Worry is the mental counterpart of anxiety, although worry often includes angry thoughts and images. That is to say, we worry about things we fear may happen. For the Type A/Hostile Personality, worry most definitely includes angry thoughts and images, since in this personality type, anxiety is usually immediately converted into anger.
Worry as defined by Webster "a mental distress or agitation resulting from concern, usually for something impending or anticipated."
It's an excellent description, and there are two aspects of the definition that bear a close consideration:
A. Worry is a mental (or cognitive) activity.
B. Worry is usually about something that might or might not happen in the future.
Worry as a stressor is a direct source of headaches, insomnia, ulcers and other gastric distress, paranoia, generalized anxiety disorders, depression and phobias. Most stress experts believe that it is an indirect source of disorders involving the immune system, such as cancer. We can literally worry ourselves to death.
For example when worry leads to depression and the depression becomes deep and unrelieved, our immune systems break down to the point where even a cold virus could become a killer.
There are several different forms of cognitive (thinking) activity, some conscious and some unconscious. The conscious processes include self-talk, imagery, abstract reasoning, learning and memory storage and direction of intentional behavior, among others.
Any conscious activity can be easily identified and immediately and directly controlled; and what we do consciously affects the unconscious as well. So, in considering worry, we know that;
A. We can identify and control our worries and
B. By controlling our conscious worry, we can affect the reservoir of anxiety that our worry has left behind in our unconscious.
The type of conscious cognitive activity that is quickest to yield to control is what we call "self-talk". We all have ongoing internal dialogues about concerns, hopes, plans, decisions and so forth, and we can easily observe what we're saying to ourselves, how we're saying it, when we're saying it and what are our perspectives, intentions and directions.
Worry involves a great deal of self-talk. Controlling worry can be easily accomplished by intentionally intervening in that internal dialogue. Self-directed imagery (picturing scenes on the movie-screens of our imaginations) is also extremely influential in causing and curing worry. It is also a quick route to making change.
How Not To Worry
What Is Worry
Worry And Imagery
Worry And Self Talk
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We can identify and control our worries. By controlling our conscious worry, we can affect the reservoir of anxiety that our worry has left behind in our unconscious and not to be worry anymore.
