Worrying Doesn’t Take Away Tomorrow’s Troubles

Worrying doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles. So why do we spend so much time doing it? 

We try to control the future by spending so much time worrying, but how effective is this strategy? When was the last time you spent all night worrying and went, ‘That was totally worth it!” 🙂

As Niceaholics, we could get a degree in worrying. It’s so ingrained in our nature.

We worry if everyone is happy with us, if we said something stupid, if we made a mistake, what’s going to happen when they find out we don’t know what we are doing, and so on.

But when does it get too much? And is it good for us?

How incredible would your life be if you could quit worrying so much?

In this post let’s talk about worrying and how we can give it up for good and take on tomorrow’s troubles bravely.

Let’s get started!

Why We Worry, and How to Know if We Worry Too Much

We all worry, at least a little. It happens. Worry is a natural part of life and is hard-wired into our being. However, for us niceaholics, a concern can be more than passing thoughts throughout the day. It can seem to take over our entire life!

What Causes Worrying?

Research has shown that we can find the root of excessive worrying in both nature and nurture. If you had a family history of anxiety and come from a long line of stressed out ancestors, it’s likely you will suffer from it as well.

However, for us, it is more likely to be environmental reasons for us to be worriers. Something happened that causes us to be frightened of the future. We learned to be fearful.

Often it comes from childhood, as we grew and started taking the usual risks our parent’s response was our first level of feedback we received about the world.

If we had overly anxious or codependent parents who themselves worried about everything, we were more inclined to be worried too. If there was instability in the home, that causes worry and concern for children as well.

Other events that cause worry can be:

• Experiencing violence – in the home or at school
• Trauma – accident, assult, war, illness or emotional trauma
• Childhood neglect – not having essential needs met as a child
• Homelessness & Poverty
• Divorce of parents
• Death of a loved one
• Bullying and Harassment – being singled out, attacked and excluded from a social group, racism

Going through high school and teenage years also causes a lot of self-consciousness and worrying about what others think, so there are many reasons we could take this on as a permanent habit.

That habit continues to torture us the rest of our lives, unless we do something about it.

Why Do We Worry?

We can worry over many things, but what is the driving force behind obsessive worriers?

When we worry, we are trying to manage our fear. It feels productive to worry, like the more we think about something, the less chance there is of what we fear coming true.

Obsessive worriers constantly worry about the future and find it difficult to relax. They worry about everything from personal safety to the welfare of the people they care about. So their lives can feel very out of control.

For those of us who have experienced trauma in the past, worrying protects us from falling victim to it again. We are like little meerkats forever on alert for danger.

Once the danger has passed, the habit of worry remains to torture us.

Are We Worrying Too Much?

How do you know if you are worrying too much?

If your relationships are suffering, you feel snappy and distracted, you have given up hobbies you love, or you are struggling to stay afloat at work, this is an early sign worrying is getting out of hand.

Second, is your worry manifesting into physical symptoms? Fatigue, insomnia, migraines, stomachaches, and heartburn are all physical symptoms of what is occurring in your mind.

Finally, is your worry causing you to develop other mental illnesses? Generalized anxiety disorder can often cause depression; obsessive worrying can cause anxiety. If you can answer yes to any of these, you probably worry too much.

If you feel your symptoms are getting severe, consider getting professional advice on how to stop obsessive worrying from becoming more serious.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Worry is something we all carry with us daily, and this is normal to a certain extent. Sometimes, though, worry becomes an overarching theme, which is no fun.

Here are the steps I used to reduce my habit of worrying too much:

Determine the Source

When a worry continues to plague you, please take a moment to explore what that is, where it is coming from, and if there is anything you can do about it.

Locating where your anxiety is coming from will allow you to remove it from your life.

Create Space

Creating space in your day will allow you time to breathe between activities. Use this breathing time to reflect on where you are in your day, relax, and return to the present moment instead of having your mind in the future.

Leave the Little Things

You need to conserve your emotional bandwidth, so if your to-do list and mind are getting bogged down with minor worries, consider letting them go.

All the things that plague your mind will not serve you. If you are stressing about the towels that need folding or the book that needs to be read because everyone is reading it, then let those items go.
They aren’t significant enough to use up your precious resources.

Find Perspective

Sometimes worry becomes an overwhelming fog that surrounds us. When this happens, stop and examine every item causing you to suffer.
Decide if it stems from something you can control, if it is necessary to your being, and if you can let it go or remove the worry entirely.

Putting each item into perspective can allow you to resolve your issues and allow the fog to lift.

Give It A Time Limit

When I was going through a period where my worrying was out of control, the advice I received was to put a time limit on it. My worry time quota was 15 minutes daily, about whatever I wanted. When my 15 minutes was up, I had to wait until the next day’s “worry session” to think about them.

I realized this was helping me break the bad habit I had developed by teaching me to delay it rather than go cold turkey.

Keeping it under control instead of letting my mind run wild was life-changing for me. Once I started pulling myself up, it got easier to stop altogether.

Socialize

Spending time with others (human or pet) can take your mind off your difficulties and give you someone to discuss them with. Sometimes sharing a burden is enough to provide you with insight.

Yes, talking to your pet counts! They are really good listeners and will keep your secrets lol. Often what you need is a sounding board, not advice.

Even if you don’t feel like talking about it, socializing is great for giving your tired mind a break.

Relaxation Techniques

There are many ways to employ relaxation. Yoga, meditation, or physical exercise. These techniques get you out of your head and into your body, giving you a better perspective of the situation.

No matter your worry, you should try different techniques until you find one that works.

The key is to distract your mind from chasing the worries and give it a rest. Moving your body makes it hard to think about other things at the same time, which is why it’s a great technique to try.

How to Interrupt a Worry Cycle

The main thing when tackling excessive worrying is you need to interrupt the cycle. I want to go a little deeper into ideas for relaxation and moving your body, as they are so good for helping you stop the worry cycle.

Worry is not something that comes and goes. Sometimes it sets up camp in our minds and bodies, creating an endless line of worry soldiers set on defeating us.

The key is interrupting them before they can get themselves organized for another attack.

I found these techniques so helpful for stopping my thoughts from getting momentum. I hope they help you too!

Get Moving

Any form of physical exercise you can focus on will also take your mind away from worry. (Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be running, haha) This can be a walk in a park, a basketball game, or even hula hooping with your kids.

The important aspect of moving is to focus on how your body feels—the feel of your legs and feet stabilizing you on a dirt path in the woods or your hips swivelling to keep a hoop around your waist.

These can help ease worry in your mind and the physical side effects of worry that plague your body, such as muscle tension.

How can you feel worried when you are hula hooping, right?

Yoga or Tai Chi

These forms of exercise help you focus on your breathing and movements in a manner that forces you to use all your intention in the practice.
I’m so uncoordinated I completely forgot about my negative thoughts because I was trying not to fall over 🙂

Mediate

Meditation is the practice of focusing on your body in its current state. Your breath, feelings, and whatever else a guided meditation can take you through. Meditation also teaches you to acknowledge interruptions or sporadic thoughts and move your mind back to meditation practice.

This training can help you not to give in to worry cycles in everyday life. Like I’ve said earlier, worrying is a habit, so to break it, it takes practice pulling your mind up and not letting it run wild all the time. Meditation is great for learning this.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

This practice calls for you to tense and then relax specific muscles. Doing this can take deep concentration as you flex muscles; you may not be used to flexing and then use equal concentration to relax that muscle.
Sometimes a meditation practice will use this technique, too. It’s another wonderful and restful way to interrupt the worry cycle.

Deep Breathing Exercises

Deep breathing exercises can help lower your heart rate and focus on your body.

You can find an array of these exercises online, or you can sit still and breathe deeply through your nose, hold the breath for a five-count, and then slowly release the breath for ten counts. Bonus points if you use a timer and work on lengthening your exhalations.

When you are being attacked by worry from all sides, take time to explore these steps, and interrupt the worry. Sometimes getting out of your head for just a few moments can help you gain perspective.

When You Are Worried About Tomorrow

5 Steps to take to Ease Tomorrow’s Worries

• Reframe your worry
• Ask if these are your worries in the first place
• Make a list
• Brainstorm a solution
• Embrace the unknown

Worry is a common part of many people’s lives. It consumes us when we are awake and when we sleep and seeps into aspects of our lives that we didn’t know it could affect.

However, there are ways to lessen the amount of worrying you do and its impact on your life.

Reframe Your Worry

When you’re worried about something, please think about what role your worry is playing. Will worrying make it go away, make it disappear, or make it better? Most likely, the answer is no.

Working through these steps will allow you to reframe your worrying so you can see it for what it is—unhelpful.

Are these Troubles Yours to Worry About?

Do you think it’s your problem to worry about in the first place? Whose responsibility is this issue?

We can get a bit carried away with our worrying and never question if it is our job or our place to get involved. This is a brilliant question to ask before you let those worry horses loose.

Is this my issue? Have they asked me to help? Whose responsibility is this?

One question that changed my thinking about this is, by helping and getting involved, am I taking away the person’s opportunity to handle this themselves?

When I saw this behavior as potentially enabling and even selfish to a degree, I could step back when the situation came up.

Make a List

If you are worried about something you have some control over, could you work through the following questions:

1) What is your worry?

2) Is your fear fact or fiction? Is there any evidence that what you are worried about will occur?

3) What is an alternative to your way of thinking? For example, how likely is it to happen?

4) Was your original thought helpful? Working through your worry in a list format will give you space to think about your worry in context and also allow you to get out of your head.

Is There a Solution?

Worrying is a time and energy suck. You’re reading this article because, like me, you are over it. Instead of worrying, ask yourself if there is something you can do.

The way to dissolve most fears is by taking action, so after making your list above, have you identified any things you can do to prepare?

Working toward a solution to a problem or preparing for an impending situation is a much more productive use of your time than endlessly thinking about it. Worrying will never change the outcome, but action will! 

Embrace the Unknown

This one is probably the hardest. Many things in life are unknown. You can spend your days and nights worrying about those, or you can embrace the endless possibilities ahead of you.

The main reason we worry is that we won’t be able to handle what we think is coming our way.

But you are stronger than you think. How many times have you handled things far worse than this? I’m guessing many times.

However, if you are exhausting yourself thinking about all the terrible things ahead, you will almost certainly make them come true.

When you are exhausted and frightened, the best decisions rarely come to you when you are under pressure.

So why not start thinking about things going well instead and see what happens?

Worrying doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles. 

We know that worrying doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles; it will never change the outcome. It simply exhausts us and wears us down.

It is such an awful cycle to get into when we can’t control our minds anymore and feel like we are going insane.

I want you to remember the next time you start on a worry session, how you will feel tomorrow.

All it will do is wreck you, so you are even less able to cope with the things you are worried about. Now, isn’t that crazy?

Use the techniques above and stop your mind from getting any speed up. Use any method you like to interrupt the pattern.

Say, “stop it.” “Is this helping us or hurting us?” Start singing a song, do some stretches, anything you can to shut that puppy up.

Please keep at it, be consistent, and pull it up every time you notice it getting revved up.

This will build a new pathway for your mind and get you out of the swirling waters of lake worrytoomuch 🙂

A Final Note

When we worry too much about tomorrow’s troubles, it steals our joy from the present moment.

It’s an endless loop because when tomorrow comes, then you start worrying about the day after.

So, when are you going to enjoy your life? Hmm? It is passing you by while you endure this torture all the time.

When you give up worrying all the time and live in the here, and now, it is very freeing. It takes a bit to get through the change, but once you are there, you will find the peace you are looking for.

Worrying about others is a kind thing, but first, we must check if it is our place to do so.

I truly hope you can turn that frightened voice down and be free of this horrible way of living.

What have you found helps your worrying? Let me know in the comments below. Let’s help each other!

Finally, I want you to know you deserve more than this, but you must take care of yourself and work on this if you want to see change.

Love

Beautiful boundaries

A nice girl’s guide to setting strong boundaries

Get your 13-page guide designed to help you build confidence and say no politely, yet firmly.

Free when you subscribe to my email list as my thank-you gift to you.

You can unsubscribe anytime. For more details, review our Privacy Policy.

Opt-in to join our niceaholic tribe and receive my goodie-filled newsletter

SUBSCRIBE

Loading…

Thank you!

You have successfully joined our Niceaholic Tribe, it’s lovely to have you with us.