The Onion’s been on fire this week, but they hit a real highpoint today. Just too apropos not to post:

WALTHAM, MA—Potentially offering hope to millions of Americans struggling with psychological and emotional problems, a study published this week in The New England Journal Of Medicine found that test subjects were capable of fully resolving their anxiety by thinking about it very intensely.

The study, which followed 1,200 adults suffering from mild unease to chronic anxiety, confirmed that focusing continuously and exclusively on one’s own specific sources of distress to the point that one’s mental and physical health began to suffer was associated with the complete elimination of anxiety from patients’ lives and their subsequent return to happiness and emotional well-being.

“Of the hundreds of individuals we studied, those who thought about their feelings of dread and apprehension at every moment of every day—including throughout their workdays, at home, and in social outings—were able to effectively cure themselves of anxiety in 100 percent of cases,” said psychiatrist and lead researcher Rajiv Menon of the University of Virginia. “Whether someone is feeling overwhelmed at the office or constantly pondering whether their relationship might be falling apart, it appears that incessantly agonizing over this source of stress is all that’s required to eliminate your feelings of tension about this subject altogether and leave you feeling untroubled and fully satisfied with your life.”

“The results are clear,” Menon continued. “The more you obsessively worry about something bad that has already happened or about something bad that may happen in the future, the better you’ll feel.”…

Study: Anxiety Resolved By Thinking About It Real Hard

One of the study’s participants, April Willis, 41, praised the research for resolving deep-seated insecurities about her appearance and competence, citing in particular the effectiveness of a technique in which she mentally replays her most anxiety-inducing thoughts and memories over and over in her head at all hours of day and night.

“After years of struggling with anxiety, I found that the cure was as simple as mentally torturing myself over every last shred of disquiet in my life until I became so riddled with doubt and unease that I was unable to eat or sleep,” Willis told reporters. “Once I obsessively worried to a point that I was effectively debilitated and felt that I barely even wanted to go on, then, poof, the anxiety went away for good.”

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