Loading practices
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Areas › Worry and anxiety › What worry does
If someone tells you the danger is not real when it plainly is, you stop trusting anything else they say, and rightly so. Start by granting what is true: the money is short, the diagnosis is real, the person is unwell. Then the question becomes one of proportion, which is a smaller and fairer question than whether you should be worried at all.
God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear (Quran 2:286). The verse takes the weight seriously, which is exactly why it is worth weighing accurately instead of waving away.
البقرة
لَا يُكَلِّفُ ٱللَّهُ نَفۡسًا إِلَّا وُسۡعَهَاۚ لَهَا مَا كَسَبَتۡ وَعَلَيۡهَا مَا ٱكۡتَسَبَتۡۗ رَبَّنَا لَا تُؤَاخِذۡنَآ إِن نَّسِينَآ أَوۡ أَخۡطَأۡنَاۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تَحۡمِلۡ عَلَيۡنَآ إِصۡرࣰ ا كَمَا حَمَلۡتَهُۥ عَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبۡلِنَاۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تُحَمِّلۡنَا مَا لَا طَاقَةَ لَنَا بِهِۦۖ وَٱعۡفُ عَنَّا وَٱغۡفِرۡ لَنَا وَٱرۡحَمۡنَآۚ أَنتَ مَوۡلَىٰنَا فَٱنصُرۡنَا عَلَى ٱلۡقَوۡمِ ٱلۡكَٰفِرِينَ
God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, and suffers its bad- ‘ Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or make mistakes. Lord, do not burden us as You burdened those before us. Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our Protector, so help us against the disbelievers.’
Qur’an 2:286read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In 248 patients referred to a specialist anxiety clinic, difficulty tolerating uncertainty looked different depending on the diagnosis and the symptom picture rather than being one uniform thing. Anxious thinking is not a single error waiting to be corrected. This was a cross sectional clinical sample, so it maps the differences rather than telling you what to do about them.
Counsell A, Furtado M, Iorio C, Anand L, Canzonieri A, Fine A, Fotinos K, Epstein I, Katzman MA. (2017). Intolerance of uncertainty, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety: Differences by diagnosis and symptoms.. Psychiatry research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Granting what is genuinely hard keeps the rest of your thinking honest enough to be useful.
Your alarm learned from something real, then started answering to things that merely resemble it. A rustle in the grass gets the same jolt as the animal that first taught you to run.
The mind that runs ahead into everything that could go wrong is the same mind that plans well, sees round corners and has things ready in time. One trait, pointed in two directions.
Watch for the moment a what if turns into a when. That small slide, from a possibility into something you can already picture in detail, is where worry does most of its damage.