Game Changer: The Rule of Opposites

First of all, you need to understand that the goal is not to stop worrying. You need to realize that worries are just thoughts like any other kind of thoughts. We can’t stop our brain from thinking. Go ahead and try not to think about a pink elephant right now. I think I can guess what image just popped up in your mind. Even I’m thinking about it writing this.

You see, trying to stop your thinking just intensifies it. That’s just how our brain works. The same goes for worries, as worries are also just thoughts. Realizing this will be a big step for you towards a healthier relationship with worry.

The Rule of Opposites works because worrying is a counterintuitive problem that requires a counterintuitive solution approach. To put it simply, you need to do the opposite of what your gut instinct is telling you to do.

This might sound strange at first, but makes a lot of sense after you have tried it yourself. Let me show you how.

Actionable Steps to Change Your Relationship With Worries

Coming back to our two familiar ways of dealing with worries – taking them serious and indulging in them or trying to stop them by force – let’s figure out what things we can do which would be a complete opposite to those. Luckily, David Carbonell, Ph.D., got us covered with some great advice in his book.

1) Recognize and Accept Your Worries and Evaluate Them for What They Are – Just Thoughts.

Every one of us has thoughts. Every one of us has worries. For both of them applies the same – it doesn’t matter what happens in your head, only your actions matter.

Did I ever think about killing someone? Yes, I did. Did I ever think about going complete nuts, screaming around in a place with lots of people around me? Yes, I did. Did I ever think about giving a Martin Luther King kind of speech on public transport during my commute to wake everyone up from this daily madness? Yes, I did. Very often.

While having all those thoughts, I never did any of those things (although I am working on the last one). You get the point. Only actions count.

So instead of keeping busy with your worrisome thoughts, make it a habit to just recognize whenever one of those “What if…?” worries pops up and simply accept it as a thought. Sometimes that is already enough.

For persistent worries, instead of following the path of one “What if…?” after another, change the question to “What is this worry about and how can I respond to it right now?”.

Is it about a problem that exists in the external world around you right now? If so, can you do something right now to change it?

If you can answer both of those questions with a “yes”, then go and do something about that problem right now. If one of the two gets a “no”, then just accept that the worry is there and let it be.

2) Humor Your Worries Instead of Arguing and Fighting With Them.

Yes, having fun with your worries is actually possible.

You could sing a small song about your worry or try worrying in your head with a weird foreign accent.

Another way is taking your worry and exaggerating it on purpose, much like improv theatre. So when I’m worrying about “What if I will never find my life’s calling and forever be on a never-ending search?” it could become this:

“What if I will never find my life’s calling and forever be on a never-ending search, which will make me go crazy and bitter, which will make other people stay away from me, which will make me lonely until I finally turn towards drugs to numb myself for the rest of my life?”.

This exercise really worked for me, because it reveals a worrisome thought for what it is – just a thought about a very unlikely scenario. The Rule of Opposites! Give it a try and find out!

3) Get Back Into the External World Doing Your Stuff.

Even if this might sound too simple, it actually works. Very often worry gets into the way when we want to work on something that we need to do. Once you have learned to recognize when there is a worry creeping up in your mind, turn the tables around and counter it by starting to work on something in your external world.

From my own experience, it can help to find a task that does not require you too think. So if you are studying and a worry pops up distracting you from concentrating, take a quick break and go unload the dishwasher, which you ignored this morning. Or didn’t you write “Clean my shoes” on your to-do list already a week ago? Go do that.

Suddenly your worries became a tool to get all the small household tasks done.

4) Set Up a Daily Worrying Workout.

The author recommends in his book The Worry Trick to consider setting up a daily worry workout. It consists of setting up an appointment for yourself every day to fully focus on worrying.

Take 10 minutes during your day, at a time when you can be for yourself, and go sit or stand in front of a mirror and speak your worries out loud. You can even prepare them in a notebook and read them out loud. During those 10 minutes, you don’t need to find a way to solve your worries or do anything else about them. Simply confront yourself with them and listen.

I realized that this works a lot like saying out loud the same word over and over again. “Noodle. Noodle. Noodle. Noooodle. Noodle.” After a while, every word sounds ridiculous this way and the same thing applies to your worries.