Worrying is something that all humans do at some point in their lives. It is a way of your brain to warn you about something important. After all, the job of your brain is to get you ready for the future. However, worries become a problem when it stays on your mind for a prolong period.

Many people are in a bad habit of worrying. A tendency of thinking about everything that can go wrong in the future is overwhelming. Even if you determined to leave your worries behind, your thoughts return back. You keep dwelling on things that probably make you feel frightening.

But the question is why you worry so much even if you know these are unhelpful thoughts. 

Let’s take a look at some explanations.

Intolerance to uncertainty

As a human nature, you constantly try to figure out to solve problems and ensure a safe life. Despite all your efforts, you have very little control over your life. You give your best but the future is always uncertain. 

Yes, you could lose your job, get health problem or face relationship conflict. The worst-case possibilities are endless. 

A situation is tough if you are having hard time. If you are already affected by something real to worry, living in the future with a negative stories is obvious.

Living with this uncertainty is hard. A less accurate understanding of future can lead to anticipation of negative events. A fear of losing control over a situation leads to irrational thoughts. Therefore, projecting yourself into a worst-case scenario is usually manifested as a sense of a threat. 

As a part of anxiety

Anxiety serves to maintain high levels of vigilance during dangerous situations. 

In fact, we human are evolved in that way only.

And if you are extremely anxious, you are programmed to be cautious in any given situation. You have a tendency to interpret  any ambiguous situation in a relatively threatening way. 

As an anxious person, you can anticipate terrible things when you heard or read about them or watch them on a screen. Anxiety provoking thoughts are usually negative. An uncomfortable feeling of apprehension or dread is extremely distressing. Consequently, worry occurred as a product of fear-based imagination. 

A belief to stay safer

Each time you worry and nothing bad happened. Thus your mind connects worry with preventing unforeseen situations. 

There is a popular belief system that if you worry about something, it would minimize the effect of a negative event by avoiding disappointment. This way, you would be less upset or feel guilty, since you already expected that particular potential outcome.

You feel that worrying may help you be more aware of a situation or better prepared to face it. It may help you come up with more alternative ways to solve problems. It pushes you to act and get things done that might be helpful to avoid negative consequences. 

This enhances sense of control and compels you to keep worrying constantly.

As a personality trait

You are worrying more than others because you’re born that way. It may run in your families. You may carry this gene from your parents. 

While growing, you may have learned this trait from people around you. Growing up in worrisome household has a potential to develop this trait.

Moreover, our society always favor that a worrying person is sensitive and considerate. Eventually, you grow into the habit of prioritizing the people around you because it is the society that will approve you. And fortunately the habit of worrying is taken as a quality of good human being. 

As an emotionally sensitive individual, you may experience intense emotions more frequently for long duration. You may be likely to feel too much and too deep over any aspect of life. You are habitual to take notice of every little thing making a big deal out of it.

The more emotionally sensitive you are, the more you will find ambiguous situations as bad. For you, people’s opinion are more important and you always need their approval. You often have difficulty letting go of negative thoughts. You would prefer to look at life from a negative perspective. Subsequently, worry get triggered when something unpleasant happens unexpectedly.

Everyone is different in the aspect of mental resilience and therefore, content and intensity of worry is different and unique for each person.

Excessive worrying can take a heavy toll on overall well-being. Mentally, you can become a victim of anxiety or depression. Physically, it can elevate your stress levels and weakens your immune system. 

Extended periods of worrying can prevent you from enjoying happy and peaceful life. In the process of thinking too much about future, you are missing out on what’s is right in front of you.

You can’t eliminate all worries, but you can choose where to direct your line of thoughts. After all, most of what your worry about never happens. Many of your fears are literally in your mind only.

Disclaimer : The purpose of this blog is to create mental health awareness. This information is not a replacement for medical treatment or counseling therapy.