of worries.

Mission accomplished. You essentially worry yourself out of worrying. And I'll bet it works a lot better than trying to count dachshunds.

It's Time to Give Sleep Its Due—For the Health and Sanity of the Whole Family

06/24/2009

I once had a co-worker who considered sleep a total waste of time, and complained bitterly about having to do it.

“There are so many other productive things I could be doing,” she’d grouch. “Why spend eight hours of my day completely unconscious and drooling?”

So she didn't. She stayed up way past midnight watching “Sex and the City” reruns and Magic Bullet infomercials, shopping on eBay, and pursuing other such productive activities. And every day at work, she was, well….cranky.

My three-year-old twins are the same way. They resist naps and bed-time because they’d much rather be lobbing carrots at each other, jumping on the coffee table, or breaking the printer. The older they get, the more they refuse to settle down—and the crabbier they are later, when their sleep debt catches up with them.

Poor sleep. It doesn’t get much respect from folks at all points on the age spectrum. And in a caffeinated world driven by instant messaging, real-time news, and texting—and with collapsing boundaries between work and leisure—sleep is first to get the shaft (with healthy eating and exercising close behind). It doesn't help that our Type A culture tends to associate sleep and naps with laziness.

I am just as guilty of dissing sleep as everybody else. But unlike my twins and former co-worker, it’s not because I consider sleep a waste of time. I am, in fact, a huge fan. My problem is that, as a mom who works full time, I don’t have nearly enough time to spend on it. Consider an average week day:

• 6 a.m.  Shower, extract kids from cribs
• 8 a.m.  Haul kids to daycare, do potty duty
• 9 a.m.  Stagger into work, smelling vaguely of pee
• 5:15 p.m.  Leave work, make mad dash for daycare
• 6:30 p.m.  Feed kids dinner, argue about eating veggies, bribe them with post-dinner cookies
• 7 p.m.  Cajole kids onto potty with promises of Wii (no pun intended)
• 7:30 p.m.  Coax kids in and out of tub, emerge soaked
• 8 p.m.  Administer pre-bed milk to kids
• 8:30 p.m.  After series of empty threats, brush kids’ teeth and put them to bed
• 9 p.m.  Absently prepare parents’ dinner while attempting to watch "House"
• 9:30 p.m.  Eat dinner while watching rest of "House"
• 10 p.m.  Wash peed-on pants, attempt to clear walkway amidst toys in living room
• 11-11:30 p.m. Collapse on bed, stare blankly at book for two minutes…BLACK OUT…zzzzzzzzz

I know.  Sounds like my own personal pity party. And I don’t know how I’d do it without my husband, who shares these duties. But on this schedule, we’re lucky to get six or seven hours a night; forget the recommended eight. I realize it’s a typical schedule for parents of young children. But it’s one that can take a toll because, as noted in Harvard’s Healthy Sleep Guide, too little sleep hurts our health. 

Specifically, lack of sleep:

• Impairs our judgment and ability to learn and retain information.
• Compromises our mood and emotional well-being—hence the crankiness we associate with fatigue.
• Can raise our risk of serious accidents and injury.
• May, if chronic, lead to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even premature death.

On the flip side, plentiful, restful sleep—averaging about eight hours a night—helps boost our learning capacity, mental performance, and memory, not to mention our mood (and, not surprisingly, our relationships with the poor folks who have to deal with us every day). Good sleep can even help us lose weight and bolster athletic performance, according to a recent New York Times blog post.

Great. But the question remains, how do you get the sleep you need when your job and kids are running you like Jillian Michaels on "The Biggest Loser"? Discovery Health's Ten Tips for Better Sleep offers useful guidance, including advice to soak in a warm, relaxing bath and avoid caffeine near bed-time.

But parents of young kids need even more drastic measures to take back their sleep. For me, at least, it's going to require hard-core action. Here's my give-sleep-a-chance to-do list:
 

• Eat dinner when the kids eat dinner. I need to swear off cooking after they've gone to bed. The risk here is that I'll end up eating corndogs and mac 'n cheese along with them—I’ll have to watch that.
• Turn off the TV. Ouch, this one is going to hurt. But I know myself. Once I get sucked into a "House" episode, it's all over. I'll keep watching them as long as they roll them.
• Procrastinate on household clean-up tasks. This one I really like. Why didn't I think of this before?

But my biggest coup would be getting the kids to sleep in later, past 6:30 a.m., or even (dare I say it) 7. That way we'd all get more healthful sleep. Anybody got any suggestions?