Worry. We all have it. We all know it. For some, worry can be a way of life. In animals, where thought is absent or extremely limited, there is a state which is somewhat similar to worry. Scientists can induce “worry” in some laboratory animals by conditioning them to perform various tasks for which they are rewarded, then stopping the reward or making it sporadic, or even providing the reward when they don’t perform the task. In those experiments, some of the animals grew frustrated and stressed, which we believe is because they are confused by the unpredictable nature of the laboratory experiment.
In human beings, worry has some of that quality. As we have discussed in previous articles, anxiety is ubiquitous to all humans. Anxiety is a natural part of our emotional life. What we do with our anxiety determines where it shows up in our mental functioning. If it goes unrecognized, it will usually stay inside our body and we might feel tense, nervous, or experience shaking, aching, tiredness, or grow agitated. When we acknowledge the presence of internal anxiety, it might show up as a feeling, such as fear, irritability, panic, or overwhelm. If those emotional reactions seem more powerful than we can handle, the anxiety might then show up in our behavior. We might act impulsively, compulsively, aggressively, recklessly, or helplessly. If we recognize that we are feeling the anxiety but do nothing further to explore, process, and express it, it might invade our thinking. We might begin to obsess over specific ideas, words, images, personal conflicts, or experience their cognitive or thought-oriented anxiety as worry.
Worry happens when we dread something or do not want something to happen, or if we fear a particular outcome, or are apprehensive about something we’ve done in the past and can’t stop thinking about. Worry is the circular thinking which anticipates that whatever we dread is bound to happen. It is particularly difficult to stop worry from dominating our thoughts precisely because it means that our unprocessed anxiety now occupies our highest psychological sphere, namely, the cognitive domain of our brain. Our cognitive brain, where we think, reason, problem solve, make sense of, and comprehend experience, is uniquely human. As stated earlier, animals seem to have few or no complex cognitive processes. When Hashem gave us our “soul of life” (Bereishis 2:7), our early Sages interpreted this as giving people a verbal, expressive spirit. Indeed, advanced societies possess advanced language, another skill that animals seem to lack or have in only limited forms. So, speech is a product of thought, and thought is a product of speech. When we think, we speak to ourselves, although often in abridged forms, in images, or in rapid ideas. When anxious, the anxiety can be manifest in our thought process and content, and that will involve incessant worry.
When someone is prone to worry, others might tell him “Deig nisht,” which is a Yiddishized conjugation of the Hebrew word, “daaga,” which means “worry.” Deig nisht means “stop worrying.” Unfortunately, telling someone to stop worrying is like telling them to forget something. Try that. Command yourself to forget something, for example, a person, a song, or an object, even for a short while. You cannot force yourself to forget.
There’s an anecdote about the Russian author Tolstoy playing a game where the objective was to go for one hour without thinking about a white bear. You cannot succeed. Psychologists refer to this as Ironic Process Theory. Trying to avoid certain thoughts or emotions can have the opposite effect. Trying to get something out of your head often results in that thought being difficult to get out of your mind, sometimes to the extent that some people literally go out of their minds. (There is another anecdote about a French philosopher who actually went out of his mind after he placed a sign on his desk telling him to forget a certain person who had betrayed him. He reportedly went insane trying to remember to forget.)
Shlomo Hamelech provides a remedy for worry. In Mishlei (12:25), he writes that “worry in a person’s mind will wear him down.” The word “will wear him down” is atypical in Lashon Hakodesh, and our Sages (Yoma 75a) offer two alternative readings of the word. One is that this word means “get it out of your thoughts.” The other is “express it to someone else.” Although many understand the first interpretation as “stop thinking about it” (which seems not doable), I might suggest that it means “get it out of your thoughts and back into your feelings.” When we worry, we are sending our anxiety away from our emotions and into our mind. Backing down into your emotions and identifying the feeling, and then taking that self-awareness and expressing it seems very effective and ameliorative as a remedy for much of our worrying. Being aware of and acknowledging what you fear, what causes you distress, and what the distress might be allows you to experience your internal self so you can begin to address what is actually scary. The second interpretation is also borne out in clinical practice. Finding a supportive listener with whom you can express your anxiety without being judged (i.e. “Why don’t you grow up?”), or criticized (i.e. “Is that all you think about?”), or invalidated (i.e. “Deig nisht!”) is another means of examining your worries and getting a grasp on how to cope and get past them.
Bottom line: If your thoughts are full of worry, don’t worry about it. Instead, feel your feelings. Express them. The anxiety will be more manageable when it is acknowledged and expressed. n
Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox is a forensic and clinical psychologist, and director of Chai Lifeline Crisis Services. To contact Chai Lifeline’s 24-hour crisis helpline, call 855-3-CRISIS or email crisis@chailifeline.org. Learn more at www.chailifeline.org/crisis.
