We have some moments when we feel free, yet other times unsettling emotions interrupt our days. What can be done when we are bothered by emotions that pull us away from living more contentedly? My mind flips back to when I worked with a young man, Jason.

Jason’s life was interrupted by anxiety, particularly at night. As he climbed into bed, his mind began to be bombarded with worries. His worries took different forms: what happened during the day, what the next day would bring, analyzing every interaction he had and thinking about what he wished he had said instead. The worries mounted triggering high levels of anxiety. Different strategies to mitigate his angst were met with minimal success.

Jason explained he didn’t want to forget what he worried about because he was afraid he would miss something important. And so, we created Boxes on a Shelf.

First, we created a list of the categories of his worries (e.g., what he had to do, things he said he wished he hadn’t, health, random worries, etc.). These categories were labels he put on imaginary boxes. At night, when disruptive thoughts and emotions burst through, his job was to determine which box each thought should go into. He told me how he how he would lay in bed as the events of the day swirled through his mind. He seized one and determined what category it fell into. Once he decided on the category (e.g., unnecessary worry), he imagined the box with that label and visualized placing the worry in the box. If a worry popped up that didn’t fit into any of the boxes he had already created, he visualized a new box, created a label, and put the worry in that box. As his mind began to empty, he imagined placing the boxes on a shelf in his closet, closing and locking the closet door until morning.

In the beginning, he actually made boxes. He took old shoeboxes, Amazon boxes, anything he could find, and labeled them. When the thoughts and feelings created distress, he took the box, opened the lid and made a motion with his hand as if he pulled the thought from his mind and placed it into the box. As time went on, he didn’t need to use real boxes. Through practice, he could visualize the boxes and imagine putting his worries into the proper box.

What helped Jason was being able to set aside his worries and place them somewhere outside of himself. He knew his worries and thoughts would be waiting for him in the morning, should he want to act on any of them. But practicing this technique led Jason to sleep more soundly. Soon he found that in the morning, he didn’t need to retrieve or think about the “worries in the boxes.”

Featured image courtesy of Ruchindra Gunasekara on Unsplash.