Why People Worry Too Much

Every day we spend a lot of time worrying about things that could go wrong, and maybe, life is forcing us to face significant problems.
We're not that good at predicting the future. We put our "worries" in series delude ourselves to keep everything under control with our constant brooding over everything that could go wrong, but in the face of reality we should have the humility to admit that the future is unknown and that our concerns, however, most of these serve no purpose except to poison the present.
Yet, even if we know it deep down, we can't stop, as if worrying were almost a drug, an activity that our brain cannot do without.

Why does this happen?

And above all, can we do something to reduce the tendency to always worry about everything?

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What's the point of worrying

We assume that if we do something - even when we know very well that it is not useful, or even harmful - there is a reason. I realized this very well when I was trying to free myself from the habit of smoking. I had a very long list of great reasons to quit, but before I could, I had to find the list of reasons why I kept smoking. Only after understanding what the benefits of cigarettes were, I was able to dismantle them one by one and set out to become a former smoker satisfied with my choice.
Even with worries it is like this: worrying performs a number of functions in our life, and if we want to try to quit we must first understand a little better why we do it.

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Meanwhile, it must be said that worrying is not wrong in itself. In fact, I hate those who never worry about anything and then fall out of the way when some problem arises.
Worrying means thinking around a problem before it occurs, in order to prepare a solution. If I have an appointment and I worry about not finding a place to park the car, then I leave the house a quarter of an hour earlier so I don't risk being late. If I am concerned that the report I am writing is not clear enough, I reread it and try to improve it, or I prepare myself to better answer the questions that may come up. If I am about to go into the jungle looking for berries to eat, I worry that I may encounter some hungry beasts, so I carry a knife with me and I am ready to use it if necessary.
Daniel Goleman writes in his famous book Emotional Intelligence :

When fear puts the emotional brain in a state of agitation, some of the resulting anxiety serves to fix the attention on the contingent threat , forcing the mind to devise a way to control it, temporarily ignoring everything else. Worry is, in a sense, a mental review of events, in order to isolate what could ideally go wrong and decide how to deal with the problem; the function of worry is to devise positive solutions in life's dangerous situations , anticipating them before they arise.

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So, if we worry, it is not because we are neurotic crazy (or rather, it is not only for that), but it is because our brain knows very well that worrying is useful , it generates anxiety, but it is that anxiety that serves to put us to develop ready-to-use solutions in the face of problems that may arise. In short, it serves not to get caught off guard.
However, it becomes a problem if the worries arise in a chronic, repetitive, compulsive way, and end up keeping us constantly hostage. When they lose their positive function, to help us find solutions to possible problems, and they themselves turn into a problem. A day dotted with “what if” ... unlikely and catastrophic.

Case Examples:

I am a champion of worries. If someone I love is ten minutes late on an appointment, I can imagine them already in an ambulance. When my husband goes out of town by car for work (which fortunately happens rarely) I spend the day in apnea hoping that he will come home in one piece. Whatever I have to do, my mind always constructs the worst case scenario. I should start writing catastrophic books, they would be fine. My experience of worrying has undoubtedly taught me three things:

1. The vast majority of the things I worry about don't happen .
2. Some of the things I worry about when they happen are much less dramatic than I imagined.
3. Unfortunately, sometimes even the most terrible and frightening things can happen, and whether or not you care about them makes no difference: they suck and devastate our lives.
   
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The three illusions of worry

In recent times, I have focused on an aspect of worry that I had never noticed before: I continue to worry because a part of me is convinced that it does something. This is the trouble here. I realized that if I don't worry, some kind of alarm goes off in my mind: /hey, you're not worried, watch out./ In short, I worry not to worry enough.
However, there is also an explanation for this, and I always find it in Daniel Goleman's book: worries can create a kind of mental addiction .

Why? Essentially for three reasons.

The first is that- by worrying we have the illusion that we are dealing with the problem in some way. The typical situation (and sometimes it is a trap into which I also fall) is that of those who fear they have a health problem but do not go to the doctor. He worries, listens to symptoms, obsessively questions Google, asks for reassurance, and then doesn't do the only sensible thing you can do in these cases, which is to go to the doctor. Worrying is deluding us that we're doing something to fix that problem even when we're not actually doing a damn thing

The second is that when we constantly worry about very unlikely things - such as losing a person in a plane crash, or failing miserably at something that is otherwise perfectly within our reach - part of us becomes convinced that there is something magical in worries. Here you see? I was so worried that the plane might crash, and then it didn't crash ... is my concern keeping it up? These are traps that our mind can unfortunately fall into, because in our brain evolved systems dominated by logic and rationality coexist, and others that are more primitive and instinctive. And therefore, even though I know perfectly well that it is not my concern that avoids catastrophes and accidents, a part of me, on the contrary, attributes to worry the magical power of warding off the danger that is the object of my fear. And this is quite a rip off..

The third aspect is that of performance- Some people (and I am one of them) - are convinced that they work better by worrying. If I am worried and anxious about a job, I know that I will try to do it as best I can, I will try to foresee every eventuality and be ready to face it. If I relax, if I don't feel the tension, I fear that something is out of my control. This belief hides a grain of truth: we have seen it before, worrying serves to find solutions for problems that could arise in order to be ready. A moderate dose of anxiety is functional to make us perform at our best. What I ask myself - and it is a question to which I have not yet found an answer - is: could I be able to work well and at the same time with tranquility and confidence? I don't know, but that's something I want to focus on in the future, and see what comes out of it.

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Breaking the circuit of worries

People who worry a lot know perfectly well that the exhortation to worry. We have seen the reason: worrying creates a sort of mental addiction, it feeds the illusion of being able to control events, and it is a powerful illusion, which certainly cannot be destroyed with a: but in short, stop worrying always!
Let's try to develop a strategy.

1. First of all, be aware- Worries often whisper in our ear , they are the background to our thoughts, they present themselves as an underground swarm that accompanies us and disturbs us throughout the day, but we do not always see these thoughts clearly . They make us feel nervous and anxious, without us knowing exactly why. Then we can try to stop and listen in order to give a name to our anxieties. It is very useful to take a pen and a notebook and make a list of the things that worry us, so that we can observe them and understand. On the contrary, it is counterproductive to try to suppress them: Forcing yourself not to think about a certain thing usually has the opposite effect. This does not mean that we do well to brood all day about what worries us: it may be enough to dedicate a moment of the day to spill the beans on ourselves, to look at the things that scare us in the face, and then move on.

2. Learn to distinguish what falls within the sphere of our control and what is outside- For Example: I certainly feel very worried about this outbreak of Covid. Is there anything I can do? In general NO, I have no way of controlling the progress of the pandemic. However, I can control my behavior so that I can continue to be careful and protect myself. On the other hand, I cannot control the behavior of other people, of strangers, but also of those I know that choose to do different things from what I would do. This is one thing we should learn to do all the time, with everything that worries us: focus on what we can control and let go of everything else.

3. Go from worry to action: If there is anything we can do, then let's do it, without delay. We replace worry with problem solving attitude. Worrying means continuing to stay focused on the problem: instead we can try to change our mindset to focus on possible solutions and get busy. Action is great medicine for people that a lot.

4. Accept uncertainty: Worrying is nothing more than a way to fuel the illusion of control. We unconsciously believe that we can avert misfortunes and problems simply by letting them distress us from morning to evening. This is not the case, sometimes things just happen and it is not in our power to influence their progress. Too many things depend on others, or on chance. We don't know too many things. We don't know how our investments - monetary and emotional ones - will go. We do not know if our marriage will last, if the children will be okay, if we will be able to have the success we want, if during the holiday week we have booked in advance it will be good weather or it will rain. They say you simply shouldn't tolerate uncertainty, but embrace it, as an essential part of our life. For those with an anxious mind it is an impossible undertaking, yet the path is that: abandoning the idea of control and embracing the unpredictability, which also has its beauty, after all.

5. Stay in the present : We have all heard a lot on this of words before, but it is always a point to come back to. The present is our anchor. If we are people who worry too much, it means that we tend to live projected into the future: worry, by definition, concerns something that could happen in the future; conversely, learning to direct attention to our here and now has a powerful anxiolytic effect. Practices like mindfulness or yoga can help us a lot in this. Anything that helps us keep mind and body together to root us in the present, because the body, fortunately for us, is always in the present, it is the mind that escapes here and there. Bringing it back to the breath and body sensations helps to calm it down.

I will be wrapping it up here watch out for my post. Thanks for reading!!
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