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Worry is future-focused and often distracts from deeper emotions like sadness, guilt, anger, shame, or fear.

Chronic worry can harm emotional processing and physical health, and keep us from meeting core needs.

Worry persists because it feels protective, offers an illusion of control, and is reinforced by habit.

Compassionate awareness and boundary-setting are key to transforming worry into growth.

Worry is when your mind spins stories about what could go wrong, even when nothing is happening right now. Worry, a mental rehearsal of future dangers, is distinct from fear, which is a response to immediate threat (Barlow, 2002). Fear is your body’s alarm system, activating when you’re actually in danger. Worry, on the other hand, is like a smoke detector that keeps going off, even when there’s no fire.

Worry is a hallmark of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), but it’s also a common experience for many people. While fear mobilizes us to act in the face of real danger, worry keeps us mentally busy, scanning for threats that may never materialize.

The Hidden Costs of Worry

Worry might seem helpful—maybe you believe it keeps you prepared, motivated, or safe. But what does it actually cost you?

Worry Blocks Emotional Processing: Worry often acts as a distraction from deeper, more painful emotions. Instead of feeling sadness, shame, or loneliness, we stay agitated and hypervigilant. Borkovec and colleagues (2004) found that worry serves as a cognitive avoidance strategy, preventing processing of fearful imagery, which then serves to maintain emotional disorders like generalized anxiety disorder.

Worry Masks Core Needs: When we worry, we may miss the messages our emotions are sending. For example, feeling shame might signal a need for validation; feeling lonely might signal a need for connection. Worry keeps us focused on hypothetical problems, rather than tuning into what we truly need (Greenberg, 2015).

Worry Takes a Toll on Our Minds and Bodies: Chronic worry keeps the body in a state of fight or flight. Worry impairs problem-solving abilities and contributes to self-doubt and a diminished sense of agency (Sweeny & Dooley, 2017). Physical symptoms can include restlessness, muscle tension, irritability, fatigue, and sleep disturbances. Over time, this can lead to chronic health problems.

Worry Steals Joy and Purpose: Perhaps most insidiously, worry can keep us from doing things we value. When we’re preoccupied with what might go wrong, we miss out on meaningful experiences and relationships.

Why Do We Worry? The (False) Promise of Protection

If worry is so costly, why do we do it?

Worry as Motivation and Control: Many people believe that worrying helps them prepare for the worst, avoid mistakes, or solve problems. While excessive worry rarely leads to effective action, it creates an illusion of control over the uncontrollable. (Sweeny & Dooley, 2017).

Superstitious Thinking: Sometimes, people believe that worrying actually prevents bad things from happening. When someone worries excessively, then the feared event doesn’t occur, they may perceive that the worry “worked”—much like carrying a lucky charm (Wells, 1995).

Distraction From Pain: Worry can distract from more distressing experiences, such as past traumas or painful relationships. It’s easier to worry about the future than to feel the ache of loss, traumas, and morally injurious events.

Habit and Emotional Buffering: Worry becomes a habit, reinforced by repetition. For some, it can be a way to titrate trauma—serving as a buffer against emotional highs and lows. They may think it is better to stay in a constant state of mild anxiety than risk being blindsided by despair (Newman & Llera, 2011).

Defense Against Uncertainty: Ultimately, worry is a defense against the unpredictability of life. It’s a way to brace against the unknown, even if it keeps us stuck (Dugas et al., 1998).

Understanding and Working With Worry

So how do you begin to shift your relationship with worry? Start by getting curious about what worry is really like for you:

How do I worry? Notice your patterns—do you catastrophize, ruminate, replay scenarios?

What drives my worries? Is it fear of loss, humiliation, disconnection, boredom, or danger? Is it something else?

What is the impact? How does worry affect your mood, body, and ability to focus?

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Just noticing your worry and starting to understand it better can begin to break its hold on your life.

Steps to Working Through Chronic Worry

Stay With the Pain: Instead of avoiding uncomfortable feelings, gently notice the thoughts, sensations, and urges that come with worry. Mindfulness-based approaches have been shown to reduce worry and anxiety by increasing awareness and acceptance (Hoge et al., 2013).

Explore Catastrophizing: Notice when your mind jumps to the worst-case scenario. Ask yourself: “Is this likely? What evidence do I have? How will I cope with it if the worst thing happens?”

Articulate Unmet Needs: Go deeper—what is the worry protecting you from? Underneath the worry, there are other emotions. Perhaps sadness, fear, guilt, shame, or anger. Notice what unmet needs those emotions are pointing to. Perhaps the need for safety, comfort, reassurance, validation, joy, connection, provision, guidance, or protection. Naming these needs can help you address them directly.

Express Compassion and Grieve: Allow yourself to feel compassion for the part of you that worries. Grieve what was missed or lost, and let in kindness. Say to your worried little self, “This is hard. I’m here for you. Let's get you some support.” Self-compassion practices have been linked to lower anxiety and greater resilience (Neff & Germer, 2013).

Find Protective Anger: Sometimes, worry covers up anger at being hurt or unprotected. Tapping into healthy anger can help you set boundaries.

Set Boundaries With Your Worried Self: Imagine your worry as a separate voice—an overzealous protector. Thank it for trying to help, and then set a boundary: “I hear you, but I’m choosing to focus on what matters right now.”

Do What You Can Do: Get to work, attempting to at least partially meet unmet needs.

Sit quietly and notice where worry shows up in your body. Is it a tightness in your chest, a flutter in your stomach, a buzzing in your mind? Place a gentle hand there. Breathe in whatever safety is available in the moment. Breathe out your worry, letting go of any extra vigilance that is not needed right now. Repeat for a few minutes, allowing this practice to soften the edges of your worry.

Barlow, D. H. (2002). Anxiety and its disorders: The nature and treatment of anxiety and panic (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Borkovec, T. D., Alcaine, O. M., & Behar, E. (2004). Avoidance theory of worry and generalized anxiety disorder. In R. G. Heimberg, C. L. Turk, & D. S. Mennin (Eds.), Generalized anxiety disorder: Advances in research and practice (pp. 77–108). Guilford Press.

Dugas, M. J., Gagnon, F., Ladouceur, R., & Freeston, M. H. (1998). Generalized anxiety disorder: A preliminary test of a conceptual model. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36(2), 215–226.

Dugas, M. J., & Robichaud, M. (2007). Cognitive-behavioral treatment for generalized anxiety disorder: From science to practice. Routledge.

Greenberg, L. S. (2015). Emotion-focused therapy: Coaching clients to work through their feelings (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.

Hoge, E. A., Bui, E., Marques, L., Metcalf, C. A., Morris, L. K., Robinaugh, D. J., ... & Simon, N. M. (2013). Randomized controlled trial of mindfulness meditation for generalized anxiety disorder: Effects on anxiety and stress reactivity. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 74(8), 786–792.

Neff, K. D., & Germer, C. K. (2013). A pilot study and randomized controlled trial of the mindful self-compassion program. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(1), 28–44.

Newman, M. G., & Llera, S. J. (2011). A novel theory of experiential avoidance in generalized anxiety disorder: A review and synthesis of research supporting a contrast avoidance model of worry. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(3), 371-382.

Sweeny, K., & Dooley, M. D. (2017). The surprising upsides of worry. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(4), e12311.

Wells, A. (1995). Meta-cognition and worry: A cognitive model of generalized anxiety disorder. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 23(3), 301–320.

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