When To Worry (and When Not To)

When To Worry (and When Not To)
Photo by Fabian Møller / Unsplash

Most things I worry about
Never happen anyway
-Tom Petty

I typed out the preliminary notes for this post around midnight last Saturday after an hour or so of lying in bed unable to sleep. Between mine and Linda's impending move to NYC (a big undertaking that will involve, among other things, more than twenty-four hours in the backseat of truck with our ornery house cat) and all the mental/digital organizing I've been doing to try to exercise some level of control over my creative endeavors, I just had too much on my mind. So I started to write all of my worries down, eventually emptying my brain enough to fall asleep. When I realized what had happened the next day, I decided I want to examine my relationship with this double-edged sword of worry, which sometimes spurs me to action and other times feels like a supreme waste of energy.

A Brief History of (My) Worrying

It didn't really come as a surprise to me that worry can be useful, because I have been making use of it my whole life. I worried myself into completing all of my school assignments, often at the last minute (What will my teachers think if I don't turn in my homework? What will my parents think if I fail? What if my inability to demonstrate mastery of these subjects somehow renders me unemployable for life?). I worried myself into strict adherence of every rule (What would God think of me if I lied, or disobeyed my parents, or deigned to think about sex anywhere in my fallen mind in which he can surely read every thought?). In retrospect, I can see where worry served me by helping me to manufacture a sense of urgency,[1] and I also can see where it crippled me, paralyzing me with indecision because I could not determine which course of action was best. I have spent years worrying frequently, even feverishly, and it would be exhausting (if not impossible) to write my lifetime of worries here. In lieu of that, here's an incomplete list of worries (and sub-worries) I had just this week:

Moving to NYC

  • Going into debt for acting school
    • What am I going to do to make a living after acting school if I fail to find an agent or book paying gigs?
    • Am I dooming myself, my wife, and our (potential) future child to a life of poverty?
    • Instead of acting school, what if I pursued some sort of apprenticeship in stagecraft, rigging, or the props department?
  • Will I be able to find a new doctor and get the medicine I need?
  • What if I get cancer from the high levels of pollution?
  • What if I die as a result of some terrorist act?
  • What if I die in the first impact of a nuclear war?
  • What if I get pushed to death by a random bystander?[2]

Writing

  • Do I spend enough time or effort writing?
  • What if I never find a way to write lucratively without essentially writing marketing copy (i.e. without writing to sell things to people)?
  • Is writing about my personal life off-putting, a waste of time, or dangerous?
  • Is a bulleted list an effective or 'presentable' means of enumerating my worries?
  • Will I ever publish even a small fraction of my poetry?
    • Is any of my poetry even good?
    • What if other people think I'm pretentious for writing metrical verse?
    • What if wanting to publish poetry at all is selfish and vain?

ADHD

  • What might have been different if I had been diagnosed earlier in life?
  • What if disclosing my diagnosis seems like I'm making excuses?
  • What if people don't believe me?
  • What if what motivates me and makes me happy changes so often that I will never master any one thing well enough to make a living doing it?

Climate change

  • What if intense heat leads to drought and makes my hometown unlivable?
    • What if something happens to my friends and family?
  • Is it unconscionable to fly back to Texas to visit my family and friends over the holidays?

Why People Worry

Most theories about why worry mechanisms even exist in the brains of modern humans go something like this: in prehistoric times, humans had to worry in order to stay one step ahead of predators, natural disasters, and so on; people who didn't worry died. But this is a gross oversimplification. While it's obviously true that there is some biological benefit to worry, (especially when it comes to avoiding real and present dangers) it is also clear that many people, myself included, worry to a degree that is actively harmful, or at least unproductive.

Moreover, it has become basically common knowledge among politicians,[3] media moguls, and advertisers,[4] that stoking worry is a highly effective means of manipulating people, precisely because worry drives us to action or inaction. I experienced this firsthand in my time working as an overnight news producer for a company that is one of the largest owners of local TV stations in the United States.[5] Crime and weather were our bread and butter, forming the backbone of nearly every morning program. Conveniently, they also provide a useful metaphor for understanding the important differences between useless and useful worry, which I've decided to call worry that wastes and worry that works, respectively.

Worry That Wastes

This is the kind of worry promoted by most crime reporting. We hear the grisly, senseless details of a recent murder that has already been solved and nevertheless start to worry about our safety, our community, or the state of the world in general. We get unsettled because the information is often presented in an almost clinically matter-of-fact way, and because even though this information is undeniably factual, it's not clear what we can or should do with it, if anything.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.
-Winston Churchill

This is the key to defining useless worry: worry is wasteful when it gets in the way of meaningful action, either by compelling us to consider problems beyond our expertise or by capturing our attention with details that are irrelevant and that in turn obfuscate what steps we need to take to progress toward our goals. Most worry falls into this category, at least for me, and it's this kind of worry that I'm most interested in learning how to minimize in my life.

Worry That Works

This is the kind of worry that arises when our local weather forecast projects that a strong storm will hit our area in a matter of days. In this situation, we would be foolish if we just decided to not worry (and not prepare). We could be hurt by debris kicked up by gusting winds. We could go hungry if we lose electricity and lack ready-to-eat food. These possible outcomes are not vague or distant what-ifs, they are specific consequences that might occur very soon. By recognizing this we can start to define useful worry: a worry needs working through if it demands meaningful action now or in the near future. These are the worries that spring from what we most care about, that urge us to demonstrate that care by doing something about it.

How to Start Working With Worry

Now that we've examined the difference between useful and useless worries, let's explore some strategies for getting to the bottom of our worries and making them work for us.

  1. Brain Dump: Write down all of your worries at this moment, no matter how big or small. This first step is crucial for me. It's how I begin to see my worries clearly and it's the only way I can deal with my worries one at a time without feeling like I'm neglecting or forgetting something important.
  2. Find the Ask: Turn every worry into a question. This helps us see what each of our worries wants us to do. Sometimes this spawns further, more specific questions that clarify goals and suggest a plan for action. Wasteful worries ask something of us too, and writing things out can help us see where these asks become unreasonable.

After these first two steps, you might end up with a list that looks like the one I made at the top of this page. It might be long or short, sprawling or narrow. What matters is that it represents in words everything that's on your mind right now, so there's no opportunity to waste worry on not having worried enough. Making this list can be a tiring process, so take your time, and take breaks if you need them. Next up is the fun part:

  1. Cut Distant What-Ifs. What-ifs frequently indicate worries that are beyond our realm of control, so the answer to many of these questions cannot even be avoided by worrying. They indicate uncertainty and a fear of something unknown, in the past or the future. Because of the uncertainty involved, they can often be negated by an equal and opposite what-if.
  2. Say Yes to Self-Confidence and No to Self-Doubt. Find yes-or-no questions and answer accordingly. Take a step back and be honest with yourself. If you are making progress towards your goals, celebrate that. If you aren't, start planning.
  3. Rephrase and Reframe. Look at your remaining questions, and try to ask them in a way that foregrounds specific action.

I followed these steps with my list, and only one of my worries survived the process:

  • How do I find a new doctor in NYC and get the medicine I need?

Reframed in this way, it doesn't even seem like a worry anymore: it's transformed into a reasonable question about a practical concern that I can answer with a little bit of effort on my part.

Conclusion

Only you can decide if your worries are worthy of action or wastes of your time. Personally, I want to expend less energy worrying about things I can't control so I put it towards controlling the things I can.

I don't think I'll ever stop worrying altogether, and I'm not even sure that a life completely free from worry could end up being the kind of life I want. In fact, I value where my worries have led me. Many began as a vague sense of dissatisfaction that suggested something about my life was wrong for me, and they spurred me to think about what I had to do to set it right. With that, I'll leave you with a few words from a song that helped me find the courage not to go to medical school, "Peace of Mind" by Boston.

I understand about indecision
But I don't care if I get behind
People living in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind

  1. Anecdotally, the manufacturing of urgency in order to complete even simple tasks seems to be common among individuals with undiagnosed ADHD. You can read more about my personal experience getting diagnosed here. ↩︎

  2. Maybe I should stop watching the news. ↩︎

  3. As early as 1532 Machiavelli was asserting that it was better for a prince to exercise power through fear than love, if he could not have both. ↩︎

  4. Consider the "Daisy" ad from President LBJ's re-election campaign in 1964. ↩︎

  5. I have chosen to protect myself by not naming them here. ↩︎