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#33 Microdose Episode Part 3: Actual vs. Hypothetical Worry · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

Hi, welcome back to our third Microdose episode. It's our third and final microdose episode on stress, anxiety, and worry. And today we're gonna be talking about. How to know whether your worry is actual versus hypothetical and why that matters.So in our last microdose episode, we talked about some of the myths that can come up about why worry is helpful and we try to debunk some of the more common myths, But we're all gonna worry anyway. So when it comes up, even if you said, I know it's not helpful, all right, I'm still worried.What do I do about it? So when you're not in a necessarily stressful or dangerous situation, but you still feel that familiar pit in your gut or tension in your shoulders, it's a good sign that some worry thoughts have popped into your head. So maybe you're dwelling on something in the past or you're pondering something in the future.And like I said, this is really normal. And I'm sure we've said this before and it's worth singing again. You're here today because your ancestors were really good at pondering and dwelling. So kinda want you to imagine, you know, in your mind's eye, your great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother and grandfather just came back from a really difficult hunt or tried to gather necessary plants for medicine.But the hunting and the gathering was no bueno. So no buffalo to feed and cloth the family. No self to put on wounds. And this hunting and gathering pair in this situation has helped by dwelling about what went wrong and they benefit from thinking about the future. So that past information, why the hunt didn't go well or.The fact that that little area of land didn't have the right plants. That's helpful with problem solving for the next expedition. So way to go, ancestors, way to go. Bravo. All right. But here we are with plenty of food and clothing, literally at our fingertips, so thank you. Internet. And we basically have drones delivering important medicine.So, That need to problem solve is not as essential to our survival. Not always, but since it was so essential, it can still also be very helpful now and then that means our brains are not ready to let those habits go, so we dwell, we ruminate. It's only human, but the great news, my friends, is we also have a really amazing modern day brain that can catch this dwelling and ruminating in the act.If we learn to pause and notice our worry thoughts, by the way, hold on. This is an important first step. I'm not gonna go into it here, but sometimes that part's hard. So listen to episode 16 if you need a little primer on this, or a refresher. Anyway, if we take the time to pause after that initial automatic thought, we can ask ourselves an important question.Is this thought about an actual problem or a hypothetical one? All right. Sometimes that's not too easy to answer. Picture yourself. You're driving a motorcycle and there's a sidecar next to you, like one of those old timey motorcycles.A little sidecar. And the sidecar, there's a character in there and they're just kind of talking to you and, and they're saying, turn this way. Go straight. Stop. Faster, faster. Right now, you're driving the motorcycle, you're steering, you have your hands on the brake, your feet on the pedal, so you're the one actually in control.But you get to decide, how much am I gonna listen to this little character in the sidecar? Right. Sometimes they might give some good advice, but sometimes they're just chatty Cathy and they're not really paying attention to what the ultimate goal is. Right. They're sort of really focused right on that moment, and so their advice isn't always great. So if you can think about your worry being like that chatty Cathy Sidecar character where you get to decide, hey, is this actually something that I need to do to plan for, to steer towards, to slow down, right?Or is this character going on and on and on about something that's actually not important? You know, they're just kind of talking my ear off, but I don't have to listen. All right, so an actual problem would be like, Hey, this person's telling me I need to do something, and yes, I need to take a left. That left is coming soon.I need to put on the brakes. I need to steer to the left. An actual problem is something that's current, this very moment, and you can take steps to solve it. They're not always easy steps. But you can do something to resolve the solution in this point in time. All right.A hypothetical often starts with a what if, right? So that's usually a pretty good indicator that you're doing some hypotheticals, and hypothetical worries can be everything from fantastical worries to potential future worries. So there's the kind of stuff like what if our world implodes tomorrow?Kind of existential worries. And then also, what if I freeze during my class presentation next week? All right, so that's a bit more realistic that it could happen, but it's, it's next week. It's not in this very moment in time and there's nothing you can do about that right in this moment necessarily. So, An actual problem would be something you say.All right, let me think of, and I've said this in previous micro dose episodes, what are the things I can do? What are the options I actually, realistically have in front of me if I'm worried about freezing in front of that class presentation and that class presentation is tomorrow. All right. I can review my notes.I can practice in front of someone. I can go into the room in the classroom and give the presentation there so I get the habit of it. Right? There are some things you can, again, not necessarily fun steps, but you can technically do them. If it's hypothetical, such as like, oh my gosh, what if this teacher assigns a presentation and then I freeze?Well, that's a little harder, right? It's like five steps down the road. Of worrying. So we just kind of wanna get our worry a little closer to the actual action steps. Um, if you think about hypothetical worries though, sort of the what if the world implodes or what if I take this class and I then professor doesn't like me?Those kinds of what ifs. The first question to always ask is, is there anything I can do about this right now? Oftentimes the answer is no. In that case, the next question would be, all right, is there a time in the future. Or is there a certain thing that has to happen before I can do something about it? So I often have college students coming to me saying like, what if I don't get the job? Or what if I don't get into business school, and so on and so forth. I'm like, oh wait, hold on. First take the gre, that's gonna give you a score that's gonna help you figure out some of the next steps, right?There's oftentimes a few steps you have to take before you know that it's all doom and gloom, and very rarely is it actually doom and gloom. It's more about saying, all right, first step, take the test, second step, see what the score is, then you can problem solve that, and so on and so forth. And you just do it step by step.Sometimes you can go back to some of those worry myths. Am I confusing my worry with something helpful, like problem solving or empathy or activism? If so, are there action items I can take to show empathy or activism? Even if it doesn't necessarily address the worry, thought, maybe you sort of activate some values that make you feel better.Can I set aside a time to worry in the future once it's a bit more present, right? So it's kinda like an if then statement or a when, then statement. When I do blank, then I can worry your problem solve about blank. So sometimes people will say like, oh my gosh, I don't want this guy to ask me do the formal, then I'm gonna have to go, or I'm gonna have to put him down. It's gonna be really horrible. And it's like, okay, we can cope ahead for some things you need to do.But after that, you can't really worry about it until it's happened. Like you worrying about that it's not gonna make it happen or not happen. So there's no real room for worry here. If or when this person asks you, then you can go through and. Say, okay, yes, I'd like to go, but then you make, you set some boundaries or no, I don't wanna go.And you try to use some communication skills, but worry in and of itself doesn't really help until the person's asked you. Right?We all have some worries that might be a little bit more fantastical. Meaning it, it's hard to say whether it's a yes or no question. It's kinda more existential, you know, what's the point in life?What's the point of society? Is our world gonna end cause of climate change? Right. Now, I'm not saying fantastical in the sense that these could never happen. It's more just to say, gosh, these are sort of big questions that no one really knows the answer to. And we're all tolerating a bit of uncertainty about what's gonna happen in the future, but I can't do anything about it right now.I mean, there's not really anything that worrying is doing to help me resolve this problem or to give myself an action step to take if I care about this problem. So, In this instance, maybe give yourself a set amount of time to let your brain really go for it. Worry away. But put some parentheses around this time so that the worry isn't popping up all day and just rotating in your head without any game plan.But put some parentheses around this time so that the worry isn't popping up all day or just rotating in your head without any game plan. And when that worry inevitably pops up, you can say, oh, hey. Yep, I'm gonna worry about you. At set point in time, you know, it's right now I'm in a class. I can't really worry about you right now.I think once you start to catalog and pay attention to your worry thoughts, you're gonna notice that some of them are really familiar. And they come little blips because you used to say, oh yeah, there's that thought again. I tend to have that a lot, and you can kind of keep going. You're over time. The more you practice just being like, huh, is this actual or hypothetical?Oh, it's hypothetical. All right. I can set aside a time to worry or I can note when I'm gonna be able to problem solve. All right. Done. You know, and it's just so much less time and energy wasted on chewing on a thought that doesn't really have a solution at that point in time. So again, we can sometimes sound like a broken record on this, but everything we talk about takes some practice and it's not always gonna work every single time. You're building some muscle towards this. Your brain has had years and years of really good practice at dwelling and ruminating, thanks to our amazing, but sort of fashioned ancestors.So be patient with yourselfif you listen to this and you feel like, yeah, this is a great first step, but I need something meatier, we're gonna give you a few resources in our show notes, so make sure to check those out and stay tuned because we'll have another full episode coming at you soon.