Everyone worries sometimes. This is perfectly normal, and in some circumstances, worrying can prompt you to take action and step out of your comfort zone. However, if you find yourself preoccupied and consumed by worry on a daily basis, it can affect your state of mind, your weight, your sleep, relationships, confidence, self-esteem, and it can really increase your anxiety.

It is important to consider the origins of your worry, and a great question to ask yourself is, “is it real in the world or is it just real to me?” Have you actually got lots of life challenges going on right now that the majority of people would worry about, or are you worrying about a situation that doesn’t warrant being upset and anxious over?

If you are over worrying the question is why? Worry and anxiety are both symptoms with a learned schema behind them. What created the reference that drives your behaviour? There are a number of common origins:

• Copying a parent. If you have a parent who is an over-worrier, the likelihood is that you will be too. Ask yourself: “Did over-worrying enhance my parent’s life?” If not, why not? When you catch yourself worrying, remind yourself: “I am fine – this isn’t my worry, it’s my parent’s.”
• Fear of criticism. For some people, worry stems from low self-esteem caused by past criticism, for example from a school bully, teacher, ex-boss or ex-partner. If this is the case, challenge your belief by asking yourself: “Do I still want to be listening to those people?”, “What skills did they have that gave them the right to judge me in the first place?” and “if they were kind people, they wouldn’t have judged me so I shouldn’t be listening to them.”
• A turbulent past. If there was a time in your life when a series of things went wrong, you may have created an expectation that things will go wrong in the future, causing habitual worry. Look at the evidence and note how many things have actually gone right, for example passing an exam, making a best friend, having a loving family, buying a home, having children, winning tickets to a concert, getting a bargain on something or going on holiday. Keep a diary and document one great thing that happened in your day before bed every night. This will start to retrain your thought patterns and create new habits. There will probably be too many things in your life that have gone right to remember and only a handful of things that have gone wrong.
• Having too much time on our hands. Our brain like to be occupied, and if you don’t give it something constructive or positive to keep it busy, it will invariably find something negative to focus on. This can be a worry, anxiety, pain or ailment that then grows because, like a muscle that you exercise, the more you exercise negative thoughts and behaviours, the stronger they get. Avoid cultivating your worries and negativity by maintaining a positive focus.