ONE of the assumptions behind chronic worry is that it is, in some way, useful. No, it’s not pleasant – any weary worrier will tell you that – but it can feel protective. You might believe that if you think through every possible problem, you will be better prepared and less shocked if anything goes wrong. You might even think that worry can even prevent something bad from happening – or at least, that not worrying makes bad things more likely to happen. The thing about this is that it rests on the assumption that our worries are reasonably accurate in the first place. But are they?

No. An important study on people with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) – in layman’s terms, chronic worriers – set out to test the question: how accurate are our worries? The people in the study were asked to record their worries as they occurred, make specific predictions about what would happen, and then track the outcomes over time. They did so by using a simple tool, the Worry Outcome Journal. Participants were prompted several times a day to write down their worries in concrete, specific terms. ‘This meeting will go badly’, ‘I’ll make a mistake’, ‘They’ll think less of me’, and so on. Alongside each worry, they rated how distressing it was and how much it interfered with what they were doing. Later, they returned to these entries and recorded what actually happened. The results were not ambiguous, with 91 per cent of worry predictions not coming true. Yes, 91 per cent.

It’s worth sitting with that stat for a moment. The vast majority of feared outcomes – the things that felt urgent and all too plausible at the time – simply never happened. In fact, for most participants, every single recorded worry turned out to be unfounded.

Lessons

If you’re a worrier, there are some important lessons here. Firstly, as already noted, the vast majority of worries don’t come true. It’s important to become more aware of this: in the study, the more people saw for themselves that their worries were inaccurate, the more their anxiety began to ease. Even when something does go wrong, it is often less severe than predicted. Indeed, in cases where the feared outcome does occur, people typically cope better than they expected. Earlier research found that people handled the situation better than anticipated nearly 80 per cent of the time.

Another big point relates to the burden of worry. Worry is not just inaccurate, it is costly. When people began to track it, they noticed how much time it consumed. Worry narrows attention, and often shows up in the body as tension. In this study, participants recorded an average of more than 30 distinct worries over just ten days. Some logged over
100. That is a busy and burdened mental landscape. This is why it can be so useful to keep your own Worry Outcome Journal. Friends and family might try and reassure you that XYZ is unlikely to happen, but reassurance is an ineffective drug. Most people have already been told at some point that ‘things will be fine’ or ‘don’t worry too much’, but these statements don’t usually change anything. What does make a difference is collecting your own evidence over time. Quite simply, it’s different when you begin to see it for yourself. Over time, the mind feels a little less convincing when its predictions keep missing the mark. None of this is to suggest that worry is always unfounded, that’s obviously not the case. Obviously, some concerns are realistic. And sometimes, unexpected things happen, and our worries are realised.

However, the pattern matters. When most worries don’t come to pass, and when those that do are often less catastrophic than imagined, it becomes harder to justify the amount of time and energy worry tends to demand. After all, worry is effortful. It takes up attention, and pulls you out of the present. It can be draining, creating a sense of strain that can last long after the worry itself has passed. We pay a heavy price when we get repeatedly bogged down in worry. Keeping track of this with your own Worry Outcome Journal, even briefly, can make that easier to see.

Linda Hamilton is a Kinsale-based cognitive behavioural therapist. If you would like to get in touch with her, call
086-3300807 For more information, go to www.kinsalecbt.com