The Worry Trap

Do You Worry All the Time?

Have you tried to control your thoughts and get your worrying under control? Did it work? If it didn't, try this simple exercise: Take thirty seconds, right here and now, and don't think about something you recently worried about. Think about anything and everything else, but don't think about that worry.

How did you do? Like most of us, you probably could think of little else except whatever it was you worried about, no matter how hard you tried. This is the problem with trying to control your thoughts: Your attempts to stop worrying very often lead you to repeat and refresh the very worries you're trying to dispel.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a revolutionary new approach to resolving a wide range of psychological problems, can help you break the cycle of chronic worry. ACT stresses letting go of your attempts to avoid, change, and get rid of worry. Instead, it shows you how to accept your feelings as they occur, without judgment. You'll learn to de-fuse from your worries, observing and then letting them go. Then you'll explore and commit to acting on your values, thereby creating a rich life for yourself-even with the occasional worry.

Pragmatic, straightforward help from an astute and expert clinician; the author draws on cutting-edge research findings to help those who suffer from the age-old problem of worry.
-Jacqueline B. Persons, Ph.D., director of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy and associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

This should be a welcome and helpful book for anyone whose life is disrupted by worry. LeJeune offers a practical and informative approach for dealing with worry that places it squarely in the larger and wondrous context of one's whole life! The easy-to-follow mindfulness methods and acceptance practices open the door for real transformation to any reader who actually does them.
-Jeffrey Brantley, MD, director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program at Duke University's Center for Integrative Medicine and author of Calming Your Anxious Mind