Why Are You Worrying About Everything?

Mental exhaustion, fatigue, and even insomnia... At times, you worry about virtually everything and your mind goes into overdrive. But why do you do it? Why fall into these black holes of worry?

Written and verified by the psychologist Valeria Sabater.

Last update: 28 July, 2022

Why are you worrying about everything? Why can’t you escape from the prison of your anguished thoughts? Many people, at some point in their lives, will ask themselves these very same questions. In fact, the truth is that it’s very easy to find yourself drifting into these types of predicaments. Consequently, delving a bit deeper into this particular area of psychological study can prove to be extremely useful.

Classic figures, like the late Wayne Dyer, reminded us that the catastrophe you’re worried about is often much worse in your imagination than it turns out to be in reality. Indeed, this is very true. In fact, some people are just like walking worry factories, and their minds are highly skilled at furthering their own suffering even more.

Is worry really so harmful, though? A lot of self-help literature suggests that there’s nothing as useless as worrying. However, this statement needs a little more clarification.

Worrying isn’t necessarily a harmful or negative exercise. The cognitive act itself is simply the mechanism by which you anticipate certain things in order to act on them effectively later. The real problem isn’t thinking too much. In fact, what you need to learn is how to think well. In effect, this means to worry in an intelligent, logical, and effective way.

Why are you worrying about everything?

If you get irritated, asking yourself why you’re worrying so much about everything, it’ll be because you’ve reached your absolute limit. In this situation, along with mental exhaustion, you’ll experience other symptoms like physical discomfort, muscle aches, insomnia, and headaches, etc.

Dr. Carlos Pelta of the Complutense University of Madrid suggested in an interesting study that these types of situations are, in many cases, linked to psychological states like anxiety and depression.

When your cognitive processes are solely focused on the future, they conjure up images and scenarios that, far from solving the problem, only make it worse. Then, you start to experience health problems. However, you mustn’t allow yourself to reach these extremes. You mustn’t feed those exhausting and negative chains of thought which are of no use to you whatsoever.

What you need to do in these kinds of instances is to first identify the triggers and then act accordingly. Indeed, you need to delve deeper and understand what’s causing these situations in the first place.

You’ve probably been taught that responsible people are always worried.

You live in a society where stress and anxiety have become normalized. In fact, you tend to assume that every responsible person who’s committed to their work and family is overloaded. Responsibility and worry always go hand in hand, and the more you worry, the more responsible you are.

What can you do in these situations?

If you want to get out of this kind of situation, you can start by changing the way you think. Stop worrying and concentrate on solving your problems instead. Stop overloading yourself, as you deserve better.

Excessive worry makes you less competent and less happy. It’s important that you know how to set limits and manage your time and your day-to-day responsibilities in a better way. You can’t always handle everything. You need time for yourself and you mustn’t take on more than you can manage.

Expecting the worst

One of the reasons you worry about everything is revealed in a study conducted at Laval University (Quebec). It suggests that people often tend to anticipate negative outcomes. Somehow, the brain seeks to prepare you for the worst, so you begin to react and deploy strategies accordingly.

However, thinking the worst almost consistently leads to unhealthy and exhausting overactivation. To the extent that you’re always on alert. All of this results in insomnia, physical tension, and discomfort.

What can you do in these situations?

When you realize that your mind is filtering out every reality, event, and thought due to fatalism and negativity, it’s time to stop. Taking a break for a few days and giving yourself some rest is the ideal solution. In fact, getting some peace and tranquility is the first step towards calming your mind.

Once you’ve reached the right balance internally, you can rationalize your ideas and start to pursue change. In fact, these states of constant worry have provoked the need for you to make some new decisions. Furthermore, you need to think intelligently about your own well-being.

Why are you worrying about everything?

Constantly worrying and suffering over every thought that crosses your mind might be a symptom of an underlying psychological problem. If you’ve been wondering for months, perhaps even years, why you tend to worry about everything, you might be suffering from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

The kind of anguish that blots out everything else and gives you no respite makes you mentally and physically exhausted. Indeed, if you find yourself in this state, you need to ask for specialist help. Symptoms usually include:

• You find it impossible to control your worry.
• Your work and personal life start to suffer due to constant worrying.
• You suffer other physical symptoms, such as tachycardia, muscle aches, insomnia, dizziness, fatigue, choking feeling, etc.
• You’ve been suffering from these symptoms for at least six months.

What can you do in this situation?

There might be other conditions to consider alongside generalized anxiety disorder, such as depression or trauma. Therefore, it’s important to get a correct diagnosis. Furthermore, you’ll need a personalized treatment strategy.

In most cases, good results are achieved via cognitive-behavioral therapy. However, it’s no less important that you learn to manage your worry.

This doesn’t mean that you cease to think about your worries or that you avoid any challenges that lie ahead. In fact, the key to your well-being lies in learning to think in a healthy way. You just need to learn to worry effectively by mapping out solutions to each of your problems.