today we're going to be talking about the four
core defining features of worry and how worry differs from anxiety
hi everyone today we're going to be answering a question that you may have never asked before
and the question is what is worry it may seem like a pretty straightforward question but have
you ever thought about what worry actually is and how worry is different from anxiety
that's what we're going to be getting into in today's video but before i get into that
just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist in the province of
british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended
as a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or mental health professional now
with those things out of the way let's start talking about a definition of worry
now one of the things when i'm working with my clients who are experiencing generalized anxiety
disorder or difficulty managing worry one of the first things i ask my clients is what is worry
and at first they seem a little confused by the question but when we get into it
i often find that a lot of people have trouble providing a definition of worry most often what
happens is that they they provide a series of examples of things that they worry about
but it quickly becomes apparent that they've never actually thought about what worry is
and the thing is this is perfectly understandable worry is an interesting phenomenon in that
it's something that we all experience but something that we rarely think about in terms of
a definition and i think part of this is due to the fact that worry is so universal
everyone experiences it and so we never have to really think about what it is since everybody
knows what worry feels like we never have to explain what we mean when we say we're worrying
however i think it's really important to have a clear understanding
of the definition of worry because it's really difficult to change something if we don't even
know or can't even define what we're trying to change specifically i think it's critical
to understand the difference between worry and anxiety and that's something i'm going to get to
in a few minutes but first i want you to ask the question of yourself how would you define worry
suppose you met an alien who just beamed down to earth and had never experienced worry
how would you explain what worry is to that alien
this can be tough especially if it's something you've never thought about before so the first
defining feature of worry is that worry is a cognitive process it's a thought process
it's something we do in our mind it's something that we are thinking about worry takes place in
our head it's not something that we do in terms of our behavior it's something that we think about
the second defining feature of worry is that worry tends to be about a collection of thoughts not
just a single thought and what i mean by that is that worry tends to be a spiraling or cascading
of what-if thoughts uh we very rarely experience worry like this i wake up one morning
and i have a terrible headache and i think to myself what if this is a brain tumor
my next thought is unlikely to be i wonder what i'm going to have for breakfast
instead my my mind is more likely going to latch on to that worry
about having a brain tumor and i'm going to have a collection of thoughts
about having a brain tumor and this can work in a couple of ways the first is that we can have the
same worry thought looping over and over and over again in our head kind of like a broken record
but the second way this can happen is that we can have one worry thought that leads to
another worry thought that leads to another worry thought and when you have this downward spiral of
one what if thought leading to another what if thought leading to another what if thought
until uh you're imagining some horrible worst case scenario so
i wake up in the morning i have the the headache i worry what if this is a tumor what if this
means that i'm going to get really sick what if i'm going to lose my job because i can't work
what if we don't have enough money to to get by what if my family's left destitute after i die
those types of things it's this collection of these what-if thoughts
the third defining feature of worry relates to its orientation in time so does worry tend to be
more oriented towards the future or towards the past well worry tends to be future oriented we
worry about things that might happen in the future not so much things that have happened in the past
now sometimes when i bring this up with clients i'll have clients tell me that
oh but i worry about things that have happened in the past however what's often the case
with this is that it's not so much that the person's worrying about the past but more so
how events from the past are going to affect them in the future so for example i might believe i
might imagine myself worrying excessively about having been fired from my last job
but if i really think about it it's not so much that i'm worrying about having been fired from my
map from my last job but more so i'm worrying about how uh having been fired in the past is
going to affect me in the future how am i going to be able to explain why i left my previous job
in future job interviews and will having been fired in the past make it more difficult for
me to get a job in the future so the key point is that worrying is future oriented
typically focused on things that haven't happened yet now there's another seemingly obvious point in
relation to this but i think it's important to emphasize worry tends to be about future
negative events not positive events very rarely do i find that people worry about things like
what if i win the lottery or what if i'm really successful at this job or what
if this relationship turns out really well we tend not to worry about good things happening
however sometimes i'll have clients who worry a lot push back and say
well they would worry a lot if they won the lottery for example to which i always ask
okay well what would you be worrying about so you won the lottery what would you worry about
and the answer is typically they would worry about making mistakes and how they would invest
the lottery winnings or that they would have long lost family members coming
out of the woodwork to hit them up for money and how would they deal with that
now notice these aren't positive things these are actually negative outcomes
that the person's worrying about so in this case it's not the positive event
it's not the winning the lottery that the person's worrying about but rather
they're warning about all the negative things that could come from that positive event
and finally the last core defining feature of worry
is that the emotion that results from this worry process is anxiety now this is a key point
anxiety and worry are not the same thing yet people often will use the terms worry
and anxiety interchangeably i'm worried and anxious yet they're two different things
worry is a thought process and anxiety is the emotion that results from that thought process
uh this makes sense because if all i'm thinking about is all of the
horrible and negative things that are going to happen to me in the future
it's understandable that i would feel anxiety about that that i'd feel anxious about that
so it's important to point out that you can't be worrying without experiencing anxiety
but you can experience anxiety without worrying now this can be
a bit of a difficult concept to understand so i'd like to explain it using an example
now suppose i'm watching uh a movie in a theater and it's a it's a horror movie
and it's this really intense scene in the movie guy jumps out of a shower with a big knife and
i react my heart's racing my hands are sweaty i feel really anxious so i'm feeling really anxious
but i'm not really worrying in that situation so it's not like i'm in that movie and i'm thinking
well what if when i get home there's this crazy serial killer at my house and what if they attack
me and they kill me i'm not thinking that in the movie theater i'm just experiencing anxiety
in relation to what i'm watching so i can be anxious without worrying
so you might be asking okay well why is this important
why is it sort of important to understand the distinction between anxiety and worry
well i think it's important because you can't do anything to directly change how you feel
as we we don't have that type of control over our emotions we can't just choose not to feel anxious
however we do to some extent have control over how we think and so if worry is a thought
process and not an emotion we have much greater ability to control our worry than we may realize
so if we put all of these defining features of worry together the definition of worry that i
like to use when i'm working with my clients is that worry is a collection of thoughts or doubts
that occur in relation to future negative events and are accompanied by anxiety
and this is the understanding of worry that helps shape the treatment that i use when
i'm working with someone who's experiencing excessive worry or generalized anxiety disorder
and i've done a number of videos on tools and skills to manage excessive
worry and generalized anxiety disorder and so if you're interested in learning
more about that i'd encourage you to take a look at some of those videos
so i hope that gives you a better understanding of what worry is and help a better
helpful way of thinking about a definition of worry i'd love to hear your thoughts
or ideas or questions about this so please leave me some comments
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when i post a new video so that's all for today's video as always thank you for
making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one