Surprisingly, ignoring worries can improve mental health. Evidence: After practice blocking out fears, people were less anxious—and less depressed 3 months later—especially if they had high anxiety or PTSD. Not all concerns demand attention. Some thoughts are worth dismissing.

Remember the expression “don’t bottle up your feelings”? Somehow this idea became conventional wisdom and I heard it constantly growing up—but it never intuitively made sense to me. The same goes for the idea that we need to talk about our traumas. I once had a therapist who insisted I had to revisit the traumatic... See more

Regarding anxiety as “just part of the script” helps us see it not as a screaming alarm system we have to heed, but as a phenomenon that simply plays out in the theater of our mind. All these thoughts—”I don’t want to go,” “I should stay home because I value self-care”--are just passing through.

“Ooh, here’s the part where I think I should stay home... See more