by Madeleine Kando
I also read that war babies are prone to worrying and catastrophizing every little fart that gets emitted around them. I am a war baby, so that seems like a good excuse, except that my husband is a war baby too, and he never worries. He misses the worry gene to the point of irritation. ‘Did we turn the stove off?’ I ask him on our way to the airport for another blissful, worry-free vacation in Hawaii. ‘I think so..’ he says without a trace of panic in his voice. He trusts me to do the worrying for him, you see.
Once I catch the worry bug, there is no telling where it takes me. I see my cat curled up on the couch. She is wider than long, which doesn’t seem to be the right proportions for a cat. Do I feed her too much? Oh my God, she will become diabetic, all because of me!
I wonder if women worry more than men. If that’s true, then at least I have an excuse. It’s not me, it’s my gender. I am supposed to worry. If I didn’t, I would go against the laws of Nature.
But who decided that worrying is a bad thing? Maybe it’s the word itself that is the problem. If we called it: ‘caring deeply about something’, everyone would start worrying, trying to out-worry their friends.
The word "worry" comes from the Old English word "wyrgan," which means "to strangle" or "to "choke." It was later used to describe the feeling of being mentally choked by troubled thoughts. It is also related to the word "wurgen," which still means ‘to strangle’ in Dutch. ‘Worrying’ in Dutch is ‘zich zorgen maken’ (to make oneself worries). But the word ‘zorgen’ means ‘to take care of’. So, which is it? Is worrying to take care of, or is it to strangle?
In French worrying is ‘Se faire des soucis’, ( to make oneself worry). Both the Dutch and the French seem to blame the worrier for worrying. As if worriers invented the concept of worrying and didn’t have anything better to do with their time.
Don’t be so quick to judge worriers. There is scientific proof that worrying has positive sides. The most obvious one is that it helps you lose weight. Toss that gym membership in the trash and start fretting and obsessing about what can go wrong. You will see the pounds fall off your body without having to lift a finger.
Another advantage of worrying is that you are always prepared for the worst. Worrying has you covered in both directions: If you worry about not passing an exam, you won’t be disappointed when you don’t and pleasantly surprised if you do.
But most of all, worrying shows that you have brains. According to a study by Alexander Penney of Ontario's Lakehead University*, high IQ and high anxiety (worrying) are correlated.
My friend Karen says that worrying is a waste of time. Planning for bad things is better than worrying about them. But how can you plan for something if you don’t worry about it first?
I read somewhere that Finland is rated as the happiest country in the world. In fact, Fins are known to be quite gloomy and somewhat pessimistic. In other words, their worrying lowers their expectations about future outcomes, leading to better emotional states when things go better than expected.
I caught myself not worrying about something the other day. I was so shocked that I immediately started worrying about not worrying. ‘How can I be so callous?’ I thought. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Then I realized why some people choose not to worry. It’s just a very unpleasant occupation.
Saturday, April 22, 2023
Is Worrying Good for You?
I worry a lot, especially about worrying so much. I inherited this admirable trait from my mother, who was a super worrier. Everything I read says that worrying is not good for your health, but for some reason, my mother died at 103.
According to psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson, the optimal way to take care of problems is to worry about them, but only up to a point. If you never worry about anything, nothing ever gets solved, but if you worry all the time, the worrying itself becomes the focus of your worrying, so that’s not a solution either.
One disadvantage of worrying is that you are only allotted a finite amount of it. Like the amount of water that fits in a bucket. If you worry about which shade of lipstick to wear or which size TV to buy, you don’t have any left over to worry about climate change or a potential Nuclear Armageddon.
But worriers don’t shy away from doing the heavy lifting. So, if you are a worrier, be proud and don’t let anyone tell you not to worry.
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