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Scheduling Worry Time: A Technique to Control Your Anxious Mind

Surviving Breast Cancer
2 days ago
3 min read

Control your mind with the worry time technique. Schedule worry time daily: a therapeutic approach to reducing the time you spend worrying.

SurvivingBreastCancer.org | By Lisa Kalner Williams

As a breast cancer survivor, I rarely go a day without a worry or two. Or fifty. Or more.

Here’s the tiniest slice of my worries this week as a node-positive survivor seven months out of active treatment:

How will I survive this summer heat while layered in lymphedema compression garments?
If I start Kisqali, will it give me lifelong side effects?
Should I have had my treatment and care team at one of the big cancer centers in Boston?
What’s that spot on my back?

I’ve learned that when worry follows me around all day, it drains my already low energy (thanks, cancer treatments!) and takes my focus away from getting better and living my best life.

If your mind is flooded with worries, consider scheduling worry time to keep these thoughts under control so you can enjoy the most out of survivorship.

What is worry time?

Worry time is a technique where you schedule a specific time to express your worries. Outside that window, you postpone anxious thoughts to their designated time. Worry time, also called worry postponement, has roots in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Instead of letting constant worries disrupt your day, CBT therapists suggest briefly acknowledging your thoughts. Then you write down your thoughts and choose to address them during your scheduled worry time. This trains your brain to regain control of your focus.

Worry time is also similar to the “passengers on the bus” idea of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). In this model, the passengers on the bus represent your worries, and you’re the bus driver who controls the passengers’ actions. In ACT, you’re encouraged to tell your passengers to sit down because it’s not worry time – or, in bus speak, it’s not their stop yet.

With this model, you’re not ignoring your worries, but you’re also not letting them steal your attention. If you’re into Keanu Reeves movies, imagine you’re him behind the wheel in Speed, keeping Dennis Hopper in check.

How to build worry time in your busy schedule

At first, you might think, “Another thing to put in my schedule?” You had a life before cancer. That was busy enough. Now, you’re adding blood draws, doctor visits, physical therapy appointments, and pharmacy runs to your day-to-day.

But by sticking with a consistent worry time, you’ll be in a better mindset to handle all the extra things that have been thrown your way since your diagnosis.

Here’s how to get started.

Create a consistent block of time in your schedule. Start with a daily cadence of about 15 minutes.
If any worries come to mind before your next worry time block, write those thoughts down in a physical notebook or a note-taking app.
When it’s worry time, review the thoughts you’ve jotted down.
For each thought, ask yourself, “Do I still have this worry?” If not, great! Cross it off your list. For any thought that remains, decide which of the following two buckets it belongs to. Is it:
- Something out of your control?
- Something you can solve?
If the worry is out of your control, accept that fact and cross it off the list.
If the worry is something you can solve, make an action plan to address it.
At the end of the fifteen minutes, conclude with something grounding – stretches, deep breathing, or perhaps a meditation.

If you still have worries that you weren’t able to address during this session, add them to the following worry time’s agenda. After all, you have other things to do, and you don’t want worries to take over your days. (That’s why you’ve set up worry time in the first place, right?)

Ready to schedule your worries?

Want to practice worry time with other people in the breast cancer community? Join SurvivingBreastCancer.org for an online Worry Time session on Tuesday, June 16 at 5:30 pm EDT!