Do you worry about pleasing all of the residents all of the time? Do you worry that your Care Plans and Progress Notes will not meet the scrutiny of your next CMS Survey Team? This Section contains 4 Approaches for Handling your worries.

1. Schedule a time to Worry
After you have a major worry perhaps after a meeting with your Corporate Consultant, you quickly discover that the worry can be very forceful and insistent. "Did I make a good impression? Does he or she feel I am doing a good job? An average job? A great job? A poor job?" And on and on and on. One way of combating this is, oddly enough, to do your worrying at designated times.

Build worrying constantly through out your day. Set aside time as “your worry time.”

Worry Diary
Whenever you sense that your worries are creeping into your mind, remind yourself that it is not yet your worry time and that the worrying will have to wait. Write down this worry in a Worry Diary, or some notebook or day planner that you use for other appointments kept in a desk drawer or at home. Assign a time for you to worry. Start with 20 minutes. It could be during a coffee break, or just after lunch, or on your trip home after work. If you find that 20 minutes is too much time and worry turns into overwhelmed panic, cut back by 5 minutes until you find your optimal worrying period.

I like the time I am when I am driving home from work the best. So I do a visualization of leaving my worries locked up in the car only to be brought out during by next trip home from work. If you want to carry this visualization further you might envision your worries locked up on the glove compartment of your car. If you are eating dinner or watching TV and they creep back into your mind, visualize them as wisps of smoke being wished back into the glove compartment. You might have a self-talk dialogue and say, "Not now, tomorrow at 5:15 is your time or is the time for our meeting. You will have to wait. I am busy watching TV with my family now." Hint: Be sure not to choose your worry time just before your head hits the pillow for obvious reasons. Also worrying as you brush your teeth in the morning will probably set a negative tone for the entire day. You might plan your day at the facility during that time. Planning if different from worrying.

The value of this approach is that it provides you with a sense of having addressed the worry. You will be able to worry about whatever is bothering you — but only at a specified time. This approach allows you to feel more comfortable not worrying, or at least worrying less, the rest of your day.

To practice this scheduled and concentrated form of worry control, start with a smaller worry and work up to your more distressing concerns. From your worry list, choose a worry that is manageable and not overwhelming. Then you can work your way up to your more formidable worries.

2. Find a Place to Worry
Maybe you are unable or uncomfortable using your drive home as a worry place. Maybe you car pool, have kids you pick up in the car, are in heavy rush hour traffic, and for what ever reason the car just doesn't work for you. You may try a worry corner— a place where you go to worry and that you use only for worrying. This special place becomes associated with worrying in your mind. It shouldn’t be your bed, because you don’t want to associate sleep with worrying. Try to make this place a tad uncomfortable, and not a place where you would like to spend a great deal of time. A good place might be in the bathroom at work. When you feel a worry or panic attack coming on at work, if you can appropriately break away, find your stall in the bathroom and freak out for a few minutes. Make faces, raise your arms in the air, hug yourself, open your mouth and make a soundless scream.

If you live alone or with a supportive other your worry space literally could be a corner. Find a corner in one of the rooms in your home that is infrequently used. Place a stool there. Make that your place of worry. When you find yourself starting to worry in other places, gently remind yourself that this is neither the time nor the place to worry.

Developing a pacing route to walk off Worry.
Personally the corner would not work well for me. When I worry I feel a certain amount of agitated energy and like to pace. So, I love to walk around my subdivision and mull things over. If the weather is bad I have a pacing route in my house. It is a figure eight that goes around my living room, into the hall, around my dining room table and back to the living room again. When I am really agitated I pace quickly, but as the worries spill out I find I naturally begin to slow my pace.

By the time you exit your car, leave the restroom stall, leave your worry corner, or stop your pacing, you probably will feel a certain amount of closure on a particular problem or problems to a lesser or greater extent. If your worrying turns nonproductive, and by that I mean you are mulling over and over and over the same stuff, start to look for ways of turning off those concerns. Here's how…

If you feel you worry too much, perhaps you tend to feel somewhat limited in generating
1. options, 2.alternatives, and 3.solutions to potentially stressful problems.

This might be because your anxiety limits their ability to think outside the box and come up with more creative ideas. Thus you may continue to worry in nonproductive ways. Does this sound a little or a lot like you?

See if you can come up with some ideas and solutions that may resolve your worries or at least make your worries less troublesome. Some questions to ask yourself include the following:

• What am I afraid of?
• Is there another way, a more sensible way, of looking at this?
• Am I looking at worst-case scenarios?
• How likely is it that what I’m worrying about is really going to happen?
• How would someone else (a good friend or a role model, for example) look at this problem?
• How would someone who is more of an optimist look at this?
• What are some alternatives and solutions that I may have missed?

4. Become your own Worry Wizard
One of the quirks we have is that we seem to be terrible at dealing with our own problems, but we’re usually pretty good at solving other people’s. Why not use this bit of psychological irony as a tool to help you worry less? Here's how. Imagine that someone is sitting in a chair opposite you. He or she has come to you for advice. For whatever reason, this person values your opinion and guidance. Also, he or she has the same worry you have. Restrain yourself from your first impulse — throwing your hands up in frustration. Reach deeply into your storehouse of wisdom. Step outside of your own frame of reference and pretend you are a wise wizard, a learned professor, a great philosopher, the best therapist in the universe, a Harvard lawyer, a doctor, spiritual entity, or what ever position of higher authority you respect regarding this particular worry.

- How does this knowledgeable person look, act, etc?
- Explain your worry.
- What does he, she, it say back?
You may find that you come up with some wonderful ideas. You are an incredible solution-finder. Now share these ideas with yourself.

Action Plan
Worry Diary - worry list
To practice this scheduled and concentrated form of worry control, start with a smaller worry and work up to your more distressing concerns. From your worry list, choose a worry that is manageable and not overwhelming. Then you can work your way up to your more formidable worries. Write this worry below.

When worries come into your mind what is a dialogue you could make up to whisk them away to their appointed meeting time and place?

Where is your worrying place at the facility? At home? Would your car work for you?

. Asking yourself some good questions
List a worry and answer the following questions
See if you can come up with some ideas and solutions that may resolve your worries or at least make your worries less troublesome. Some questions to ask yourself include the following:
• What am I afraid of?
• Is there another way, a more sensible way, of looking at this?
• Am I looking at worst-case scenarios?
• How likely is it that what I’m worrying about is really going to happen?
• How would someone else (a good friend or a role model, for example) look at this problem?
• How would someone who is more of an optimist look at this?
• What are some alternatives and solutions that I may have missed?

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