The second half of 2011 was not a good time for me. Work was very stressful, and what had been gearing up to be the Great Summer Romance had slowly and painfully fizzled out. My mother was unwell, and I was going through a phase of really missing my father, who had died a few years before. It was the perfect, uninvited storm.
Before, when I’d gone through bad patches, I’d been able to dig myself out fairly quickly. Not this time. Suddenly, I was living in a state of high anxiety. I was still getting on with my life – going to work, going out – but anxiety was running the show. Having to make even the smallest decision would send me into a panic.
My regular coping tools – staying busy, booking a trip, going for long walks – weren’t helping. I knew I had to find a therapist to make sense of what was going on, but that was another decision to make. After I’d tried a few who didn’t work out, a friend recommended someone she thought would be a good fit.
The therapist was Norwegian, and her consulting room – all Delft blues, cream and earthy tones – exuded hygge calm. The first time I walked in, I felt a sense of relief. I told her how I’d been feeling and she told me I could find a way out. I didn’t believe her. Over the next few weeks, her kind, firm and practical approach was reassuring. Now I felt supported. But my anxiety was still rocketing.
Then, during one session, when I was stuck in a particularly vicious circle of overthinking, she said: “Tonight after 6.30pm is ‘No Worry Time’.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Exactly that,” she said. “From 6.30pm until you wake up the next day, you’re not allowed to worry.” “How will that help?” I asked. “By giving your brain a rest, and allowing the other parts of you that aren’t driven by anxiety to come back in,” she said. She told me that anxiety is a bully, and like all bullies, it needed to be put in its place.
Of course I didn’t believe this strategy would work. I thought the only way out of my fugue was to flog my worries to death and think about them every waking minute until I’d “solved” them. Surely putting a lid on them, even if just for a few hours, would make them worse? To this, she said: “Your worries will still be there in the morning if you want to go back to them.” For some reason, this cheered me up.
Reluctantly, and begrudgingly, I gave her rule a try. The first night I managed to park the anxious thoughts until 8pm, before I let them flood back in. A tiny victory, but that was enough for now.
A couple of weeks later, the therapist asked how I was getting on. I told her I’d extended my no-worry time to 10.30pm, but I still didn’t think her strategy was helping much. She told me to keep going. So I did.
It took a while, but eventually I extended the no-worry rule until the next morning. Soon after that, something clicked. I was feeling lighter, no longer bobbing up and down in a sea of anxiety, and starting to feel happy and optimistic again. I told my therapist it was working.
After 18 months I felt ready to go it alone. It wasn’t only the no-worry rule that did it, of course. It was the mixture of talking therapy and practical advice – eating well, sleeping well, exercising, not rushing around – that helped. But I’ll never underestimate how powerful it was to park my worries overnight.
Last year, when I was travelling in Bangkok, I saw a sign in a bar that read “No worry zone”. I loved it. It was a reminder that I could make my life a worry-free zone, and that you don’t have to be held hostage by anxiety – sometimes you can call the shots.
