Stress Management For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 13

Worrying Less

In This Chapter

Identifying your worries

Understanding why you worry

Controlling your worries

Everybody worries at some time or another. In fact, worrying can be a good thing. You should worry about some things in your life. Worrying is healthy and appropriate when it motivates you and leads you to attempt to resolve a problem in a productive, adaptive manner. If you’re worried about an exam, you may study harder. If you’re worried about your health, you’ll probably go see a doctor.

Some people, however, worry far more than they have to, and in turn they do very little to effectively resolve their worries. For these people, much of their stress takes the form of excessive worry. This inordinate and often useless worrying can rob people of much of life’s joy and interfere with their day-to-day functioning. And if a person’s worrying becomes chronic, it can result in a wide variety of stress-related conditions and disorders. Controlling and managing your worries becomes an essential part of managing your stress.

In this chapter, you figure out how to identify your worries and understand why you worry the way you do. You also discover better ways of managing ...