Do you tend to worry too much? Everyone worries sometimes. In fact, a little bit of worrying is healthy. It’s what motivates us to plan ahead and stay safe. But if you’re constantly fretting about something, it can start to affect both your mental and physical well-being.

You’ll lose sleep because you’ll stay up at night, overthinking every decision. You might get frequent headaches, digestive problems, and you might feel “wired but tired.”

It can also affect your relationships because you’ll tend to look for reassurance, so your conversations will frequently revolve around your worries, which can be tiring for your family and friends.

Furthermore, excessive worrying can make it more difficult to deal with the problems you’re worrying about. If this sounds like you, you might be worrying your life away. So, how can you break the cycle? Let’s find out.

Why Do Some People Worry More Than Others?

There are several reasons. First, there is a genetic component, but environment and experiences seem to play a greater role. For example, people whose parents are divorced are 70% more likely to be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

As kids grow up and explore the world around them, they’re supposed to internalize this feeling that their parents will keep them safe. If this feeling is somehow disrupted, they can develop this mindset that the world isn’t safe.

Being raised by overprotective parents has been shown to also negatively impact a child’s sense of safety and security.

People worry because they believe something bad can or will happen to them, and they won’t be able to handle it. So they ruminate on various scary scenarios, trying to figure out strategies to prevent them.

In a way, worrying makes them feel safer because they believe that if they didn’t worry, things would get out of hand, so worrying is the responsible way to go through life.

Accept Uncertainty

The most important and the most difficult step toward worrying less is to “simply” accept uncertainty. It’s impossible to predict everything that might happen to you, and you need to accept these limitations. Accepting uncertainty means acknowledging that life is unpredictable and imperfect, and focusing only on the things you can control.

You can start by asking yourself in what way has worrying been helpful to you? Has it really improved your ability to predict the future?

Also, can you live with the possibility of something bad happening if it’s highly unlikely? Next time you catch yourself worrying about things you can’t control, remind yourself of the answers to these questions.

Schedule “Worry Time”

Trying to ignore and suppress your worries sometimes makes them worse. At the same time, you don’t want them to take up all of your time, so when you start to worry about something, write it down and tell yourself that you’ll think about it later, during worry time.

“Worry time” could be once or twice per day, whenever you have 30 minutes, but preferably not before bed, for obvious reasons.

If you have trouble falling asleep because of your tendency to worry, this strategy might be particularly useful because, instead of trying to suppress your worries, you can postpone them until the next day.

Before bed, it’s better to have a relaxing ritual like taking a bath and reading. You might also benefit from natural sleep aids like CBD isolate from OCN.

This is a simple but powerful strategy. By scheduling rumination sessions and postponing your impulse to worry, you’ll gradually learn that your worries are not as urgent as you thought, and you can free your mind to focus on more productive things without catastrophic consequences.

Categorize and Analyze Your Worries

Once you get in the habit of writing your worries down and postponing rumination until “worry time,” you can start to learn how to analyze them. First, you’ll want to categorize them into productive and unproductive worries.

A productive worry means there’s something you can do about it. For example, you’re worried that you forgot to pay a bill, so you can check to make sure you paid it.

As you go through your list, ask yourself if this is a problem you can fix. For the worries you can’t fix – the unproductive worries – ask yourself if it’s likely or unlikely to happen and what evidence you have that this worry is realistic.

Talk It Out

You may also find relief in sharing your worries with a trusted friend or family member. They can help you put things into perspective and give you advice. Note that if you’re a chronic worrier, even the most loving and supportive people in your life may not always be available.

That’s because emotions are contagious, and if you spend a lot of time with someone that tends to worry a lot, it can start to affect you.

Instead, you can try talk therapy with a mental health professional who has the necessary training to help you get to the root of your problem.

Live in the Moment

Most worries stem from ruminating over what might happen in the future based on experiences from the past. When you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by worries, take a moment to focus on your surroundings and your breath.

Really take in the details of everything around you. This helps to remind you that you are in the here and now, and whatever it is that you’re worried about hasn’t happened yet, and if it does, you will handle it then.

Excessive worrying is also closely linked with a lack of confidence in our abilities, so it helps to take on challenges. You can start by learning something you’re interested in. For example, let’s say you’ve always wanted to learn how to play the guitar. As you’re learning, you will, of course, face obstacles which you will need to overcome.

The goal is to attempt to do something and then learn the skills necessary to do it. If it’s something you do for yourself, there will be no pressure. You can make mistakes, you can explore, and it won’t affect the rest of your life.

What it will do is teach you that with time and patience, you can achieve something that used to baffle you.