Vlad Munteanu When it helps: When the same worry has done its tenth lap and shows no sign of tiring.
When it doesn't: Not built for grief or for real ongoing situations that need feeling-through rather than sorting. Some heavy things aren't worries: they're losses.
Worries come in two species: ones you can act on, and hypothetical ones, the “what ifs” that no amount of thinking can finish. They feel identical from the inside. The worry tree is a short series of questions that tells them apart and gives each kind the treatment it actually responds to: action for the actionable, scheduled action for the not-yet, and a deliberate letting-be for the hypothetical.
It's almost bureaucratic: a flowchart for worries. That's exactly why it works. Rumination hates paperwork.
Catch the worry and hold it in one sentence. Not the whole tangle, just the one that has you right now.
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