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Areas › Worry and anxiety › What worry does
If you have been told all your life that you overthink, it is worth saying plainly that this trait has served you. The aim is not to flatten it. It is to give it a job with an end point: think it through, write down what you will actually do, then hand the rest over. Planning has a finish line. Worry does not, which is the whole difference.
No leaf falls without His knowledge (Quran 6:59). Nothing you stop tracking is thereby dropped.
الأنعام
۞وَعِندَهُۥ مَفَاتِحُ ٱلۡغَيۡبِ لَا يَعۡلَمُهَآ إِلَّا هُوَۚ وَيَعۡلَمُ مَا فِي ٱلۡبَرِّ وَٱلۡبَحۡرِۚ وَمَا تَسۡقُطُ مِن وَرَقَةٍ إِلَّا يَعۡلَمُهَا وَلَا حَبَّةࣲ فِي ظُلُمَٰتِ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَلَا رَطۡبࣲ وَلَا يَابِسٍ إِلَّا فِي كِتَٰبࣲ مُّبِينࣲ
He has the keys to the unseen: no one knows them but Him. He knows all that is in the land and sea. No leaf falls without His knowledge, nor is there a single grain in the darkness of the earth, or anything, fresh or withered, that is not written in a clear Record
Qur’an 6:59read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A controlled trial in 26 people with generalised anxiety disorder tested a package aimed at, among other things, beliefs about worry and how people approach problems, and it produced clinical improvement. Beliefs about worry being useful were treated as part of the target rather than as nonsense to be argued away. The sample was very small, so take it as promising rather than conclusive.
Robert Ladouceur; Michel J. Dugas; Mark H. Freeston; Éliane Léger; Fabien Gagnon; Nicole Thibodeau (2000). Efficacy of a cognitive–behavioral treatment for generalized anxiety disorder: Evaluation in a controlled clinical trial.. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The same forward looking mind either prepares and stops or keeps circling, and giving it a finishing point decides which.
There is a small gap between something happening and the story you tell yourself about it. That gap is the cheapest place to step in.
Nerves before something new usually fade as you get the hang of the thing. Worry is expecting a bad ending. Anxiety is the body over-reacting to either. Three different problems, three different kinds of help.
Some people are not being lazy when they stall. They are waiting to feel sure about how it turns out, and because that feeling never arrives, nothing moves.