This may sound like an unusual approach if everyone is always telling you "not to worry" or to "stop worrying!" You may be used to people saying that to you and you may well feel that it really doesn't help so what about another way of dealing with things...making time to worry instead.

 Of course, over-worrying isn’t helpful to you at all. However, sometimes we need to make time to both think about something and to make sure we have worry-free time.

Step one:

Start by asking yourself: ‘What is a reasonable amount of time to think about my problems?’

When you think about it you may decide that you could spend twenty minutes a day focussed on this.

Step two:

Now make sure that you identify a clear twenty minute period each day when you’ll do nothing but worry. Sit down with a clock to make sure that you work to time, or set an alarm, and then you are free to worry as much as you need to for the allotted time.

Step three:

When your time is up, say ‘STOP’ to yourself, and now it is time to go do something completely different.

You might even want to do something special for yourself, to reward yourself for such hard work worrying!

Try this exercise and you can start to take back some of that control for yourself of the thoughts and feelings of worry.

You can always reward yourself with ten minutes to just lie back close your eyes and relax whilst listening to my free relaxation MP3. Just click on the link at the top of the page to enjoy the calming listening experience yourself.

You can also find my free MP3 download on How To Stop a Panic Attack here: http://www.markpowlett.co.uk/howtostopapanicattack.html

If there is one actor who appears in the headlines in unusual stories often it must be Bill Murray. Famous for turning up at parties and enjoying himself in a way that only someone confident in themselves can, the star of Groundhog Day has now turned to hypnosis to solve a problem he has had with cats!

Bill Murray has been making a film where he plays a curmudgeonly hermit who spends most of his time with his pet cat Felix in the new film called "St. Vincent". The only problem that he had was that he has an allergy to cats which threatened to derail the production. So he turned to hypnotherapy to cure his allergy so he could share scenes with a showbiz performing cat.

Famous for appearing in "Lost in Translation" and "Ghostbusters" he spoke to chat show host Ellen DeGeneres and in an interview on her talk show on Wednesday this week Bill Murray said of the hypnosis sessions:

"I read someplace that allergies are psychosomatic and you can actually hypnotise yourself and overcome the allergy.

"So I used to do that. I used to go to girls' houses and they had cats and all of a sudden I'd be looking at them crying and they'd be like, 'What did I say?' and I'd go, 'No, it's not you!' So I learned to hypnotise myself and get over it.

"But then I decided I didn't really like cats that much, so I stopped. I'm more of a dog guy. But for the movie I went back to that and it worked."

It's not entirely clear how much of the story is Bill Murray the raconteur and if he visited a hypnotherapist or just worked on himself but it's probably fair to say that if anyone knows the benefits of thinking the way that you want to and how that can really help in your life then Murray is the man!