"I'm worried about this..." "I'm worried about that..." These are words I read often on this forum. Over the years, I became a master at using worry to avoid change. Worry kept me from living the life I wanted to live. It also kept me stuck in a miserable relationship. Some of my favorite excuses for not taking action and ending my relationship were:
- I’m worried I’ll be lonely.
- I’m worried I won’t be able to make it financially on my own.
- I’m worried I’ll never find another partner.
- I’m worried I can’t manage the house on my own.
Like a lot of people, I allowed worry to immobilize me. Then one day I realized that worry is a choice.
In his book, "The Gift of Fear, Gavin DeBecker says:
Worry is the fear we manufacture—it is not authentic. If you choose to worry about something, have at it, but do so knowing it’s a choice. Most often, we worry because it provides some secondary reward. There are many variations, but a few of the most popular follow:
- Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don’t do anything about the matter.
- Worry is a way to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we’re doing something.
- Worry is a cloying way to have connection with others, the idea being that to worry about someone shows love. The other side of this is the belief that not worrying about someone means you don’t care about them. As many worried-about people will tell you, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action.
- Worry is a protection against future disappointment. After taking an important test, for example, a student might worry about whether he failed. If he can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it, so to speak, by worrying about it, then failing won’t feel as bad when it happens. But there’s an interesting trade-off: Since he can’t do anything about it at this point anyway, would he rather spend two days worrying and then learn he failed, or spend those same two days not worrying, and then learn he failed? Perhaps most importantly, would he want to learn he had passed the test and spent two days of anxiety for nothing?
In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman concludes that worrying is a sort of “magical amulet” that some people feel wards off danger. They believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening. He also correctly notes that most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur. This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predictor that it isn’t likely to happen!
The relationship between real fear and worry is analogous to the relationship between pain and suffering. Pain and fear are necessary and valuable components of life. Suffering and worry are destructive and unnecessary components of life. (Great humanitarians, remember, have worked to end suffering, not pain).
After decades of seeing worry in all its forms, I’ve concluded that it hurts people much more than it helps. It interrupts clear thinking, wastes time, and shortens life. When worrying, ask yourself, “How does this serve me?” and you may find that the cost of worrying is greater than the cost of changing.