112 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
Repetitive negative thinking can feel like a never- ending
chain of thoughts. As soon as one worry appears, it can give
rise to other concerns that preoccupy your attention and
remove you from the present. For instance, you might worry
about meeting a deadline for a project at work. These
thoughts might prompt you to worry about something else.
Sometimes people even worry about their worry: they
become conscious of the worries themselves and feel the
need to control them, which, in turn, becomes a cause of
concern.
Now, let us see how we can use mindfulness to counter-
act the exhausting effects of repetitive negative thinking. If
you have been practicing the nonreactive stance taught in
chapter 2, then you are already halfway there, because fos-
tering a nonreactive, mindful disposition is the healthy
opposite of repetitive negative thinking. In chapter 2, we
invited you to look at an object and notice its color, texture,
weight, and dimensions in a nonreactive manner. In the fol-
lowing practice, we will invite you to look at something of
your own imagining: a worst- case scenario.
W hen such scenarios come to mind, your normal reac-
tion may be to worry in an effort to determine how you can
prevent them. This time, however, you will practice not
reacting. The goal of this exercise is for you to create upset-
ting mental images without feeling as if you need to do any-
thing about them. This will be difficult to accomplish on the
first try! The key is to approach distressing thoughts with an
attitude of total acceptance rather than reactivity.
Exercise 4.2: Accept, Don’t React Consider the sorts of
things you worry about, and contemplate a worst- case scenario. As
an example, if you have social anxiety, imagine that you have to give