Why can’t I stop worrying?
Anxiety can be a truly overwhelming experience. You feel constantly on edge, panicked, your mind races with ‘what if’ scenarios, you may be filled with self-doubt and it can seem like around every corner something might go wrong.
Anxiety can lead to muscle tension, headaches, difficulty concentrating and fatigue.
Our bodies go in to fight or flight mode when it perceives a threat. It starts a physical reaction (heart racing, breathing speeds up, feel sweaty and shaky) designed to help us fight off or run away from a threat. In the right situation, anxiety can be an appropriate signal to warn us of danger.
However, when we find it difficult to disengage from our worries, we spend a significant amount of time worrying and/or it’s impacting us physically, this means anxiety has become a problem.
Often all someone experiencing anxiety wants is to feel less anxious, so why can’t they stop the worry?
Reason 1
The person has positive beliefs about worry.
You may be reading this say ‘I know there is nothing positive about my worry! It’s horrible and it makes me feel like I’m going crazy!’.
However, humans never do anything without us thinking there is a benefit.
Some examples of subconscious beliefs we can hold about worry include that ‘it prepares me for the worst case scenario; it makes me feel like I’m doing something; it helps me solve problems and understand something; it shows I care about someone; when I worry bad things don’t happen’
Reason 2
On the flip side, people with anxiety often have negative beliefs about worry as well. This creates a push and pull effect between thinking worry is helpful and very harmful. Examples of such thoughts include ‘worry is uncontrollable, bad for my health, I’ll have a nervous breakdown’.
Reason 3
We have trouble re-directing our attention away from worry and back to the present.
Reason 4
We rely on temporary or unhelpful strategies to stop worry, such as drinking, netflix, food, suppressing feelings and avoidance of situations or unpleasant thoughts to cope.
Reason 5
Who does your anxious inner voice remind you of? Often we model our internal self-talk based on those around us whilst growing up. Perhaps you have a parent or relative who was always quite anxious.
These are some of the reasons you might find it hard to stop worrying.
A psychologist can help provide you with specific strategies for each of these reasons to help you reduce your worry in the long term. You do not have to live with anxiety forever.
Photo by Sonnie Hiles on Unsplash