Why worrying works

I go to the doctor and he asks how my sister is doing.

“She’s really worried,” I say.

“Why?” asks the doctor, who I suspect is questioning my sibling’s faith in him.

I reply, “Because that is what she does. She worries.”

The doctor laughs. “You’re funny,” he says.

I wasn’t being funny. That is exactly what my sister – indeed everyone in my family – does. We worry. About health and happiness. About ourselves and everyone we know. If you call to ask us to recommend a good toothbrush, we’ll worry about your dental health. Then we’ll worry about how you’re going to afford all the visits to the dentist. And are you allergic to the painkillers you’ll certainly need after the procedures?

Before too long we’ll have you at the undertaker and we are somehow now taking care of your three children.

I come from a world of professional worriers. So, on the flipside, I think the rest of the world does not worry enough. This can strike me as uncaring. This is going down a bad road.

It turns out it’s the excessiveness of our worry (which may turn into anxiety) that is bad for us. Research suggests that a moderate amount of worry is not unhealthy and can actually lead to positive actions. If you are the just-right-bear of worry, what you feel can motivate you to do things that can help or even save you.

My family’s worry-gene means we are never short of that toothbrush recommendation, or one for a dentist, pharmacy, or even undertaker if it comes to that.

A 2020 BBC article about the upside to worry came illustrated with a brilliant photograph: in the foreground is a firefighter. In the background, a very safe-looking barn. In the back-background, thick clouds of smoke. The caption reads: “A constructive kind of worrying about wildfires in Australia has been linked to taking action to be prepared when fires strike.”

That’s when I notice the fire traces. The farmers were adequately concerned (read “worried”) about the threat of wildfires, bush fires, any kind of fire, to do the work of clearing the surrounding land. And so they were safe.

Note, they did not panic, assume they were doomed and flee to the city. Nor did they blithely assume trouble would never come their way. They did a bit of sensible work and gave themselves some space to breathe.

Too much worry will paralyse you. It’s overwhelming and it’s hard to think straight. You end up pinned to one place, unable to figure out how to get past the problem. It can be the genesis of an anxiety disorder. Unlike a clear-thinking farmer, you will end up with a barn on fire.

Insufficient or no worry at all means you can miss important signs that you would do well to act upon. That way lies recklessness and negligence. Don’t ignore your body if it’s telling you you’re unwell. Don’t ignore someone who thinks they may be unwell. You don’t know for sure something isn’t amiss.

A degree of worry is reasonable – indeed, beneficial. Worried about passing an exam? That can direct you toward better study habits. Worried about surviving a pandemic? You read, you listen, you observe. You wear a mask, wash your hands, maintain physical distance and get vaccinated. You read somewhere about new strains of the virus and you’ve heard what our statistics are. You make sure to get your booster.

Between the covid pandemic and some of the dramatic climate-change-induced disasters we’ve seen in the recent past, we have some of the best examples of why a controlled sort of worry might work in our best interest.

In the same BBC article that featured the fire-safe barn, the following quote resonated with everything I believe mental health workers talk about: “One study found that worry about climate change was the single strongest predictor of support for climate policies (suggesting that it may be more effective for environmentalists to appeal to the public’s worries rather than their fears). Since worry is future-focused, compared to rumination about the past, there’s great potential for it to be adaptive.”

Consider the number of cliches – sorry, proverbs – devoted to promoting the benefits of a little pre-emptive worrying: a stitch in time saves nine; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; an apple a day keeps the doctor away.

To prepare for something is to have an inkling that something needs to be prepared for. To take action to prevent something getting worse is to admit that the thing could indeed get worse.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.