How to Combat Chronic Worrying
Are you a worry wart? Do you constantly find yourself ruminating about negative possibilities and all those “what ifs”? Do you fret about everything, from your health to how you are perceived by other people? Whilst worry itself is not bad, it spurs us to actions and thought patterns that create a long-term impact on our health and happiness.
Every one of us have their own worries. As mentioned, worrying is not bad and is a normal cognitive ability endowed to every human being. Just like anger, it serves as a survival mechanism. Imagine the world without worrying. We could all be careless about our health and safety, which could mean higher illness and death rates, as well as crime rates.
But like what they say – too much of everything, good or bad, can be dangerous. Study after study shows that chronic worrying can take a toll on our health and quality of life. It weakens our immune system, increases our risk of serious illnesses like heart disease, and makes us more prone to depression. Chronic worriers are also prone to very discomforting health issues like irritable bowel syndrome, nausea, fatigue, and aches and pains. In fact, records show that these people tend to over utilise the health care system, seeing their doctor every single time they experience aches and pains, even though not totally serious.
How Worrying Endangers our Health
Apart from these, chronic worriers often have poor quality of life as they tend to avoid new things and situations that make them uncomfortable, like social gatherings, speaking engagements and the like. They are also aloof to meeting new people.
But why do some people worry too much? Why are some people good at managing their worries whilst the others are not? There are several reasons for this. According to Dr Robert L. Leahy, director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York City, and author of The Worry Cure: 7 Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You, there is a genetic component, as well as nurture or non-nurture factors. For example, people who come from divorced homes are 70 per cent more likely to have generalised anxiety disorder, a mental health illness characterised by chronic anxiety, exaggerated worry, and tension. Overprotective parents are also likely to raise worriers, Leahy notes. Even reverse parenting could play a role. In this case, it is the child who takes care of his or her parents because they are not fully functioning well.
Feelings of insecurity as a baby are also another factor. For instance, kids who experience neglect from their mothers tend to develop a mind-set that the world is not a safe place, making them prone to excessive worrying later in life.
So how much worry is too much? Well, it depends on how much worrying affects your quality of life, and how much you are suffering. If it is already affecting your day to day life, now is the time to seek help and try the following self-help strategies.
Self-help Tools for Chronic Worrying
Make a worry list.
Overcoming your worries doesn’t mean setting them aside or denying them. Usually, what works best is analysing whether they are logical or not. So the first step in dealing with your worries is to write them down. Don’t restrict yourself. Make a list of all things that worry you. Then, analyse whether your worry is productive or unproductive. A productive worry is one that you can do something about right now. For example, you are worried because your boss gave you a huge assignment. But then it is a productive worry because you can do something – come up with a plan and a timeline, delegate tasks if needed, and start early. Meanwhile, unproductive worry is one which you can’t do anything about. Example is worrying because you might develop cancer or not, or you will grow old and have grey hair and wrinkled skin, or you will die.
Accept uncertainties.
Life is not perfect. There are things you can’t change that you’ve got to accept. Once you have identified your unproductive worries, it’s time to accept them. There is indeed a possibility that you will develop cancer someday, as no one can tell what would happen in the future. Life is full of uncertainties. What you can do is to accept that they exist. Let go and focus more on things that you can control.
Make friends with discomfort.
No one likes to experience discomfort as it registers a sense of threat in our brain. But the more you expose yourself to difficult situations or challenges, the more you get better at handling them and the more resilient you become. You don’t have to take big risks. Small, even tiny steps can have significant impact. For example, if you are not comfortable socialising with others, begin with increasing your social interaction with your close friends. Accept a party invitation or two, be more visible in social media, or travel more.
Focus on the present.
Most chronic worriers have this sense of urgency. They think that if they won’t get the answer now, something bad will happen. Rather than spending all your time, effort and attention to urgency, focus on the moment. What can you do to make this very moment more pleasant? What can you do to calm yourself and relax right now? When your mind is calm and tranquil, you will find it easier to arrive at better solutions to whatever problems you have at the moment.
Cut yourself some slack.
It’s not your goal to live forever. It is to live for as long as you can with the best quality of life you can. So make sure you are giving yourself some time to be like a child again. Just because you are trying to lose weight doesn’t mean you should forget about your favourite treats and break your bones in the gym. Hey, you deserve to enjoy life and have fun!
Give time for meditation.
A 2013 study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience found that meditation training not only lower anxiety levels in people, but it also had effects on the anterior cingulate cortex (which controls emotions and thinking) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex brain regions (which controls worrying).
Talk about it.
Each individual needs to understand what causes their anxiety or what it is related to. Cognitive therapy and talk therapy are great for chronic worriers as these techniques help them get into the root cause of their issues.
We all worry sometimes and that’s normal. But when worrying becomes chronic, and it starts to affect our daily life, it’s time to do something about it. There are several ways to combat excessive worrying, and they include making a worry list, accepting life’s uncertainties, focusing on the present, giving time for recreation and meditation, and seeking professional help.
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