Worry Charting
The article drew me in with the title: “Most Things You Worry About Will Never Actually Happen.” Which is… true. Though I entered the article with the belief that my worries are still valuable. They help me to be cautious, and that, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.
But the article references a recent study. The researchers had people record all of their worries for one month:
The study participants also recorded the outcomes of their worries. The researchers found that 91% of people’s worries did not come true. For several of the people in the study, exactly none of the things they worried about actually happened.
Oh.
It would probably be eye-opening to do this: to write down everything I’m worried about throughout the day, and then chart it, discovering which worries came true, which worries didn’t (but I intervened so they wouldn’t come true), and which worries simply didn’t come true and they were out of my control.
Of course, this only works for short-term fears. We have no clue if our long-term fears will come true or not until far down the road. But I think I want to try this for the month of November. See what comes of it by the end of the month.
7 comments
I tend to worry a lot and I do try to stop myself from worrying about stuff that won’t happen. On the other hand sometimes worrying can be good because it causes you to be more cautious.
Interesting study, though I have to say that saying 91% of people with GAD’s worries never come true is different from saying that most of the worries of a normal person never come true. It’s probably true that most normal person’s worries don’t come true either – but I don’t think this study can fairly say that. Several of the all-consuming worries that I had did indeed come true – I didn’t get into my top-choice college, I never completed my PhD, Trump did come to power. That said, worry charting does seem like a worthwhile thing to try for a while.
My stepdad was a worrier, and he used to say “I know my worrying works, because the things I worry about never happen.” 😉
I am not a worrier generally, but there have been things I’ve worried about that half actually come to pass. My husband has GAD and worries a lot; I would say that these findings are fairly reflective of his experience, i.e., most of the things he worries about never happen.
I had a colleage that was extremely worried about getting dementia. Her parents both hot it pretty young and she was extremely scared about it. She died last month from Lou Gerigh disease. It made me think about worrying a lot.
My mother was a first class worrier, and I inherited it from her. But in more recent years, I’ve been able to train myself to worry less. Because although some worries can be helpful, in that by thinking about a situation you can find a solution, or develop a plan of action to deal with it, other times it’s just pure self-torture. By learning to put away those thoughts, which don’t help me at all, I’ve been able to find much more peace, and improve the overall quality of my life. I’m far from being really good at it (as my husband will attest), but I am oh-so-much better than I was.
I wonder what would happen if one wrote down worrying too much as a thing they worried about. Would that help or hurt?
I know one common response to worry is to say the event is improbable do the worry is misplaced energy, but I have had a harder time with that as a helpful technique. The most recent event was that my very good friend’s daughter died suddenly. And I find myself unable to really help myself or my kids know how to respond to our worries because, you know, sometimes the worst thing, the improbable thing happens. it is really difficult not to fixate on that all day, every day.