Most of us worry from time to time.
You might worry about an upcoming appointment, money, work, your family, your health, or something you said earlier in the day.
Worry isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it draws our attention to a problem and helps us decide what to do.
But worry can also become difficult when it feels hard to switch off, keeps returning without leading to action, or starts taking up a lot of our time and attention.
Understanding how worry works is a useful first step towards responding to it differently.
What do we mean by worry?
Worry often involves thinking about things that might happen in the future.
It can take the form of questions such as:
“What if something goes wrong?”
“What if I can't cope?”
“What if I've made the wrong decision?”
“What if they don't reply?”
One worry can quickly lead to another.
For example:
“What if I make a mistake at work?”
might become:
“What if my manager notices?”
then:
“What if they think I'm not good enough?”
and eventually:
“What if I lose my job?”
Before long, your mind may have travelled a long way from where the worry started.
Worry can sometimes be useful
Some worries point towards something we can actually do.
Imagine you realise tonight that your car's MOT expires next week.
You might worry:
“I need the car for work. What if I can't get an appointment?”
That worry can prompt useful action: check the expiry date, look for available appointments and book one.
Once you've made a plan, the worry has helped you respond to a real problem.
This is different from spending the rest of the evening thinking:
“What if there aren't any appointments? What if the car fails? What if the repair is expensive? What if I can't get to work?”
The mind has moved from identifying a problem towards repeatedly exploring possible future difficulties.
When worry keeps going
Worry can feel as though we're trying to solve a problem.
We think about it again.
We run through another possibility.
We try to predict what might happen.
Perhaps we tell ourselves:
“If I think about this enough, I'll eventually work it out.”
But sometimes there isn't any more useful action available at that moment.
The worry continues without bringing us closer to a solution.
And because many of the things we worry about involve uncertainty, there may never be a completely reassuring answer.
Wanting certainty
Uncertainty can be uncomfortable.
When something matters to us, it's understandable to want to know what will happen.
Will the test result be okay?
Will I manage the presentation?
Will my relationship work out?
Will my family be safe?
The difficulty is that life rarely gives us complete certainty.
Worry can sometimes become an attempt to get certainty about something that can't be known yet.
Our mind keeps looking for another possibility:
“Yes, but what if...?”
Even after we've found one reassuring answer, another question can appear.
The crystal ball problem
Worry can sometimes make us feel as though we need a crystal ball.
If only we could know exactly what was going to happen, perhaps we could finally stop worrying.
But our minds can't reliably predict the future.
When there's uncertainty, the mind may try to fill the gap by imagining possible outcomes — and when we're already worried, our attention can be drawn particularly strongly towards what might go wrong.
The problem isn't that you're failing to predict the future accurately.
The problem is that the future isn't completely predictable in the first place.
What do we do when we're worried?
Worry isn't only about what happens in our thoughts.
It can also affect what we do.
When we're worried, we might:
- repeatedly check something
- ask other people for reassurance
- search online for answers
- go over a conversation again and again
- avoid situations that make us uncertain
- put off making a decision
- repeatedly prepare or plan
- keep looking for signs that something is wrong
These responses can make sense in the moment.
If you're worried that you've made a mistake, checking might briefly make you feel better.
If you're worried about someone's opinion of you, asking for reassurance might bring some relief.
If something makes you anxious, avoiding it can reduce that anxiety for a while.
The difficulty is what happens next.
Short-term relief can keep the worry going
Imagine you're worried that you've sent an email with a mistake in it.
You check the email.
Everything looks fine.
You feel relieved.
A few minutes later, another thought appears:
“But what if I missed something?”
So you check again.
Once again, you feel better.
For a while.
Over time, repeatedly checking can make it harder to trust the first check. Instead of learning that you can tolerate some uncertainty, you may begin to feel that you need to check in order to feel safe or reassured.
A similar pattern can happen with reassurance or avoidance.
This can create a worry cycle:
Worry → Check / seek reassurance / avoid → Short-term relief → Worry returns → Repeat
The things we do to reduce worry in the short term can sometimes help keep it going in the longer term.
Not every check or reassurance is a problem
This doesn't mean checking something once is unhealthy.
It doesn't mean you should never ask someone for advice or reassurance.
And it doesn't mean avoiding something is always wrong.
Context matters.
We're interested in patterns.
Is the behaviour helping you deal with a problem?
Or do you find yourself needing to repeat it because the reassurance doesn't last?
Simply noticing that difference can be useful.
You don't need to stop worrying
The aim isn't to eliminate worry completely.
Worry is part of being human, particularly when something matters to us.
Instead, CBT can help us become more curious about what kind of worry we're having and how we're responding to it.
A useful starting point is to notice:
What am I worrying about?
Is there something I need to do?
What am I doing in response to the worry?
Is that helping me deal with the situation, or am I getting caught in a repeated worry cycle?
You don't need to solve the worry yet.
For now, just start noticing the pattern.
Not all worries need the same response
This leads to an important idea.
Some worries are about problems where there is something useful you can do.
Others are about possibilities where there is nothing you can do about them right now.
Trying to respond to both types of worry in the same way can leave us going around in circles.
In the next resource, we'll explore the difference between practical worry and hypothetical worry.
And we'll start with one simple question:
“Is there anything I can do about this RIGHT NOW?”