The Healthy Side of Worry By Mark W. Neville, MDiv
Like a coin, worry has two sides. One side is unhealthy while the other is healthy. While many of us know about the unhealthy side, few of us know about the healthy one. Before I describe healthy worrying, let’s take a close look at the unhealthy kind.
What is Unhealthy Worrying?
Originally, worrying was a verb that meant “to strangle.” It referred to killing by biting the throat as a dog or wolf does. Now, it usually refers to something unhealthy we do to ourselves. It’s something we do that distresses us and harms our relationships, too.
Unhealthy worrying often looks like this:
Something happens that stirs up our fear.
We negatively judge feeling afraid and take it to mean something horrible is going to happen.
Our fear is so scary we perceive it as a fact. We believe the horrible things we imagine are, in fact, happening.
We then try to make our fear go away by trying to control it and what others do.
Our fear of feeling afraid keeps us attached to it, intensifies it, and prolongs it.
When others resist our attempts to control them, we feel frustrated. We become hypervigilant for even small events that confirm our worst fears. We use these events to convince others that terrible things are happening. Something must be done to prevent them!
Fortunately, rarely do these horrible things actually happen. As Mark Twain quipped, “I’ve been through many crises in my life, most of which never happened.”
If something terrible does happen, we often say, “I told you so!” and blame others for not listening to us.
See how prolonged and complicated unhealthy worrying is? As in the original meaning of worry, it strangles the quality of our life, health, and relationships. Psychiatrists note that it often indicates Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
The Healthy Side of Worrying
Now let’s look closely at the healthy side of the coin. Healthy worrying is real. It is a healthy type of fear.
Fear is our normal, natural, healthy response to events that threaten our safety, the safety of those we care about, or both. We see and hear these threatening events firsthand, or learn about them from reliable witnesses. We do not just imagine them in our minds.
For example, if we develop chest congestion, run a fever, have aching joints, and lose our sense of smell, it’s normal for us to worry that we might have COVID. Our worry does two healthy things. It informs us that our lives could be at risk. It also fuels our responses to test ourselves for COVID.
Notice how simple healthy worry is. We don’t choose it or overthink it. We feel it and go with it. We test ourselves and get the results. When the results are negative, we take over-the-counter medications. When they are positive, we call our physicians and go with their recommendations.
We stay focused on the facts we know from our five senses instead of the horrible things we imagine in our minds.
Conclusion
So, next time you catch yourself worrying, ask yourself if it’s unhealthy or healthy. If it’s unhealthy, you would do well to work with a therapist. If it’s healthy, accept it and go with it. It takes you toward life, health, and happiness.
Mark is the originator of Life Therapy, an effective alternative to traditional psychotherapy. He specializes in anxiety, depression, trauma, and couples therapy and cares for clients in North Carolina and nationwide. Visit https://MarkWNeville.com to Learn More and Book a Free 30-Minute Initial Consult.