Is worry passed from generation to generation? A mother who was concerned about her daughter Lucy's worries confessed that her family includes some “super worriers.” Her daughter is highly sensitive. She wondered if she had inherited a genetic trait for worry, as she had her blue eyes and curly hair.
This is a particularly good time to try to set an example of not worrying about the future, but that’s easier said than done. There are some insightful books for adults and children that can help us step out of that unproductive future-oriented mindset.
Psychotherapist Rick Carson’s best-selling book, Taming Your Inner Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way, teaches adults how to combat the inner voices that bathe us in self-criticism and keep us from enjoying life right now. The inner gremlin is the inner narrator who notices all our experiences and finds fault with them. This figure could also be called the inner worrier.
That’s what Rosemary Wells named the gremlin-like figure who haunts the life of a little boy named Felix in a book called Felix and the Worrier. The worrier taps on his window at night, bringing up subjects that will occupy Felix the whole night. As children get older, they can learn that the worrier is part of their own mind and adopt ways of steering themselves away from fearful thinking.
In The Whatifs, by Emily Kilgore, Cora is preparing for a big piano recital, and the Whatifs are gremlin-like figures that sneak up on her with all kinds of doubts and scary images.
In Don’t Feed the Worry Bug, by Andi Green, whenever Wince worries, the worry bug appear and gets bigger with each successive fear.
Children and adults CAN learn to talk back to this part of themselves—whether it’s called the gremlin, the worrier, the Whatif, or the worry bug—by saying things before an upcoming challenge like “I'm not worried about the test. I'm studying hard and I will do well on it.” Countering the negative suggestions our minds make has proven to be one of the most effective strategies for change.
Psychologist Wendy Ritchey and I wrote a book about self-talk that includes a whole chapter on using positive self-talk to gain inner security. Maybe we can work together to raise a new generation of non-worriers by becoming aware of what we say about things that might occur in the future and concentrating on projecting a compassionate, positive perspective on right now.
Comments