Worry is such a part of our lives. We can worry about so many things, of so many degrees of importance, from the outcome of a sporting event to whether climate change will make the weather unsustainable for human life. We can worry about ourselves, our friends, family, students, or humanity as a whole.
I remember waiting for the results of a medical test. It was torturous, imagining different results. Luckily, I was soon able to put the worries away and not ruminate over the possible outcome. But ruminating is so easy to do. Not-knowing can be so difficult. When we worry, we can feel like we can’t let the emotion go.
And I noticed in myself that if we’re worrying, the unthinkable we worry about isn’t happening. When we worry, then for the length of a thought, we feel we’re keeping the unbearable at bay. We’re locking the future into the realm of the bearable, into the realm of imagination. We delay and delay. The emotion becomes a magical incantation. If we repeat the worry over and over, we stop the imagined awful from becoming awfully real.
But, to delay is to delay living or really to live delaying. To worry is to live in some form what we worry about. We keep it close to us. But the future is just another possibility, just another thought. What’s real is what we’re doing, feeling, thinking now.
There’s also a double quality to many emotions. We can fear fear (as well as enjoy it, as in watching horror movies). The fact we feel fear is itself fearful. We can get angry at anger, or at ourselves for being angry. We can also enjoy joy and love loving. With worry, we can, for example, worry about ourselves for “having” the emotion as well as worry about the object of worry.
We also might imagine rumination opens us up to those we worry about. And that can be true. The imaginative component of worry can help us understand what other people might be thinking or feeling. But it can also do the opposite. It can keep us in what’s called the default mode network (DFN) of the brain, the network we’re in when not involved in a task or focused activity.
As medical journalist James Kingsland describes in his book Siddhartha’s Brain: Unlocking the Ancient Science of Enlightenment, the default mode network allows us to bring up events we’ve lived through and to imagine what we haven’t experienced. It allows us to construct an image of who we are but looks at others more in relation to ourselves and less in terms of who they are in themselves.
The DFN allows “mind-wandering” to imagined possibilities. This ability to imagine is quite an amazing achievement of the human brain. It allows us to build ships to fly to the moon and write novels. And we might think we wander mentally to avoid psychological suffering as well as examine possibility after possibility. But according to research by Harvard psychologists Mathew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, the “mind-wandering” itself can be the cause, not the consequence, of negative emotions. Worrying can cause more worrying.
Yet the emotion serves a purpose. Worrying can be the emotional stimulant for planning, examining options, and considering consequences. We not only imagine a future; we feel what we imagine.
If, when we worry, we stop what we’re doing, take a few deeper breaths, and feel our feet on the floor. Or in a mindfulness session, we notice the feelings and label any thoughts⎼ and say to ourselves this is a thought; or this is worry, or fear. And if we question, examine the reality, the evidence for the response we’ve considered, we can use the magic of worry in a more skillful manner.
When we notice the components of worry we can respond in a helpful and healthy manner. We can notice first the rising energy and awakening attention. Then the direction of feelings, the turning towards or away, the like or dislike, the sense of threat, attraction, or disinterest. Then the sensations, the jumpiness in the stomach, hands, face, the tightness, grasping, etc. Then the full emotion is created including thoughts and considered actions.
We can also lessen the power of the emotion to dominate our thoughts by broadening our perspective, or returning our focus from the imagined future to the feel of now. We can notice the beauty around us, the expanse of the sky, the color of leaves on a tree, the joy we feel listening to a bird singing. Or by taking considered, appropriate action, by taking a walk in a beautiful spot or helping to get out the vote. We feel the power to act by acting ⎼ by checking out what we think is true, sharing what we learn, and acting for the general good.
Worry⎼ if we notice the feelings and magical thinking that animate it, so many previously hidden possibilities might reveal themselves to us.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
