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My 15-year-old granddaughter visited me recently, and on the day she was scheduled to fly home, I became concerned about her tight connection between planes. I checked flight status and saw that her first flight was running more than two hours late, which meant she would miss her connection, with no other flights available that day. Fortunately, we found a seat on an earlier flight and she made it home.
My focus on my granddaughter’s trip home fits a general definition of worry: concentrated thought and associated anxiety about potentially unpleasant or threatening outcomes.
I always worry about tight connections, and in a few instances, this worry has allowed me to avoid considerable inconvenience, although with most trips over the years, worry has been unnecessary. But is it an unhealthy drain on my psychic resources, or is it helpful?
Distinguishing Helpful Worrying From the Harmful Variety
Moderation Versus Extremity. There is an inverted U relationship between worry and helpfulness: a low level of worry neither motivates nor harms; a medium level motivates us; and too much worry can overwhelm us with anxiety.
Extreme worry can bring on catastrophizing and a lack of action. Indeed, high levels of worry are never helpful and can lead to depression and poor physical health. Moderate worry, however, can be useful in motivating us to plan and take action.
Spinning and Solving. Psychotherapist Andrea Wachter distinguishes two types of worry: “spinning” and “solving.” Spinning creates a web of worries without resolving anything. Solving focuses on what we’re worrying about, encouraging us to address the content of the worry—with helpful self-talk and with useful preparation for what we’re worrying about.
The Value of Moderate, Focused Worry
Practical Benefits. Research on focused concerns in our lives shows that worry helps with safeguarding our health, being ready for hazardous weather, and meeting academic deadlines. In areas prone to wildfires, worry is associated with taking constructive action to prepare for a fire.
Moderate, focused worry produces better performance in school and in the workplace because it encourages people to seek information about stressful events and then engage in more successful problem-solving.
Drawing Attention. Worry can be informative, drawing attention to a potential future problem, even when there aren’t immediate solutions. Psychologists studying climate change have shown that worrying about climate change is the single strongest predictor of support for climate policies.
Increasing Awareness. Instead of shunning worry, we can listen to it and assess a potential threat. When events are largely out of our control, our worry can still equip us to cope with unpleasant or threatening outcomes.1
Emotional Buffering. Moderate worry may provide an emotional buffer. If things work out better than our worries anticipated, the actual outcome is more manageable than expected, which can then bring about a more moderate emotional response.
Generating Empathy. Worrying about a potential problem can engender more empathy for others with similar problems, even without experiencing those problems. I recently lost use of my left shoulder due to an injury, with one potential fix being surgery, followed by two months immobilized in a sling and a lengthy recovery. I then spent time worrying about my limitations during the recovery period, including difficulties with bathing, getting dressed, shopping, driving, and other basic activities. I may not undergo surgery, but I now have more detailed knowledge and increased understanding of the hardships of undergoing shoulder surgery—or breaking an arm.
Reminding Us. Worry often stays around until uncertainty is resolved, so it acts as a reminder of what we need to do.
Managing Worry
Social psychologist Kate Sweeny offers a three-step process for channeling or redirecting worry: 1) label the worry, 2) implement actions to manage the worrisome problem, 3) if nothing else can be done, reduce the worry with mindfulness exercises and healthy distraction. In Sweeny’s case, worrying about political matters in the U.S. motivated her to write hundreds of postcards encouraging people to vote.
Worrying in Context
Worries are always in the context of worldly conditions and do not need validation by a troubling outcome. This past June, for example, London-born international journalist Christiane Amanpour reported being worried about traveling to the U.S. to give a speech at Harvard University. She had heard of British travelers being turned around at the border or detained and questioned for hours.
Her worry led to extra precautions, including taking a burner phone and leaving behind her own phone and her laptop. It turned out that she was welcomed by the immigration officer in Boston, which proved to be a great relief.
Even though an objective analysis of probability and risk would likely have ruled against Amanpour’s precautions, her worry was moderate and focused, and it did no harm.
Balancing Expectations
A close friend once asked me, “What if everything works out?” This apt question reminded me to balance worry about unfavorable outcomes with consideration of favorable ones.
Colette Hirsch, Sarra Hayes, and Andrew Mathews conducted research comparing worrying without modulation to worrying with an intervention of benign thinking. When participants considered benign outcomes to potentially threatening circumstances, they reported fewer unpleasant thought intrusions, while also showing greater working memory and processing ability. This research also showed that although anxiety is always present during active worrying, practice in thinking about benign options leads to lower levels of anxiety, before and after stressful situations.
Final Words
We shouldn’t automatically worry about our own worrying. Moderate, focused worry can be beneficial.
At the same time, we also shouldn’t feel compelled to worry. Not worrying is a healthy default value, and we can, of course, prepare and plan for potentially threatening events without worrying about them.
But for those of us who lean toward worry, focused management of our worrying can lead to effective preparation, increased awareness about threats, emotional buffering when hardships occur, and increased empathy.
