[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout Recovery Podcast where I teach professionals to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work. Hello my friends, and today we're going to look at two ways to reduce worry quickly. How one physician's protocol and a coaching approach can help to break the worry loop fast. So let me ask you this. How much of your day today so far has been taken up by worry or even just one single worry? And what's the actual likelihood of that worry coming true?

[00:00:52] Your brain might be sounding the alarm, warning you of looming disaster, but we know it often lies for effect. In reality, 90% of worries never happen, and even when they do, the outcome is rarely as bad as predicted. Worry is one of burnout's most persistent and exhausting companions. It feels useful, but rarely is.

[00:01:19] So does it start for you the moment you open your eyes in the morning? That same dreary litany of failure playing on loop? When your brain keeps telling you things are going wrong, it's no surprise that your energy, motivation and performance suffer. It makes it harder to trust others too. Your future can start to feel precarious, and this is often the seed of Imposter Syndrome, which is more common than you'd think amongst high performers in burnout. It's rarely the truth about your abilities, but it feels true and it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[00:02:04] Do you carry your worries home at night, becoming snappy or withdrawn around your family? Well it's draining, it creates emotional drag, and it's a problem worth solving. And the good news is -it can be solved.

[00:02:21] Today I'm going to walk you through two simple ways to reduce worry fast, a science-based protocol from Dr. Steve Birman's book, The End of Worry, and a practical reframing technique, also based on neuroscience, that I use with coaching clients.

[00:02:39] First, a quick story that captures the shift that we're aiming for .

[00:02:45] This morning, listening to a man share his sense of hopelessness in depression, I remembered: whatever negative thoughts I have about myself, I no longer automatically believe. I know they're just thoughts. Wait a moment, and another will come. Nothing I think is factual, no matter how convincing it sounds to me. For every belief I have, millions might disagree.

[00:03:17] So what if I'm wrong?

[00:03:19] Being able to observe your thoughts from a distance without fusing with them changes everything. So let's explore how. Let's look first at the Bierman method. Steve Bierman, a physician, offers a brilliant short book, The End of Worry. It's built around a four step mental protocol designed to help you dissolve the worry reflex.

[00:03:43] And it's not about calming yourself or positive thinking. It's a way to reprocess threat and uncertainty at the level of reflex, not logic. The steps are private, internal, and structured. They help you walk through a worry until it loses its power.

[00:04:04] Let's see what it looks like in action. And we use an example from one of my clients, a physician. She told me she'd been late for work after hospital rounds. She immediately worried that she'd fall behind for the day and never catch up. So I asked her, what if that's true?

[00:04:23] What happens if you don't catch up? And she described how she'd feel frustrated, disappointed, overloaded. She could see the people coming around her with their demands of her. I invited her then to step outside herself to look at that version of herself from a distance, and she said, I feel sad for her. I don't want to be her.

[00:04:49] Then I asked her to imagine the opposite scenario. What if you did finish your work? She described it in detail how it would feel, what she'd do, how she'd prioritize, what would happen next. And in that moment, she had a choice to align with that intention, to visualize it and thereby to create her own relief.

[00:05:13] That's essentially Bierman's method. He suggests repeating this process with each and every new worry you have, and he claims then it takes about 10 hours in total over the weeks or months to dissolve the worry habit permanently. In return, of course, you get back thousands of hours that you might otherwise spend worrying.

[00:05:37] I highly recommend the book. It's a short, sharp tool that you can use right away.

[00:05:42] And here's another way that I might deal with it with my clients. In coaching, especially for people in burnout, I often take a different approach, especially when worry is tied to performance, self-image, or imposter syndrome.

[00:05:59] So we use the quick version of CBT Cognitive Behavior Therapy together. So using this one, I first asked my client to separate out the event from her reaction. The event "being late" was outside of her control, but her reaction, her response, what she thought, then felt and then did, was within her control and therefore malleable to change.

[00:06:30] She realized that her default thought was, "there aren't enough hours in the day", and this thought made her feel overwhelmed. When she felt overwhelmed, she rushed her patient visits, was brisk with her staff, and then she froze and procrastinated on the remainder of her tasks for the day. And the result was she didn't finish her work and the worry came true.

[00:06:59] So together we explored an alternative version. What if she could have a new thought? Any thought she wanted about this situation? What would she pick? She picked, "I can overcome this, I'll get back on track quickly." And that made her feel confident. And she said, if I felt confident, I would have prioritized urgent tasks and completed charting notes during the day.

[00:07:29] So the new result is she would be happy with what she accomplished. And that really, altogether is the power of pausing to reframe any situation. Instead of believing her worry, she gave herself a better chance to succeed and to feel good about herself, and of course to complete her work.

[00:07:51] Both methods rely on science, the neuroscience of how our brains actually work. We need to be able to see the future before we can move towards it. So with worry, we see a black future and despite our best ideas, we move towards that. But when we can choose to create a more confident version of our view of the future, then we can move towards that too.

[00:08:17] It's simply a pause and reframe moment that we can choose to uplift our outcomes in this way.

[00:08:27] So both methods, Bierman's and this reframing tool invite you to disbelieve the worry and choose a more empowering path. The trick is to notice the worry, to interrupt it in the moment and not let it drive the next thing that you do.

[00:08:45] So why does this matter and burnout? In coaching I use a very big range of tools and techniques to support clients, to unravel all their old patterns and loops that aren't supporting them and that are entrenching their burnout, their anxiety, their overwhelm, their frustration, even further. Worries, such as these are tied to Imposter Syndrome, performance fear, and perfectionism, and also people conflict.

[00:09:15] With practice, they learn to lead themselves more kindly through their day and through their challenges; to stop hiding; to reconnect with trust, creativity, and collaboration; and to take back all that energy that worry has been draining off them for years. And don't forget outside work as well as inside work.

[00:09:38] So if you'd like to try a simple, powerful protocol to break the worry habit, have a look at Steve Bierman's book, The End of Worry. It's only 70 pages. You could finish it today and start using it straight away.

[00:09:55] If your worries feel older, deeper, more entrenched, tangled in burnout, identity, imposter syndrome, or your sense of worth, that's where coaching can really help you untangle it all and set yourself on a cleaner, more productive path that will eventually become much more fulfilling for you than anything you currently create.

[00:10:18] If you'd like to talk, book a free call with me at dexrand.com and let's map out a recovery plan together.

[00:10:28] I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you have, please forward it to other people you know who may also need to hear this message. Thank you for listening today. Catch you next time.