Why Telling Yourself “Not to Worry” Doesn’t Work

Ever told yourself "don't worry" only to find your anxiety levels skyrocketing? Unravel the mystery behind this paradox and explore the psychological mechanisms that make self-reassurance ineffective in quelling worry.

Worry is an attempt to solve an uncertain, and possibly negative, outcome

To stop worrying, one needs to accept worry, and then focus pragmatically on solving the issue the best way possible under the circumstances.

• When I’m worried, it usually means that I’m afflicted with nagging, unhelpful thoughts and anxieties about an uncertain situation I am powerless to control.

Emotional Elements

Emotionally, worry is most directly related to fear – an evolved set of automatic psychological and physical functions that emerge to guide our behavior when confronted with anxiety.

• Unfortunately, affect is not always appropriate or helpful. Trying to repress a persistent emotion merely heightens and complicates it, even creating new emotional responses that may be inserted over or mixed with the emotions already generated.

Working Around Worry

We need to accept worry, acknowledge the stressors and limitations it has imposed on us, and focus pragmatically on achieving the best possible outcomes under the circumstances.

• Don’t try to solve the big problems when you’re already consumed by worry; accept the worry as a temporary affliction and refocus your efforts as best you can within these temporary limitations.

What Exactly Is Worry?

Worry is a chain of thoughts and images, negatively affect-laden and relatively uncontrollable; it represents an attempt to engage in mental problem-solving on an issue whose outcome is uncertain but contains the possibility of one or more negative outcomes.

• worry is a combination of cognition and affect, a process that engages both our intelligence and our emotions.

Cognitive Elements

Intellectually, worry causes us to involuntarily repeat unpleasant and unproductive thoughts, thoughts that do not contribute to effective problem-solving but cyclically feed on themselves.

• Trying to silence a recurring thought is a lost cause, thanks to a cognitive glitch known as the “thought suppression paradox.”
• When you tell yourself not to worry, you aren’t going to silence it – you’re engaging the worry in conversation, inviting it to explain itself further.

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