1. Give yourself high quality worry time.

You may actually value your worrying.  After all, worry can feel protective.  Considering every possible negative outcome can give you confidence that there will be no unpleasant surprises.  The problem comes when worry takes over your life, intruding at any moment of the day or night to distract you from what you really need to focus on.Instead of letting worry take over, set aside brief periods throughout the day devoted to high quality worry.  It’s up to you to decide how often you need to worry and how long each period should last.  You might want to devote the last five minutes of every hour of your waking day to high quality worry, or you might prefer 20 minute sessions morning, afternoon and evening.

During high quality worry time you focus all of your attention on whatever you’re anxious about.  You can allow yourself to get as worked up as you want about anything that’s bothering you.  Once the designated time is up, you turn your attention back to whatever needs to be done in your life.  If worry intrudes at any other time in the day, you very patiently and gently remind yourself that now is not the time to worry.  You turn your attention back to whatever it is that you were doing, confident that before long you will once again have some high quality worry time available to devote yourself wholeheartedly to your concern.  If the schedule you initially choose doesn’t work for you, modify it until you find one that does.  As you practice high quality worrying, you may gradually decrease your sessions in length or frequency.