Worry
Worry as a verb: to feel or cause to feel anxious or troubled about actual or potential problems.
Worry as a noun: the state of being anxious and troubled over actual or potential problems.
Worry is generally thought of as a form of verbal mental problem solving about future events that we fear could be negative.
It is natural to worry about an unpaid bill, an important meeting at work, or a first date. But “normal” worry can become unhelpful if it becomes about lots of things, is very frequent or is difficult to manage or stop.
If you worry every day about “what ifs” and worst-case scenarios, it can become difficult to get anxious thoughts out of your head. This can interfere with your daily life, affecting both your emotional and physical health.
What causes worry?
Worrying can be triggered by various things. It can be something obvious and linked to external things, for example:
- Hearing particular information on the radio or in a conversation.
- Seeing a certain image on TV or online.
- Being put in an uncomfortable position, e.g. having to face uncertainty or make a difficult decision.
Sometimes worry happens for a less obvious reason, with images or thoughts popping into your head out of the blue for no apparent reason.
For example, the thought “what if I didn’t lock the front door when I left the house?” could pop into your head, and you could reason “I did lock it, it’s fine’ and not worry about it any further.
However, if the thoughts continue (e.g. “someone will walk into my house and steal my TV and laptop”) then that original “what if?” has now triggered a worry episode.
What keeps worry going?
Some people feel that they worry excessively about a number of different things on a daily basis and don’t understand why this happens.
This can keep you awake at night, make you feel irritable and tense during the day, and can be difficult to stop.
There are two types of thoughts or beliefs about worry which work to maintain the worry, in a vicious cycle. These are negative beliefs about worrying, and positive beliefs about worrying.
See if you can work out whether the following statements are positive or negative beliefs about worry.
- Worrying helps me find solutions to problems.
- If I keep worrying like this, I will have a breakdown or become ill.
- Worry motivates me to do things.
- I can’t control it; my worrying will never stop.
- Worry prepares me for the worst.
There are things you can do to manage your worries and the thoughts that come with them. These are explored in the following pages. It can be helpful to remember that it is perfectly natural to worry about things some of the time.
Things to think about
- Can you relate to the descriptions of worry at the beginning of this page?
- Have you experienced either positive or negative beliefs about worry?