How to Stop Worrying: A Window, a Sort and a Test
How to stop worrying is really a question about where the worry goes, rather than whether it arrives at all. Three things have held up in research: postponing worry to a fixed daily window, sorting each worry into solvable or hypothetical, and tolerating one uncertainty instead of chasing reassurance. This worksheet sets all three up for the week ahead.
Reviewed byMichael Callans, MSWRelated tools & tests
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About this tool
How to stop worrying is the wrong target and a reasonable question, so this page answers the version that can actually be done: moving worry out of the whole day and into a place where it costs less. This is the plan rather than the explainer. If you want to understand what worry is, what it does to the body and why some people worry far more than others, What Is Worry? covers that ground. If you want the single technique in detail, with the script and the common mistakes, Scheduled Worry Time has it. What follows is the four-part week that puts them to use.
The core method is older than most people assume. In 1983 Borkovec and colleagues applied stimulus control, a principle borrowed from insomnia treatment, to worry: instead of arguing with worries or trying to suppress them, you postpone each one to a fixed appointment in a fixed place, and when the appointment arrives you worry deliberately for a set period. McGowan and Behar tested a version of this with 53 high worriers over two weeks, using a daily thirty-minute worry period against a control condition, and reported reductions in anxiety and in sleep difficulty. The findings are modest and preliminary, from small samples, and they are the best direct evidence this technique has.
Postponing is not suppressing, and the difference matters. Wegner and colleagues showed in 1987 that people told not to think about something went on to think about it more afterward than people who had been free to think about it all along, which is why telling yourself to stop worrying reliably fails. Postponement sidesteps that trap because nothing is forbidden. The worry is written down, acknowledged as legitimate, and given a time. Most people find that many of the worries they postpone have lost their urgency by the time the window arrives, and the rest get thought about properly instead of in snatches while trying to work or sleep.
The second part is a sort, and it is the step that stops a worry window from becoming thirty minutes of misery. Worries divide into two kinds. A practical worry has an action attached: something can be checked, booked, asked, repaired or planned. A hypothetical worry has none: it is about an outcome nobody can settle today, often beginning with "what if". The useful response differs completely. Practical worries want a decision and a date. Hypothetical ones want to be noticed, named as hypothetical, and left alone while you return attention to whatever is in front of you. The tool at Worry Decision Tree walks that decision through step by step.
The third part goes after the engine underneath. Dugas, Gagnon, Ladouceur and Freeston tested a conceptual model of generalized anxiety and found intolerance of uncertainty to be its strongest correlate, more central than beliefs about worry itself or poor problem orientation. The practical meaning is that chronic worriers are not primarily afraid of specific disasters. They are allergic to not knowing, and worry is the attempt to think their way to certainty that no amount of thinking can produce. That is why reassurance fails so quickly, and why checking, over-researching, over-planning and asking the same question twice all make the next not-knowing harder rather than easier. Our screen at Intolerance of Uncertainty Test describes the pattern.
If the problem is intolerance of uncertainty, the treatment is practice at being uncertain, which is what the experiment in part 3 is for. Pick one certainty-seeking behavior and drop it once, deliberately: send the message without rereading it four times, leave the house without checking the forecast, make the plan without a backup plan, ask nobody whether the decision was right. Then write down what you predicted and what actually happened. The point is not to prove the fear wrong, because occasionally it will be right. The point is to discover that not knowing is survivable, which is the only thing that genuinely reduces the need to worry.
Two honest limits. First, worry is sometimes accurate and the right response is action, not acceptance: a plan on paper cannot fix a situation that needs money, a doctor, a lawyer or a conversation. Second, this is a self-help plan, not treatment. Where worry is uncontrollable most days for six months or more, with restlessness, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension or disturbed sleep, that pattern is what clinicians call generalized anxiety disorder, and psychological treatment for it works: Cuijpers and colleagues pooled 41 studies covering 2,132 patients and found a large effect for psychotherapy against control conditions, while noting signs of publication bias. A therapist can do this work in far more depth than a worksheet can.
References
- Borkovec TD, Wilkinson L, Folensbee R, Lerman C. Stimulus control applications to the treatment of worry. Behav Res Ther. 1983;21(3):247-251.
- McGowan SK, Behar E. A preliminary investigation of stimulus control training for worry: effects on anxiety and insomnia. Behavior Modification. 2013;37(1):90-112.
- Dugas MJ, Gagnon F, Ladouceur R, Freeston MH. Generalized anxiety disorder: a preliminary test of a conceptual model. Behav Res Ther. 1998;36(2):215-226.
- Borkovec TD, Inz J. The nature of worry in generalized anxiety disorder: a predominance of thought activity. Behav Res Ther. 1990;28(2):153-158.
- Wegner DM, Schneider DJ, Carter SR, White TL. Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1987;53(1):5-13.
- Cuijpers P, Sijbrandij M, Koole S, Huibers M, Berking M, Andersson G. Psychological treatment of generalized anxiety disorder: a meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review. 2014;34(2):130-140.
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, November 6). How to Stop Worrying. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tools/how-to-stop-worrying
How to Stop Worrying FAQ
How do I stop worrying about everything?
Worrying about everything usually means worry has no boundary in time, so the most reliable first move is to give it one. Set a twenty to thirty minute window at the same time and place each day, write each worry down as it arrives, postpone it to the window, and return your attention to whatever you were doing. In the window, sort each worry: anything with an action gets a decision and a date, anything hypothetical gets named and left alone. Then pick one certainty-seeking habit, such as rereading or asking for reassurance, and drop it once deliberately. Three moves, one week, reviewed on the trend rather than on any single day.
Why does telling myself to stop worrying never work?
Because suppression requires monitoring for the thought you are trying to avoid, which keeps it active. Wegner and colleagues demonstrated the effect in 1987: people told not to think about something thought about it more afterward. Telling yourself to stop worrying also adds a second problem, the sense that you are failing at something simple. Postponement works better precisely because nothing is banned. The worry gets written down, treated as legitimate, and given an appointment. That removes the fight, and most people find a good share of the list has gone cold by the time the appointment comes around.
What is the difference between useful worry and pointless worry?
Useful worry has an action attached and pointless worry does not, which is the whole basis of the worry tree. If something can be checked, booked, asked, repaired or planned, the worry is doing its job and the right response is a decision with a date on it. If the worry is a what-if about an outcome nobody can settle today, no amount of thinking will resolve it, and the right response is to name it as hypothetical and put your attention back where it was. Most chronic worriers treat both kinds the same way, applying problem-solving effort to questions that have no answer yet.
What is intolerance of uncertainty?
Intolerance of uncertainty is difficulty with not knowing, and it is the factor most closely linked to chronic worry. Dugas, Gagnon, Ladouceur and Freeston tested a model of generalized anxiety and found it more central than beliefs about worry or problem-solving confidence. In daily life it looks like rereading, double-checking, over-researching, asking the same question twice, over-planning, and needing reassurance that a decision was right. Each of those relieves the discomfort for a few minutes and makes the next unknown harder to sit with. Treatment works in the other direction: practicing not knowing in small doses, until uncertainty becomes tolerable rather than solvable.
Does scheduling worry time actually work?
The evidence is real but small, and worth describing accurately. Borkovec and colleagues introduced worry postponement as a stimulus control method in 1983. McGowan and Behar tested it with 53 high worriers over two weeks against a control condition and reported reductions in anxiety and in sleep problems. Those are preliminary findings from modest samples rather than large trials. In clinical practice it is widely used as one component of cognitive behavioral therapy for worry rather than as a standalone cure. Most people need a full week before postponing becomes automatic, and dropping it after two bad days is the usual reason it does not help.
When is worrying a sign of an anxiety disorder?
The markers clinicians use are duration, controllability and interference. Worry that is hard to control, present more days than not for six months or longer, and accompanied by restlessness, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension or disturbed sleep describes the pattern called generalized anxiety disorder. The amount of worry matters less than whether it can be set down and whether it is costing sleep, work or relationships. The reason to get it assessed is that treatment works well: Cuijpers and colleagues pooled 41 studies with 2,132 patients and found a large effect for psychotherapy against control conditions, though they noted indications of publication bias.