It’s been a few years since I’ve posted on this subreddit. Last time, it was to write about my experiences recovering from an anxiety disorder, but in the years since posting, I’ve learned a LOT more about the nuances of worrying and anxious symptoms. Since I know so many of you are struggling right now, I wanted to share a little more of what I’ve learned about the former.

The most important discovery I made throughout my recovery was this: worrying is a behavior we choose just like any other, be it exercising, eating, or maintaining a certain posture. And, the reasons we choose to worry are the same as the reason we choose to do anything else - either we act to prevent discomfort or we act to gain some benefit. Reducing how much we worry requires us to understand the cost or benefit behind it, and directly address it.

For many of us, not worrying makes us uncomfortable, and the reason we worry is to prevent that discomfort. Why are we uncomfortable without worrying? For the same reason many of us are uncomfortable with regularly exercising or eating certain amounts: our neuroplasticky brain has shaped around that behavior. When we act on a habit frequently - whether exercising, overeating, or worrying - our brain adapts by making it easier to choose to act in that way again, and makes *not* acting like that uncomfortable. In addition, it starts producing urges to keep acting on that habit, even when doing so is unhealthy.

This means every time we choose to worry, especially when we do it to prevent discomfort, we are conditioning ourselves to do it again. Those of us who feel uncomfortable without worrying are this way because we have behaved this way for a long time.

But there is hope in this understanding, hope which holds the key to recovery: just like we can condition our brain toward worrying, we can condition our brain *away* from it as well. When we choose to **respond to the urge to keep worrying and shift our focus to something else**, it tears down the pathways in the brain dedicated to worrying. With enough consistent application and time for the brain to change, we can turn the tide on habitual worrying, regardless of what we're worrying about -be it social situations, our health, or the political climate.

There are several books out there that give specific techniques for responding to the urge to worry, and methods to re-focus our attention on other things, such as the four Rs or the DARE Response. It's against the rules to promote books on this sub, but I may consider making a sub dedicated to the literature around these techniques if enough people are interested.

Of course, there are also times when we worry because we look to gain something. We worry about getting sick because it helps us stay healthy or we worry about being unprepared for our presentation because it motivates us to start preparing. This kind of worrying is not something we want to stop entirely. If we saw the people around us catching a deadly virus or had a giant presentation coming up and our response was “yeah, there’s no need to worry about this, everything will be fine even if I don’t do anything,” that would arguably be far worse than worrying.

The key to worrying healthily is making sure that we worry in a way that is **productive** and **short**. That is, worrying has to lead us to take **beneficial physical action quickly**. If we worry about getting sick for three hours, spend half of that time googling symptoms, and don’t do anything about it, we have effectively wasted our time. Similarly, if we sit and worry about our presentation for our entire evening, practicing our speech for the hundredth time even though we know it by heart, we are making ourselves uncomfortable without accomplishing anything.

This is why it's often said that worrying has diminishing returns, and in the vast majority of cases, it's more time- and energy-efficient to quickly make the wrong choice and then course-correct than to make the right choice only after long and drawn out deliberation. Thus, the healthiest action we can take when we notice ourselves worrying unproductively or inefficiently is to **take our best guess at what would be the most productive step forward, then act on it**.

This decision will sometimes be a physical action. If we’re experiencing a new physical symptom we haven’t felt before, like chest pain or a serious cough, we can worry for ten minutes then schedule an appointment with our doctor. If we have only gone through our presentation once, we can worry for a minute or two, then practice again.

However, after we have called the doctor, practiced all we can, and in the vast majority of other cases, the answer will be: “there is nothing productive I can do to address this problem, but worrying will get me nowhere.” So, like above, the best action we can take is to use one of those techniques to answer the urge to keep worrying and focus on something else.

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If we are habitual worriers, this response will feel incredibly difficult at first. Urges to worry will arise constantly, and choosing to act differently will cause a lot of mental discomfort. And naturally so - we wouldn’t expect ourselves to flawlessly commit to a six month workout plan if we’re not already in good shape, nor to easily stick to a tough diet when we’ve been habitually overeating for a long time.

But the more often we respond to the urge to worry, the easier it becomes, and the less often the urges will pop up. It took me a few months of here-and-there practice to stop googling symptoms of illness, but I have seen other people stop completely in as little as a few weeks with the right methods.

To be clear, this post isn’t a magic pill. There isn’t anything on this planet that can make us instantly stop worrying, just like there isn’t a drug or technique that will instantly whip us into good physical shape. What this does show, however, is that just like being out of shape and having a poor diet are not lifelong conditions, neither is excessive worrying about social situations or our health. With concerted effort to change and a willingness to put the temporary discomfort aside, our brain adapts, and we reach a point where we no longer worry needlessly. And speaking from the perspective of someone who went from worrying for hours each day to doing so sparingly, I can tell you it’s absolutely worth it.

For all of you out there on this journey with me, I wish you luck and hope you have a speedy recovery.