Research has suggested that although worrying may be unpleasant, the immediate emotions that are avoided by focusing on worry are often perceived as more aversive (eg, fear, anger, grief). In return, these aversive stimuli trigger worry as an avoidant behavior, which over time may be habitual.
Chronic worry is a mental habit that, over time, can be broken. For some worriers, anxious thoughts are fueled by an underlying belief about worrying — that it's somehow protective, will help us avoid bad things, or prepare us for the worst. Worry might keep our minds busy, but not in a constructive way.
Many of us get stuck in behavior patterns. While we might think we are just anxious people, we might overlook the fact that anxiety can be a habit, like any other.
Even thinking about the situation can cause chronic worriers great distress and disability. Excessive worry or ongoing fear or anxiety is harmful when it becomes so irrational that you can't focus on reality or think clearly. People with high anxiety have difficulty shaking their worries.
Are you always waiting for disaster to strike or excessively worried about things such as health, money, family, work, or school? If so, you may have a type of anxiety disorder called generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD can make daily life feel like a constant state of worry, fear, and dread.
Constant worrying, negative thinking, and always expecting the worst can take a toll on your emotional and physical health. It can sap your emotional strength, leave you feeling restless and jumpy, cause insomnia, headaches, stomach problems, and muscle tension, and make it difficult to concentrate at work or school.
Anxiety Therapy is one way to rewire the brain. It helps you build new neural pathways that are healthy and help control anxiety symptoms. Mindfulness is another way to rewire the anxious brain. Mindfulness helps retrain the brain through mindfulness meditation, which will effectively help with anxiety.
However, if you're someone who feels addicted to worrying, your nervous system is likely stuck in this physiological state in a chronic and ongoing way. There could be various reasons for this. It could have started through trauma experiences, particularly relational trauma or attachment disturbances in early life.
Does anxiety get worse with age? Anxiety disorders don't necessarily get worse with age, but the number of people suffering from anxiety changes across the lifespan. Anxiety becomes more common with older age and is most common among middle-aged adults.
Research has found the hormones produced with chronic stress can age our brain and immune systems. Those who are constantly stressed have higher instances of dementia and memory loss, as well as more damaged cells within their immune systems.
In addition, medications originally designed for depression, the SSRIs (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Lexapro, Effexor, Cymbalta, and others), are also capable of lowering the underlying level of anxiety which takes a lot of steam out of this phenomenon.
It belongs to a group of illnesses called anxiety disorders. People living with GAD worry much more than other people, and they worry more often than other people. They often worry about many different activities of daily life, such as their home, work, finances, family, health and the future.
As it turns out, humans are wired to worry. Our brains are continually imagining futures that will meet our needs and things that could stand in the way of them. And sometimes any of those needs may be in conflict with each other.
Most people with anxiety disorders never fully eliminate their anxiety. However, they can learn how to control their feelings and greatly reduce the severity of their anxiety through therapy (and medication if needed).
Creating new neural pathways may take time — several weeks to months — but it can help your brain address triggers with more confidence, so you feel less anxious overall. Consistency is the key.
Anxiety can become a mental health problem if it impacts your ability to live your life as fully as you want to. For example, it may be a problem if: your feelings of anxiety are very strong or last for a long time. your fears or worries are out of proportion to the situation.
Overthinking is caused due to various reasons like fear, intolerance to uncertainty, trauma, or perfectionism. Overthinking can also be a symptom of already existing mental health conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, or depression.