This week I’m continuing my series with Dr. Joel Minden, and there’s no one I’d rather talk with about how to handle worry. Joel is a true expert on this topic. He offers a compassionate, realistic, and effective set of tools for worrying less so you can redirect your energy toward living well.

Specific topics we touched on included:

• Anxiety vs. worry
• The implicit goal of anxiety
• The similarities between obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
• Intolerance of uncertainty
• Worry as a learned behavior that is reinforced (rewarded), making it more likely to continue
• Finding alternatives to replace worry
• The sense of helplessness that can lead to depression
• Whether worry can ever be productive
• The value of writing down one’s worries
• Possible signatures of unproductive worry
• Shifting attention to what we can control rather than focusing on the uncontrollable
• The downsides of distraction as a way to deal with anxiety and worry
• Accepting uncertainty when the outcome would be truly bad
• Being more specific about one’s worst-case fears
• Unhelpful distraction vs. more helpful and productive engagement with life
• Allowing anxiety to “come along for the ride”
• The role of meditation in dealing with worries
• Joel’s use of CBT techniques for dealing with his own worry and anxiety

Joel Minden, PhD, is a clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety and related disorders.

He is the author of Show Your Anxiety Who’s Boss (affiliate link), founder of the Chico Center for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, diplomate of The Academy of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at California State University, Chico.

Find Joel online at his website, follow him on Twitter, and read his blog on Psychology Today.