Worry loves to feel urgent. It taps you on the shoulder at breakfast, in traffic, at 2am — insisting it must be dealt with right now. But most worry isn’t a fire; it’s a habit. The research-backed move isn’t to fight it or shove it away, but to give it a time and place. You’re not ignoring the worry. You’re telling it: not now — you have an appointment later.
Postponement, not suppression
In the 1980s, psychologist Thomas Borkovec ran a deceptively simple experiment. Instead of telling chronic worriers to stop worrying — which never works, because a suppressed thought rebounds harder — he asked them to postpone it. Notice the worry, jot it down, and agree to give it your full attention during a fixed daily worry period. The rest of the day, gently return to what you were doing.
The result surprised people: by the time the appointed worry period arrived, many of the worries had lost their charge — or resolved themselves. Postponement works because it honours the worry (you will get to it) while breaking the reflex that treats every anxious thought as an emergency demanding an immediate answer.
15 min
a short daily worry window is usually enough to hold it all
2 kinds
solvable worries need a plan; hypothetical ones need letting go
later
most postponed worries feel smaller by the time you return
The worry tree: solvable or not?
When your worry period does arrive, CBT offers a simple branching question — the worry tree. First ask: is this something I can actually do something about? If yes, it’s a solvable, practical worry. Turn it into a plan: what is the next small step, and when will I take it? Then you’re done worrying, because worrying and planning are not the same thing.
If there’s nothing you can do — the worry is hypothetical, a what-if about a future you can’t control — then the honest move is to let it go. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because rehearsing an imagined catastrophe changes nothing except your nervous system. Here you shift from thinking to soothing: breath, the present moment, your body in the chair right now.
- 1Notice the worry and write one line — just enough to know you won’t lose it.
- 2Say to yourself: not now, I’ll give this my full attention at my worry time.
- 3At your set time, ask the worry tree: can I do something about this?
- 4If yes — write the next small step and a when. If no — let it go and soothe.
- 5Return to your day, and treat any new worry the same calm way.
🌳Worrying isn’t solving
It can feel productive to turn a problem over and over — but if no plan or action comes out of it, that’s rumination, not problem-solving. The worry tree separates the two so your effort actually goes somewhere.
“How much have cost us the evils that never happened.”
Try it now
Right now, don’t solve anything. Just practise the act of setting the worry down. A few slow, even breaths tell your body there’s no emergency — and from that calmer place, the worry can wait for its appointment.
Let the pace do the work — you don’t have to think your way calm.
Set the worry down for now. A few slow breaths — it has an appointment later.
Make it a practice
muukly turns these techniques into a daily habit — bilingual and free to start. Your sessions, streak and progress, saved and gently guided.