Anxiety Self-Help Technique: Grading Your Worries

There are several ways you can adjust your thinking to create an experience that will lower anxiety. To combat the feeling that life events are overwhelming, you can try a simple technique known as grading. It may seem simplistic and obvious, but few people actually follow through on using it. If you do, it can be an excellent way to relieve some anxiety and get a better grip on the things happening in your life. Click here for more Strategies to Reduce Worrying.

Grading

The thrust of this technique is to write out and assign values of magnitude to various stressors and anxiety provoking situations. Here are the steps:

First, if you find yourself in a “stressed out” or anxiety state, take a moment to collect your thoughts.

Second, create four columns on a piece of paper for daily, mild, major, and cultural.

Third, start going through all of your worries and place them into the appropriate column.

In the “daily” column put small things that you encounter most days (traffic, getting the kids off to school, social situations, etc). In the “mild” column put things that are more timely but hold some small level of worry (test or work presentation, planning a party, having a difficult conversation, etc). In the “major” column put things that are causing more significant anxiety and have higher stakes (significant relationship problems, issues at work/school, economic problems, etc). Finally, in the “cultural” column, put things that are happening in the world that affect your anxiety level regularly (the war, negative news stories, the economy, etc). You may be surprised to find out how many of these things can be involved in your anxiety experience that you may not regularly acknowledge.

Find Solutions

Now that you have your list in front of you, go through the various columns and decide whether you can:

(a) take action or prepare

(b) let go of the worry

(c) learn to accept it

You may be surprised to find out how many things are within your control and can be changed without much stress. Feel free to add columns or include other possible solutions as you see fit.

Additionally, it may be helpful to do this experience regularly and save the sheets to have a record of what you were worrying about at various time and how you were able to make changes.