Telling Yourself Not To Worry

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.