Why Telling Yourself "Not to Worry" Doesn't Work
Worry is an attempt to solve an issue that has an uncertain, and possibly negative, outcome.
An important point here is that worry is a combination of cognition and affect, a process that engages both our intelligence and our emotions — and the problem with trying to interrupt it is twofold.
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An argument with a worry is an argument you can't win: when you tell yourself not to worry, you aren't going to silence it — you're engaging the worry in conversation, inviting it to explain itself further.
Worry causes anxious, repetitive thoughts — but if you concentrate on stopping those thoughts, you are actually directly contributing to them. Worry develops from and perpetuates a state of fear — but forcing yourself to suppress a negative emotion can instead magnify it, or activate other negative affects like anger or despair.
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Since we cannot stop worrying through conscious effort, the best course of action is to concentrate on working around it.
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