I am a worrier. I say that without shame, but also without pride. It is something I have had to face honestly, because worry — left unchecked — has a way of becoming a full-time occupation.
Most of us know worry well. It is that low hum in the background of your day, or sometimes the very loud noise that wakes you up at 2 in the morning (sometimes actually in the form of a disturbing phone call) and will not allow you to go back to sleep. Worry is the mind’s attempt to solve a problem that hasn’t happened yet, the visualization of a circumstance, or an anticipation of something that may never happen at all.
Here is what I have come to understand about worry: it is a form of the same control issue I wrote about previously. When I worry, I am essentially trying to mentally rehearse every possible bad outcome, as if by thinking it through enough times I can somehow prevent it, or at the very least, not be caught off guard when it arrives. The Stoics actually encouraged a version of this — premeditatio malorum, or the premeditation of adversity. The idea is to prepare yourself mentally for hardship so it doesn’t knock you flat. I have used this, and at times it has served me. But there is a significant difference between intentional, brief reflection on possible adversity — and rumination. Worry tends to be the latter.
The Taoist tradition offers something that I find more useful on a daily basis. The Tao Te Ching points us toward trusting the natural flow of things, rather than resisting what we cannot control. Worry, in this context, is resistance. It is us saying to the universe, I do not trust what is coming, I don’t like it, and so I will fight it in my mind before it even arrives. That mental fighting is exhausting. And it rarely changes the outcome.
My Choctaw tradition also speaks to this, in its own way. There is wisdom in understanding that we are part of something larger than ourselves — governed in some way by a Great Spirit, a natural order, a web of relationships that existed long before us and will continue long after. In that sense, I can try to do what some recovery oriented support groups suggest and “turn it over”, meaning put it in the hands of the universe, God, Great Spirit, the Tao, fate, or whatever. When I situate myself within that understanding, my individual worries don’t disappear, but they do find their proper proportion. I am not the center of the universe, and most (or at least not all) of what I worry about is not as catastrophic as my mind insists.
Here is a question worth spending some time considering: How much of what you have worried about in your life actually came to pass? And of what did come to pass — how much did your prior worry actually help?
In my experience of working with people in crisis, in clinical settings, in supervision, and honestly in my own life — the answer to both of those questions is humbling. Most feared outcomes never materialize. And when they do, we find a way through them that had nothing to do with all the rehearsal we did in advance. Now, when I look back, many of my worries did in fact come true, especially with my older son, who has a double whammy of alcoholism and mental health issues (autistic spectrum disorder with executive functioning disorder). It is not that I was a psychic, but more that I knew the patterns and where the would lead. Yet, my worry never changed outcome, and it didn’t really prepare me in the way that diminished the impact of adverse experiences that were the result of his issues.
This is not to say: don’t plan, don’t prepare, don’t take things seriously. It is to say: there is a line between useful preparation and the kind of worry that just borrows pain from a future that hasn’t arrived. Learning to recognize that line is a practice. It doesn’t come naturally — at least not to me. I can’t say “don’t worry” because we are human, and for many of us, it just comes naturally.
What helps me is returning to something simple. What can I actually do today? Not tomorrow. Not next month. Today. If there is an action I can take, I take it. If there is nothing I can do right now, I try — and I mean genuinely try — to put it down, to “turn it over” to recognize that it is out of my realm of control. I say to myself, “whatever happens will happen no matter how much it bothers me and sometimes I just can’t change the outcome. This enables me to have maybe a moment of less worry (maybe not total and complete serenity. Not forever. Just for now.
I won’t pretend that is easy. But it is a skill, and skills improve with practice.
If you are a worrier, you are in very good company. The goal is not to become someone who never worries. The goal is to not let worry become the thing that runs your life while you’re busy trying to live it.