Worriers Might Be Handling

7 min readNov 25, 2020

Worrying has become a routine part of many people’s lives these days. And while stress and anxiety are often categorized as irrational or unnecessary, it’s easy to understand why worry, in the scary universe of now, is ubiquitous.

https://www.videoparentingcourse.com/sites/fox/Baye-v-Salz-lv-tv.html
https://www.videoparentingcourse.com/sites/fox/Baye-v-Salz-lv-game.html
https://www.videoparentingcourse.com/sites/fox/Baye-v-Salz-lv2020.html
https://www.videoparentingcourse.com/sites/fox/Baye-v-Salz-lv.html
http://www.gometrotowing.com/mmx/video-Aja-v-Mid-dtvs-lv-tv.html
http://www.gometrotowing.com/mmx/video-Aja-v-Mid-dtvs-lv-TODAY.html
http://www.gometrotowing.com/mmx/video-Aja-v-Mid-dtvs-lv0.html

When it comes to making decisions of any kind, there’s always some degree of uncertainty, but under normal circumstances, it’s limited. When you eat raw oysters, for example, you’ll either get food poisoning or you won’t. However, with this pandemic, there’s a great deal more uncertainty, and that creates a much more unstable scenario where you have to constantly weigh options that keep changing, notes Sonia Bishop, PhD, an associate professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. Couple that with missing or inaccurate information, and you have a recipe for excessive worry. But, experts like Bishop say that in a time when worry is often warranted — and even protective — there’s a way to harness its value without letting it take over your life.

Specific, short-lived worry can be quite useful, especially when it comes to coping with a crisis.

Worrying is part of the brain’s response to fear. It gets a bad rap because it’s unpleasant, but it’s also functional behavior designed to protect us from unfavorable situations, like, say, contracting Covid-19. The response originates in the amygdala, and then the frontal lobe, which is involved in decision-making, considers the information available before designating a reaction. Too much worry can mess with that reaction, sometimes resulting in decision paralysis. “Often we use these [executive processes] to help engage in more thoughtful or rational approaches, and some aspects of those don’t seem to be processing information the right way in anxious individuals or people vulnerable to anxiety,” says Bishop.

Long-term, generalized worrying is not great for your mental and physical health. It can lead to depression, addiction, and even digestive, cardiovascular, reproductive, and immunity issues, to name a few. Specific, short-lived worry, however, can be quite useful, especially when it comes to coping with a crisis. “Then it has a function, and then you can use the worry to motivate action,” says Kate Sweeny, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside.

If given free rein, however, “[worrying] becomes really dysfunctional and disruptive to our lives,” Sweeny continues. If you’ve been having a hard time being productive or just operating normally, your worrying mechanism is likely in overdrive. Even with all the triggers out there right now, there are ways to temper the mechanism so that it helps you make good decisions and doesn’t emotionally tax you within an inch of your sanity.

The benefit in assuming worst-case scenarios

Catastrophizing is a common symptom of people with generalized anxiety disorder, but even if you don’t have an anxiety disorder, you may be doing your fair share of catastrophizing given the state of, well, everything. While it’s not helpful to always assume the worst, when you’re dealing with risky scenarios, like eating dinner with friends indoors at a restaurant, Bishop posits that level of concern may be more beneficial than not.

“When there’s so much uncertainty, the risk of going to a restaurant could be anywhere from maybe 1 in 10 people being positive to 1 and 100 people being positive,” says Bishop. “Do you want to take the most probable outcome, or do you want to veer on the side of saying, ‘I’m going to [assume] the worst-case scenario because at least then I know I will be engaged in protecting [myself and others].’ The cost of underestimating is so much worse than the cost of overestimating.”

Worriers who spent time imagining worst-case scenarios also likely fared better at the beginning of the pandemic, says Bishop, when there were so many unknowns. Those people were taking more precautions and may have stayed safer because of them. That said, since the shutdowns took a lot of the guesswork out of making those decisions, Bishop often heard people say their anxiety levels were lower during more officially restricted times.

With many neighbors relaxing their safety parameters and dealing with pandemic burnout, the worry intensifies. So now, we have to consciously rebuild and reevaluate our parameters in order to stay safe. And this can trigger unhealthy levels of worry.

Potential long-term effects

Beyond the physical health concerns, Sweeny says there are other potential long-term effects of regular, excessive worry — and they’re a mixed bag. “One is that we get better at it; we build up psychological calluses,” she says. “Another is that we numb out and therefore don’t prepare appropriately. A third is that the stress just builds and builds until some kind breaking point.”

Since people are still dealing with the pandemic, in addition to electoral and racial unrest, it’s impossible for experts to say how this pervasive worrying will ultimately affect humans. One of the best outcomes would be if our fear response adapts to the point where we more readily prepare and protect ourselves from potential risks without invoking the worry mechanism too much.

“The cost of underestimating is so much worse than the cost of overestimating.”

How you can get better at worrying

Try to narrow down your worries on any given day to more specific things and tackle them one at a time.

“Run the mental checklist; see if there is something more you could be doing to prepare yourself to a reasonable degree,” says Sweeny. If you’ve done all that but still feel anxious, it’s time to turn to some research-backed worry deflation methods.

This is where, you guessed it, mindfulness comes in. Practicing mindfulness really just means doing anything that keeps you in the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or fretting about the future. There are plenty of ways to do it, but one that Sweeny lauds is getting yourself into a flow state.

Flow is a more active form of mindfulness that involves doing something that’s enjoyable and moderately challenging and that allows you to track your progress. Playing video games is a perfect example of a flow activity because they’re engaging, and you’re constantly moving forward to new, harder levels. Learning a new language or engaging in a 30-day exercise challenge are two more great flow state activities. The goal is that you become so immersed in it that your worries fade back, at least for a time.

Even after we make it through these times, worrying will be a part of our lives. The best thing we can do is cultivate a productive relationship with it. Sweeny says it may help to think of worry like that slightly annoying friend who needs to be reassured every so often. Don’t ignore it, but don’t give it too much attention either.

Worriers Might Be Handling

The benefit in assuming worst-case scenarios

Potential long-term effects

How you can get better at worrying

Written by Dass Bass