Worry triage
Sort each worry into one you can act on today and one you cannot. They need opposite treatment.
How it works
Most worry episodes are a solvable problem and an unsolvable hypothetical welded together. Pulling them apart is the single highest-yield move in the whole programme, because the correct response to each is the exact opposite of the correct response to the other. A current, actionable problem deserves a concrete plan and a next step. A hypothetical — "what if the company restructures", "what if the climate news is right" — cannot be solved by thinking, only endured or accepted, and every minute spent trying teaches your mind that the worry was worth it.
Open the toolHow good is the evidence
Strong evidence
The problem-solving-versus-worry distinction is a core component of IU-based CBT for GAD (Dugas, Robichaud), which outperformed waitlist across IU, worry, anxiety and depression in Dugas et al. (2022).
Where this is used
The domain modules that lean on this technique.
- Anxiety about the state of the world — Climate, conflict, politics, the news
- Job and career insecurity — Redundancy, restructuring, automation, performance
- Money and financial anxiety — Bills, debt, savings, whether it will be enough
Related techniques
- Worry postponement — Capture worries as they arrive, and deal with them only in a fixed daily slot.
- 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".