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Identify and challenge positive beliefs about worrying — the beliefs that keep you worrying because you think it helps.
One reason people keep worrying is that they believe it's useful: "Worrying helps me prepare," "If I worry, bad things are less likely to happen." These positive meta-beliefs make worry feel necessary and hard to give up. This worksheet helps you identify your positive beliefs about worry, examine the evidence, and design experiments to test whether worry actually delivers what it promises.
Use within a metacognitive therapy framework when the formulation identifies positive meta-beliefs about worry as a key maintaining factor. Typically introduced after the metacognitive formulation is established and the client can identify their own positive beliefs about worry.
Use guided discovery to help the client recognise that they hold beliefs about worry being helpful or protective. Ask questions like "What would happen if you didn't worry about this?" to surface implicit positive meta-beliefs.
For clients who strongly endorse positive meta-beliefs, use a cost-benefit analysis of worry before directly challenging the beliefs. Some clients find it easier to examine these beliefs in the third person first.
Not appropriate outside a metacognitive therapy framework. Avoid if the client does not hold meaningful positive meta-beliefs about worry, as the worksheet will feel irrelevant and forced.
Positive meta-beliefs are often deeply held and ego-syntonic, making them resistant to straightforward verbal challenge. Behavioural experiments testing whether worry actually prevents bad outcomes or improves performance are usually more persuasive than verbal reattribution alone.
Suitable for clients working with metacognitive beliefs, gad, cbt, wells, positive beliefs about worry, behavioural experiment. This tool can be used as a standalone worksheet or as part of a structured homework plan.
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Identify and challenge negative beliefs about worry — the beliefs that worry is uncontrollable or dangerous.
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A formulation based on Wells' metacognitive model of GAD — mapping the role of positive and negative beliefs about worry in maintaining the worry cycle.