Worrying

You wake up with a feeling of dread, maybe even panic. It’s an unpleasant sensation in your body, so what do you do? You worry. Worrying is something active that you can do to rid yourself of this terrible feeling. You probably have little control over this problem, so you try to get control over it. You start to examine the problem from every single angle, over and over again, because if you keep thinking about it, you’re going to solve it!

In my view, habitual worrying is a coping skill that helps you avoid painful emotions and body sensations. How exactly is worrying going to make you feel less dread/panic/sadness? It’s not! It’s completely self-defeating. When you avoid these unpleasantries, they don’t just go away, they wait for you to let your guard down and then come bubbling back to the surface and then there you go again, trying to avoid that old feeling of dread and panic by worrying.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but your brain actually experiences some relief from the feeling of anxiety when you worry. Worrying engages your logical frontal lobe and gives your brain the illusion that you are gaining control over this feeling of anxiety that comes from your emotional/subconscious/survival brain. What you’re actually doing, however, is creating entrenched neural pathways between anxiety and worrying, so that one feeds the other until you’re caught in a vicious cycle.

When you worry a little bit here and there you may not have a worrying habit. You’re like an occasional smoker, but you’re playing with fire. Once you have smoked for years, or worried for years, the habit becomes harder to break. Have you ever had the experience, when you have absolutely nothing to worry about, of trying to find something to fill the void of worrying in your head? If the answer is yes, then you are probably a habitual worrier. Worrying is like your nicotine, and you have to have it to feel relief from the withdrawal symptoms of worrying: that old dread and panic.

Want to quit? I can help. Through a combination of talk therapy and either EMDR or hypnosis, we can get you off the worrying “drug” for good.