Worry
The essential characteristic of worry is not fear, but fear that is rehearsed.
Frequently, it is the fear of something improbable that is made to feel more likely, more real, through the mental rehearsal of it.
This is contrary to the very aim of the worrying. The reason for playing out the scenario again and again in our thoughts is to try to ward it off. We are searching for the measure that will prevent the scenario, or for the hidden detail that will prove to us the scenario is impossible. The tactic is risky because of the way repeatedly playing it out makes the scenario seem more plausible, and more in need of preventing or disproving. Worry is an arms race.
This is why the steps taken in response to a source of worry are often irrational or overly costly. The measure we come up with has to be able to answer the size or seriousness to which we have built up the scenario through worrying.
This arms-race-style escalation is one aspect of worry I find as I reflect on this distinctly human activity. “Human,” because while fear is seemingly pervasive throughout the animal world, I suspect we are the only creatures who indulge in this circling and spiraling mental rehearsal of fears. The act is distinctly human also because I suspect that every one of us is, to some extent, a worrier.
I cannot stop myself from worrying when I encounter a fear that strongly tempts me down this path. At best, I can observe the behavior, and in this way perhaps come to understand it. And maybe make peace with it, or put it in its place? That much I don’t know.
Here are some further thoughts about worry:
1. Worry has a superstitious appeal
My own worries have a poor track record of predicting the future. As imaginative as I am in finding fears to worry about, unwelcome developments still manage to come to me by surprise. This has happened often enough that my worry itself comes to feel like a sign that the thing I am worrying about will not come to pass, or even that the worry has a superstitious power to prevent that thing from happening. This is crazy, of course: Practicing worry as a chant becomes an even costlier defense as the last logic of worrying (that is, worry in the hope of possibly finding a solution) disappears. I ought to instead simply note my worries’ poor predictive ability and abandon the effort there.
2. Worry hides in prudence’s shadow
The worry focused on a fear that is not improbable is arguably more difficult to manage, or even to recognize. To be sure, worry focused on an unlikely fear is lonely—one wants to hide that he is investing energy worrying about that thing. But a worry that lands close to the concerns or fears of many others raises questions that cannot be resolved. Namely, am I overreacting to this credible fear, or is my fixation appropriate to the threat? No one can say, but the worrier is inclined to believe the latter. The gray area that has prudence in sight allows worrying to flourish.
3. Worry focuses on loss rather than gain
The object of my worry is rarely some good thing I will not get. For example, I do not worry that I might fail to discover a new friendship in the coming year. Even to frame a worry that way seems absurd. If there is a new friend on the horizon for me, I don’t know that person yet, so how can I worry about not meeting that person? Worry instead clings to who I am and what I have right now, and rehearses potential harm or loss to this current state. So while I have mentioned that my worry is imaginative—and it is—there is also a sense in which it is unimaginative. It is not capable of accounting for the fact that the progress of events might bring good things, not just setbacks and harm.
4. The media feed our fears by practicing worry for us
Improbable events coming to feel likely through repetition is a cycle occurring not just in our imaginations, but outside of them as well. The media also provide us with imagery and stories of plausible but unlikely dangers revisited again and again. In fact, unlikely danger is more likely to be elevated this way—the fear we need the reminder to be afraid of. If worry is rehearsal of fears, then the media are like an external aid augmenting the amount of rehearsal we can be afflicted by.
5. “Don’t worry” is difficult because the mind must do something
I have been careful not to make this article prescriptive, because I am not qualified to council another in how to stop worrying. I have a poor record at accomplishing this for myself. But these final few points seem relevant to that aim:
We cannot choose against having a particular thought (just framing the choice thinks the thought), but at our best, we are able to choose our actions. And since worry is rehearsal, just this much might be valuable. If the response we want to take to the worry is an irrational step, then the meaningful countermeasure might be to deliberately not take that step, as uncomfortable as this is, so as to not feed the worry by performing one more rehearsal of it.
Because worry is concerned with imagined and anticipated problems, real problems offer a hidden blessing. No one would reasonably wish for more problems, but when they appear and when they fill our attention, our worries have a way of falling silent.
Point 3 above carries the seed of the tactic that has worked best for me lately. When I catch myself worrying about something that might go badly within the uncertain future, I turn my imagination to trying to envision the ways that thing might unexpectedly go very well instead. If worries have a poor track record of predicting the future, here is hoping that our positive thoughts can do better.
Photo: “Worry Lines” by Bryan Rosen
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