What if? Why Worry?
One in four people will suffer from an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. And the rest of us will worry, fuss, and fret far more than we need to.
Worry is amazingly common. Worry is like blood pressure, you need a certain level to live, but too much can lead to an unhealthy mind and body. At its worst, worry is insidious, invisible, feeding on anything it finds. It sets upon you unwanted and unbidden, feasting on the infinite array of negative possibilities in life, diminishing your enjoyment of friends, family achievements, and physical being. All because you live in fear of what might go wrong. People who worry too much suffer. For all their hard work, for all their humour and willingness to laugh at themselves, for all their self-awareness, worriers just cannot achieve peace of mind.
What is Worry?
Worry is a special form of fear. It is what humans do with simple fear once it reaches the part of their brain called the cerebral cortex. We make fear complex, adding anticipation, memory imagination, and emotion.
Worry can take shape in many forms, but it almost always stems from an overwhelming sense of feeling vulnerable and powerless.
Today, we are finally beginning to understand the biology of worry to pinpoint what is happening in the nerve cells of the worrier. Our autonomic nervous systems is cranked up higher, and our blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate may be also increase. As some may be less sensitive than others when it comes to the brain’s natural stress modulators.
Other pioneering research, by Jerome Kagan (PhD), has revealed that children who are high-strung and highly aroused early on in childhood, often become tense, shy and worrying adults.
Our new knowledge in the field of Neuroscience and Brain Plasticity has enabled us to stop blaming worriers for their woes, and begin helping them to get better. One of our newest and most powerful findings is that our brains are adaptable and flexible. You cannot give yourself a new brain but you can be redirected, retrained, reassured, and reset. You can change.
RETRAINING YOUR BRAIN
Worriers can retrain their brain by learning new mental skills. It’s like training your muscles to learn the pattern of a golf or tennis swing, so that the correct swing becomes automatic. You can train your brain to learn effective ways of dealing with situations that arise again and again, such as financial worries or fears of failure. There is a window of opportunity that lasts about a minute, during which you can sever the tentacle of a toxic worry before it grips you totally as the brain has not yet gone into spasm. That is the time to defuse worry.
“Worry Wisely!”
There is such a thing as wise worry; it is our reaction to worry that counts.
For winners, worry is a reason to take positive action giving successful people an edge.
