Your Addiction to Worry Can Kill You

Have you woken up in the middle of the night, worrying about your son’s science exam the next day?

Maybe, in the middle of the day, you started to think about your dad’s age and how his health could really decline at any point.

Or you make a mistake at work and begin to run scenarios through your head of being fired or demoted.

Or worse yet, you don’t make a mistake and worry about being fired or demoted.

The best way I like to describe worry is like a muscle.  The more you use it, the bigger it gets.

You have trained your brain to be worried, you’ve turned the setting to worry and you’re amping up every single time you worry about something which fuels your worry muscle and it becomes more powerful the more you feed it. 

Worry can easily become a terrible habit which people then take on as their personality with statements like, ‘Oh, I’m just a worrier,” or “If I’m not worrying then something bad can happen and I won’t be prepared.”  

Being a worrier is not part of your DNA and worse yet, you cannot control outcomes by worrying about what will or won’t happen.  There is a crazy statistic that more than 80% of what people worry about never actually comes true. 

Wiring your brain for worry weakens the connections between your prefrontal cortex, the thinking and rational side of your brain, and your amygdala, the part of the brain that always is on high alert. So when your amygdala fires, your prefrontal cortex doesn’t get the signal, and making rational choices becomes much harder.

Heavy stuff...maybe, but here is why all of this is important.

Worry flares the amygdala, which fires our fight or flight, which releases cortisol and adrenaline into our system and these are neurotransmitters we can get addicted to so when we aren’t worried or have nothing to worry about, guess what, we go and search for something to worry about.

Have you ever worried about something that had a minute chance of happening yet you’re replaying it in your mind, start running scenarios in which it could happen, and find false facts just to support your thought? 

That’s your brain trying to get its fix.  Frightening, right?

Worry addiction is real, but just like any addiction, it can be beaten.

1. Awareness: If worry is a habit, it’s happening automatically which means many times it just becomes part of your being, weaved into your makeup so you aren’t actually even recognizing it.  Start to become mindful of the moments it happens and what is triggering your worry to start. 

2. Question Yourself:  Ask yourself questions to challenge your thoughts.  What evidence supports this thought? Are there more thoughts supporting this thought? 

3. Separate the Facts: When you see the thoughts, then ask, what are the facts around these thoughts and how can I separate them out?  We create these extensive fairytales in our minds using a bunch of thoughts we have which are based on beliefs we’ve acquired, yet so often, none of those beliefs are actually based on real facts.  Get really clear on what the fact is and then how your thoughts are supporting or morphing the facts. 

When you worry, cortisol and adrenaline pump into your body which can have severe long-term effects on your health.  It lowers your immune system, elevates your blood pressure, and increases the chances of heart disease and diabetes. So the next time you want to say, “I’m just a worrier by nature,”  think about how it can hurt your health.