Wind down
The worry window
Ten minutes, once a day, where worrying is the whole job
10 min
How to do it
Pick ten minutes, same time each day, away from bed. Write down whatever is circling. When a worry turns up outside that window, tell it, in your own head, that it has an appointment later, and get back to what you were doing.
What the evidence says
Scheduling worry into a fixed window is one of the oldest and best supported CBT techniques for anxiety, and it is close to what the guidelines recommend over medication for menopausal low mood without diagnosed depression. It works by breaking the habit of responding to every worry the instant it appears, which is the same skill women describe using to finally get past 3am wake ups.
