Worry postponement

Capture worries as they arrive, and deal with them only in a fixed daily slot.

How it works

When a worry shows up, write one line and return to what you were doing. You are not suppressing it — suppression backfires — you are deferring it to a scheduled 15-minute period. Two things then happen. Most worries have gone flat by the time the slot arrives, which is direct evidence against "I have to deal with this now". And the ones that are still live get your full attention rather than a leaked hour of it.

How good is the evidence

Strong evidence

Stimulus control for worry comes from Borkovec’s model and is a well-established GAD technique that appears in both CBT and MCT protocols.

Caveat: Postponement is a tool for changing your relationship to worry, not a way to never think about anything. If you find yourself using the slot to worry harder, you have turned it into a ritual — shorten it.

Where this is used

The domain modules that lean on this technique.

• Anxiety about the state of the world — Climate, conflict, politics, the news
• Social media and comparison — Feeds, comparison, being perceived, the urge to check
• Health anxiety and body checking — Symptoms, searching, appointments, mortality
• Relationships and social standing — Being judged, conflict, whether people are annoyed with you

Related techniques

• Worry triage — Sort each worry into one you can act on today and one you cannot. They need opposite treatment.
• Detached mindfulness — Notice a thought arrive, and take no action on it whatsoever — including not arguing with it.
• Decatastrophising — Realistic worst case, most likely case, and — the part people skip — how you would actually cope.
• Concreteness training — Move from "why is this happening to me" to "what exactly happened, and what is the next step".