Why Am I Always Worried Something Bad Is Going to Happen?
Maybe its hypervigillence
Do you ever find yourself worrying about the worst thing that could happen, even when everything seems to be okay? Your spouse doesn't answer their phone and your mind immediately goes to an accident. You notice something different in your body and start wondering if it could be something serious. Your boss asks if you have a minute to talk and you're already wondering what you did wrong. Sometimes people describe it as, "I know I'm probably overreacting, but I can't stop thinking about what could happen." We usually call this anxiety or worrying, but sometimes it helps to ask a different question: Why has my brain become so good at looking for what could go wrong?
For some people, the answer may be connected to what they learned earlier in life. If you grew up around unpredictability, conflict, criticism, addiction, emotional outbursts, loss, or other difficult experiences, being alert may have actually been helpful. Maybe you learned to pay attention to someone's tone of voice when they walked through the door. Maybe you needed to know what kind of mood a parent was in. Maybe things could change quickly in your home, so being prepared felt safer than being caught off guard. Trauma doesn't always mean one terrible event. Sometimes it's what happens when a child repeatedly learns, "I need to stay prepared because I don't know what's coming next." Even years later, your circumstances may be very different, but your brain can continue doing what it learned to do well: scanning for danger and preparing for the worst.
Worrying can also become a way of protecting us from deeper emotions. If I can think through every possible bad outcome, maybe I can prevent myself from being surprised, hurt, rejected, disappointed, or out of control. Worry keeps us busy trying to predict the future instead of noticing what we're feeling in the present. Underneath "What if something bad happens?" might be fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, or a feeling of helplessness that we learned a long time ago was difficult to tolerate. This is one reason simply telling yourself to "stop worrying" usually doesn't work very well. The worrying may have a purpose. The problem is that something that once helped protect you can eventually keep your nervous system acting as though danger is always just around the corner.
In therapy, I often want to understand the worry rather than immediately fight with it. What is your mind trying to protect you from? What does it believe would happen if you stopped preparing for the worst? What feelings might be underneath all that worrying? We can learn practical ways to respond differently to anxiety, but we can also work on the deeper emotional learning that may be keeping the pattern going. The goal isn't to convince yourself that nothing bad will ever happen. None of us can have that kind of certainty. It's helping your brain learn that you don't have to spend today preparing for every bad thing that might happen tomorrow. At Asbury Counseling, I work with adults experiencing anxiety, OCD, complex trauma, and difficult emotional patterns, including people who understand logically that they're safe but have a hard time actually feeling that way.
