A Lot to Worry About

Mankind's ability to think— to figure things out and speculate—gives him the greatest edge over all else in the animal kingdom. But the advantage does not come without a downside. The power to grasp future possibilities also makes man prone to unnecessary worries.

Worrying is not a bad thing altogether. In fact, it is a good thing when kept to the minimum. Fretting helps us anticipate problems, and so we are able to plan solutions ahead of time.

The human race would not have survived the perils of primitive times without the ability to assess our circumstances. But as human intelligence and conditions have vastly improved over time, they do not seem to have assuaged our genetic paranoia. Today, the valuable human trait of discernment and foresight has brought many of us into a dark fantasy world and gives us habits that bring nothing but weariness and misery.

Too much worrying can become an emotional disturbance. The current incidence of chronic worrying is alarming - reportedly about eight percent of the world population is afflicted. The sufferers are mostly women, perhaps because of their special sensitive nature.

Chronic worrying is a real health problem, both mental and physical. The imagined threats that haunt worriers are usually accompanied by sleeplessness, fatigue and muscle tension. These symptoms can then turn into depression, hypochondria or even obsessive-compulsive behavior. 

Behavior experts, realizing the seriousness of the problem, have been conducting extensive studies on how anxiety makes its way into the human mind and how to stop it. What has been found so far is already helping millions of fretters around the world understand and contain their problem.

The worried behavior starts early. It is estimated that worrying is 30 percent inherited. And even if you were not born with a particularly fretful nervous system, experiences in childhood or adolescence can bring it on. The usual root cause is a traumatic event; many people who have experienced great difficulties early in life are never able to shake off their fear of future misfortunes, no matter how much prosperity they have since attained.

Worriers are common among those who were thrust too soon into adult roles. They are those who, as kids, were responsible for the safety of their siblings or even of their parents, or of the family's wellbeing, in general.

Majority of chronic worriers have an over-nurturing personality. For instance, an over-protective mother may become nervous at the thought that her teenage son has just learned to drive. She gets restless. Every time the son goes out on the family car, the mother calls him on the cell phone every five minutes, and then stands at the window until the youngster returns home.

A non-worrier parent will view such behavior as exaggerated or irrational. The normal feeling is that nothing bad is likely to occur. Even as it is natural for a parent to be concerned, she trusts that her child will take care and be alright.

But the worrier parent feels that her child keeps returning home safely because she keeps vigil. In the rare instance when one of her fears is proven valid, the more she thinks that her worries will always materialize. The habit may then spread, for the parent is likely to hand down her worrier mindset to her child.

In a study involving worriers, events turned out much better than they had anticipated. What they so feared rarely happened. And in the few cases when something bad did actually happen, it was not as bad as the worriers had earlier imagined, and they were able to cope a lot better than they thought they could.

An intriguing recent finding is that anxiety doesn't at all prepare people for real events but, instead, numb their senses as a result of the unnecessary seeping away of mental and physical energies. Too much worrying can weaken the body and render it inflexible, and thus unable to deal effectively with actual situations.

Chronic worriers are like soldiers perpetually bracing themselves for trouble. Yet when the enemy appears, they are immobilized. Their brain is unable to distinguish the most pressing threats and can't decide what moves to take amid the endless string of apprehensions.

For many, the worrying habit has been going on so long that it has become automatic. Even under the best of conditions - a successful career, a supportive spouse and brilliant kids - a worrier will always find something to worry about.

Of course, there's a lot to worry about in life: work, the kids' education, the family's health, interpersonal conflicts, money. But these concerns are common to all; yet some are rendered powerless by thoughts of bleak possibilities while others are able to enjoy life in spite of the uncertainties.

There are no guarantees in life. It's by the way we handle the uncertainties we face that the quality of our life experience is defined. Happy people find it exciting to be always guessing what may come and do the best they can to prepare for anything.

It is such a gloomy life where we dread every possibility. As it would certainly take so much of the fun of living if we were to know exactly what's to come, every time. We probably need to worry just a little - enough to get us excited, not scared.