Introduction & Theoretical Background
Patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) spend significant amounts of time engaged in worry. Engagement in worry is reinforced by the beliefs that worry is uncontrollable, and that worry prevents the occurrence of negative events.
Worry postponement was first described in a study by Borkovec, Wilkinson, Folsenbee & Lerman (1983) where it was prescribed as a daily 30 minute ‘stimulus control’ task. The patient’s task was to notice that they were worrying and then deliberately choose to delay engaging in the worry until a later time. Compared to a no-treatment condition this intervention led to significant reductions the amount of reported daily worry.
Worry postponement has a range of beneficial effects including:
- Illustrating to clients that worries typically concern a limited number of themes
- Allowing clients to discover that postponed worries often feel irrelevant by the time they are revisited
- Helping to undermine client beliefs regarding the uncontrollability of worry
- Reducing client’s feelings of urgency regarding