Worry, worry, worry, worry;
Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone.
—Trouble by Ray LaMontagne
Worry is the cognitive component of anxiety: it’s the thoughts running through your head when you’re anxious about something specific or nothing in particular.
People worry about different things, but there are some general themes to worrying, such as:
- What if ______ happens?
- I can’t tolerate not knowing about ______.
- What does this physical symptom mean?
- What if I forget to ______?
Worry is a concern about bad or negative things that might happen in the future. It’s different from rumination, which is a concern about things that happened in the past or are happening now.
Strangling Yourself
The Old English word for worry meant to strangle. The Middle English definition expanded on that meaning with to grasp by the throat with the teeth and lacerate. In the 1500s, the term took on the meaning to harass, as by rough treatment or attack or to assault verbally. A hundred years or so later, worry was used in the sense of to bother, distress, or persecute. It wasn’t until the 1800s that it came to be defined as to cause to feel anxious or distressed and to feel troubled or uneasy.
If you look at a list of some of the physical sensations generated by anxiety, the original definition of worry, to strangle, still seems pretty apt:
- Shortness of breath or a feeling of choking
- Chest pain or discomfort
- Dizziness or feeling faint
- Numbness or tingling sensations
- Muscle tension, trembling, feeling shaky
Chronic worrying can definitely have a strangling effect in multiple areas of your life. By its nature, it’s a contraction rather than an expansion. The worst part of it is that it’s something you do to yourself.
Why Do We Worry?
We worry because we have both a conscious part of the brain (System 2), which allows us to imagine things happening in the future, and an unconscious part (System 1), which accentuates the negative rather than the positive.
Like so many other mental processes, it’s all about survival. Worry in and of itself is not necessarily bad. Being able to anticipate something that could go wrong down the road makes it possible for us to take some kind of action to prevent future disasters.
Productive worry signals a potential threat and puts us into a problem-solving mode so we can deal with it effectively.
It’s when worrying becomes habitual or chronic that it exerts its strangling effect. Rather than determining what to do to about a potential problem—and then actually doing it—we engage in totally counterproductive coping strategies to eliminate the unpleasant symptoms we’re experiencing.
Typical behaviors include:
- Avoidance of anxiety-producing situations
- Engaging in unhealthy, risky, or self-destructive behavior
- Limiting daily activities
Sorting It Out
Productive worrying begins with making a determination as to whether or not there’s a real threat. You can ask yourself:
- How imminent is the threat?
- How likely is it to occur?
- Is there something I can do about it?
Chronic worrying tends to be focused on events in the far-off future that are unlikely to occur and where there is no clear course of action you can take.
But making this determination is not always easy. Anxiety and its cognitive component, worry, are complicated by the fact that some of us are genetically predisposed toward anxiety. And even if we’re not so-predisposed, responding to anxiety with chronic worrying and maladaptive coping behaviors can create habits that are extremely difficult to disrupt.
We’ll be delving deeper into these topics and exploring ways to respond effectively to anxiety instead of being at the effect of it at the next MONTHLY MEETING OF THE MIND (& BRAIN).