The Nuance
Most Things You Worry About Will Never Actually Happen
Persistent worrying is pointless. Here’s how to stop doing it.
In his 1915 book Worry and Nervousness, the American surgeon and psychiatrist William Samuel Sadler described worry as an “inability to relax the attention” once it had fastened itself onto a given fear. All people experience negative or troubling thoughts. But for those with worry-related mental “disturbances,” Sadler wrote, those negative thoughts are stickier and, eventually, they can become destabilizing.
Flash-forward 100 years, and mental health experts today echo many of Sadler’s sentiments — albeit using different language. “Worry is part of human nature,” says Robert Leahy, a New York-based clinical psychologist and associate editor of the International Journal of Cognitive Therapy. If people didn’t worry, they wouldn’t be able to anticipate and prepare for life’s challenges. “For some people, though, worry gets to be overwhelming,” Leahy says. “People who worry a lot tend to become depressed; you can worry yourself into this negative outlook on life.”
One could argue that recent world and domestic events more than justify anxiety and a negative outlook. But a new study in the journal Behavior Therapy finds that many of the worries that occupy an…
