How to Cure Worry

By this point I hope that I’ve convincingly showed that we worry (and continue to worry) because it very briefly makes us feel good by distracting us from the very uncomfortable feeling of helplessness.

Nobody likes feeling anxious, but most of us would rather feel anxious than helpless.

From this perspective, worry is our attempt to out-run helplessness.

And while it never works in the long run, we keep trying because it very briefly works in the short term, albeit with the unhappy side effect that we stay stressed and anxious in exchange for the illusion of control.

I suppose this tradeoff is worth it for some. But if you genuinely want to stop worrying so much, there’s really only one way out: Acceptance.

Specifically, in order to stop running away from the feeling of helplessness, we have to train ourselves to be okay with feeling helpless and out of control.

And like any other kind of training, the trick is to start small.

How to Kick the Worry Habit with Mindfulness

The first and most important step is to begin to gain awareness of how worry works in your life.

When you find yourself worrying, try to identify the cause or trigger for the worry and notice how it makes you feel emotionally.

Don’t rush into all the mental planning and imaging and hypothetical guessing that makes up worry. Instead, try to focus on your emotions.

We must be willing to feel and be with our uncomfortable emotions, especially helplessness.

Unfortunately, for most of us, this is an insanely hard task — to just feel our emotions without thinking about them. It’s uncomfortable and unnatural feeling, and you’ve probably got decades of experience telling you to run away or fix it by thinking more about it (i.e. worrying).

But this is the task. If we want to be able to not engage in worry and rid ourselves of all the anxiety and stress that comes with it, we must be willing to feel and be with our uncomfortable emotions, especially helplessness.

So start small, and be patient.

Notice little fragments of worry here and there. Notice yourself being pulled by years of habit to start thinking and worrying. Then choose something different.

Choose to stay with the emotion, even if it’s just briefly. Then choose to re-direct your thoughts and behavior elsewhere.

If you want a more structured approach to doing this, mindfulness is a great exercise for learning to accept how we feel and break the habit of worry.

Here are few articles I’ve written on the topic: