How To Make Worrying Actually Productive, From A Psychologist

"But I need to worry!" my client Rachel tells me. "If I don't worry, nothing ever gets solved, and something bad will happen."

The truth is, some of us like to worry. It is a comforting ritual because it gives us something to do. Like that old soft toy we hug, it's something we're so used to. To cut it away from our lives—even if everyone tells us we'd be so much better without worrying—can make everything feel adrift. 

Who will I be without worrying? What will I do? What will life be like?

These are too big and existential. It's easier to do the thing we're great at—worrying. 

And this is how we get addicted to worrying. 

Here's the deal: Our beliefs about worrying make us likelier to worry more or less.

Many who enjoy the physical practice of worrying—calling it their daily meditation—tell me that they believe that worrying solves their problems. Ergo, worrying is helpful. 

(Like two lawyers taking our thoughts to court, we soon break it down and the realization dawns: Worrying doesn't solve any problems. It is planning that does.) 

For others, worrying helps them procrastinate because the task at hand feels way too emotionally overwhelming. On a deeper level, worrying may feel useful because it helps us to avoid physically reexperiencing trauma, and thus it may feel like a small price to pay. 

How I like to describe worrying is, worrying is a mental cancer that metastasizes from something in one area of your life, to one that feels all-pervasive and permanent. 

Fundamentally, when you enter the worrying spiral, your worries jump from concerns in one part of your life to bigger, fearful things in many parts of your life. Time enters its own time dilation field like those bubbles in sci-fi flicks, and three minutes very quickly morph into three hours. And add in the physical effects of all that anxiety— from migraines to palpitations to clammy hands—to the mental exhaustion, and your original problem hasn't been solved. Instead, it's been amplified. 

And as these habitual grooves—from mindset to bodily sensations to behaviors we engage in—get stronger, the more entrenched we are in worrying. Some clients tell me they spend up to eight hours a day worrying. 

Now, it's impossible to unwire your autopilot habit of worrying overnight. If you've got substantial anxiety passed in your genetics, or you started worrying at a young age watching your family and having experienced some unpleasant adverse experiences as a child, then that's many years of deep worrying to unwire. 

Remember that before you judge yourself or want to curb the problem straightaway. Self-judgment only makes everything worse.

In my book This Is What Matters, I write about making a date with your worries every day—what I call "Worry Time."

Worry Time is a dedicated, pre-scheduled container of time when you sit down to go through all of your worries and then map out solutions. The solutions part here is key—because there is a big difference between worrying and planning. Worrying alone gobbles your time, and you feel worse after that. Planning transforms that worry into action. 

This way, we keep the physical spaces cordoned off. And when the urge to worry pops up during the day, you can tell your brain you'll worry about that later during your designated Worry Time (maybe just jot a headline in your notes about the topic) so your brain is reassured.

This works way better than lying to yourself that you aren't worried or scolding yourself to just be positive. 

Step 2 is to reset your brain. Because when worrying, your brain is operating in fear mode. Meaning, your primitive brain structure, known as the amygdala—which is only concerned with you surviving and not thriving—is in charge. Just like you don't knowingly take planes with a hijacker in them, you shouldn't be operating your brain when your fear center has hijacked you.

To reset your brain, take three deep breaths slowly. Make sure that when you're breathing in, you're inflating your belly like a balloon, and vice versa. Breathe out as slowly as you can. 

Step 3 is to harness that mental energy. Grab a pen and paper, or open a digital note. Set an alarm for X minutes. Write the problem you want to solve at the top, and the time frame. And then go for it.

You won't cut out worrying straight away because it's so well practiced. It's the super car engine that revs from zero to 200 mph in milliseconds. The point is that you start to cut it with kindness as soon as you spot it.