Your Own Personal Worry Time: A Simple Way to Get a Break From Anxiety

Here’s how it works. Pick a time of day that works for you—maybe ten or fifteen minutes. That’s it. Not an hour. Not half an hour. Just a short block. For example, you could do it right after dinner, or at three in the afternoon, or whenever you tend to feel the most anxious. The key is to make it the same time every day, so your brain starts to get the hang of it. During your worry time, you get to worry as much as you want. No holding back. You can think about everything that’s bothering you—money, school, a fight with a friend, your health, whatever. The only rule is that you have to do it in that short window.

One great way to make worry time work is to write down your worries. Grab a notebook or a scrap of paper and just scribble whatever comes to mind. You don’t need to make it neat or pretty. Just let it all out. Write, “I’m scared I’ll fail my test,” or “I’m worried my mom is mad at me.” Putting the worry on paper gets it out of your head, which can make it feel less huge. Plus, when you see it written down, you might notice that some worries are actually pretty silly or that you can handle them better than you thought.

Now here’s the important part: when worry time is over, you stop. Set a timer on your phone or a kitchen timer. When it goes off, close your notebook, put it away, and do something else. Go for a walk, watch a show, call a friend, make a snack. Anything that takes your mind off the worries. This might feel weird at first, like you’re not allowed to think about your problems. But that’s exactly the point. You’re training your brain to know that worrying has a time and a place, and it doesn’t have to take over your whole day.

What about all those other times during the day when a worry pops into your head? That’s the magic part. When you start using worry time, you can tell yourself, “Hey, that’s a worry. I’ll deal with it at 4 p.m. during my worry time.” And then you let it go. It sounds too simple, but it actually works. Your brain learns that you’re not ignoring the worry—you’re just saving it for later. That makes the worry feel less urgent. And since you know you have a chance to worry later, you don’t have to hold onto it right now.

You might worry that if you push worries away, you’ll forget them or they’ll get worse. Don’t worry about that. The worries will still be there when you sit down for your worry time. In fact, you might find that a lot of the stuff that seemed so scary earlier in the day now feels less important. Maybe you even realize you don’t need to worry about it at all. That’s a good sign.

Worry time works best if you keep it short and consistent. Don’t let it stretch into twenty or thirty minutes. If you find yourself running over, that’s a sign that you’re getting stuck in a loop, and you need to practice stopping. It’s okay to be messy at first. The goal isn’t to be perfect. The goal is just to give yourself a break from constant worry. You deserve that break.

Give it a try this week. Pick a time, get a notebook, and set a timer. See if it helps you feel a little more in control. Because you don’t have to let worry run the show. You can be the one in charge.