How to Stop Worrying: Causes and Remedies

In order to stop worrying, it is important to recognize that one of the many gifts that the Lord created human beings with is our remarkable capacity for thought. People can think ahead and map out future events in a way that allows them to plan, anticipate potential issues and obstacles and develop strategies to deal with them.

This is an amazing capacity that can help a person achieve goals as diverse as getting a college degree, working through a difficult patch in marriage, building a successful business, etc. Being able to think ahead thus helps us to adapt to the world around us and navigate it well.

However, at times our minds can be like a hamster wheel, endlessly turning but not going anywhere or doing anything meaningful. Mulling over things that might occur endlessly can leave a person feeling anxious because we are uncertain of the outcome or are afraid of the possibilities that might emerge in the future.

When we fear the future possibility of failure, getting injured, or experiencing loss of various kinds, that can generate the mental anguish that we commonly label as “worry.” A simplistic way to think of the distinction between anxiety and worry is that while anxiety mostly affects our bodies, worry tends to reside more in our heads.

Worry is closely tied to our efforts to resolve an issue that is uncertain but that carries the potential for negative consequences. And so we can dwell on an upcoming physical exam and find ourselves thinking about all the possible negative outcomes from it. Or if a loved one or colleague leaves us a message with those dreaded words “We need to talk,” we can find ourselves spiraling as we consider all the ways things could go wrong.

One of the main reasons to stop worrying is that it activates your fight or flight response. This is how our bodies enable us to respond to danger, whether real or imagined. Worry magnifies our stressors by dwelling on negative possibilities and multiplying them. Usually, one negative thought sparks another, which leads to yet another, and so on.

Imagination and reality can both feel very real in our bodies, which means that your fight or flight response is triggered in situations of real danger and stress, but also in situations of imagined danger too. When you worry, it may feel as though the worst-case scenario you imagined is already unfolding, and that simply increases your stress levels.

What makes us worry?

We worry for a variety of reasons. When faced with uncertainty and change, we desire to create certainty to shore up our confidence that we can weather any storms coming our way.

Change and uncertainty are uncomfortable, and one way we attempt to deal with discomfort is to try and exert control over our situation in the attempt to think our way through to a solution. The world is full of uncertainties, and we try to tame those by producing solutions that resolve those uncertainties.

Our personality and heritage may also affect how much a person tends to be anxious and worried. We may come from a family of worriers, where we’ve seen worry modeled and taken it on as a part of how we are in the world. Anxiety and anxious behavior, along with the worry that is a key part of that behavior are both modeled and something that we may inherit from our family.

The third component of why we find it difficult to stop worrying is that we are prone to trust ourselves and what we see, instead of God. Perhaps it is the human condition, but as we grow older, we learn that part of being a mature adult is the ability to rely on ourselves and handle the things that come our way. Being a grown-up is about being able to “deal with things” ourselves without relying on someone else.

There is truth to this. A child depends entirely on the people in their life for everything, and as they grow older there is the expectation that they will grow in self-reliance. Things get interesting at this point, especially from a biblical perspective, because of the difference between being child-like, and being childish.

We are called to child-like faith by Jesus “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3, ESV), but we are to also be mature in our understanding and not be childish (“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” 1 Corinthians 13:11, ESV).

Finding the balance between these can be difficult. As we grow older, we stop being child-like in entrusting ourselves to God for everything. We begin to think that things depend on us, our strength, and gifts, and not on God. We think being an adult means abandoning everything from our childhood, but in reality, growing up means, as one person wrote, “finding true maturity without abandoning or despising the gifts and insights of our childhood.”

C.S. Lewis once wrote that “When I became a man I put away childish things; including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” There is a real sense in which we try to be “very grown up” when it comes to the future, and that’s where we often become ensnared in worry.

Moving past worry

To stop worrying, there are things we can do to overcome the worry that stems from circumstances and an unsettled inner disposition.

Find things that engage your interest and energy.

The neurochemicals released into your body when your fight-or-flight response is activated need somewhere to go, so you can use the nervous energy to focus on things that can help you move forward or do some cardiovascular exercise. Exercise can help you relieve stress, calming your body and returning it to its emotional baseline by reducing stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.

Live in the present.

Our capacity to consider the future and evaluate different outcomes and possibilities can be great, but it can backfire when it spirals into worry. One way to stop worrying and use our mental capacity in ways that promote our mental wellbeing is to practice mindfulness and gratitude.

Mindfulness helps you to be aware of yourself – your emotions, thoughts, and state of being. It allows you to accept what is, which can curb anxious thoughts. By practicing gratitude, we focus on all that is well and the things we appreciate in our lives right now. Not only does this curb worry, but it also allows you to have a more positive outlook on things.

Learn to identify your patterns of worry.

When you worry, it tends to be under specific conditions and in certain ways, whether you do it by ignoring or minimizing the blessing God has placed in your life, overgeneralizing, catastrophizing, making assumptions about the intentions and thoughts of others, or having an all-or-nothing mindset about the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Pursue creativity and problem-solving instead.

Another practice to help you stop worrying is to put your energy into solving problems, rather than endlessly dwelling on things. Instead of worrying, you can problem-solve, reframing the situation and defining it in a way that you can do something about. For instance, if you anticipate that you might lose your job and income, you can ask yourself how to prepare for that eventuality and begin working on the options available to you.

This gives your mind something to do, and it can provide you with concrete steps that move from mere contemplation to action. If there are no options available, thinking through things and working toward a solution will help you recognize if there’s nothing for it but to accept the situation as it is.

Learn to trust God.

Within the biblical way of seeing things, one reason for worry is the deep self-reliance that makes us think the outcome of things rests primarily or entirely on us. This may seem naïve, but the Bible has a very sophisticated way of looking at life and the dynamics that drive our existence.

The book of Ecclesiastes, for example, reminds us how having more “stuff” doesn’t lead to less worry, but more. Ecclesiastes 5:12 (NIV) reads, “The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep.”

And we are also reminded that “…godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that” 1 Timothy 6:6-8 (NIV). When we are preoccupied with our material possessions, we tend to worry about protecting our current “stuff” and accumulating even more of it.

This is one of many reasons why Jesus warns us about thinking that the meaning of our lives is tied to the abundance of our possessions, and why in texts such as Matthew 6:19-34 he instructs his disciples not to be preoccupied with the pursuit of things, which only induces worry and takes our eyes away from the kingdom of God, the only thing that truly matters and will last.

Worrying doesn’t add to our lives, and we should rather trust that just as our heavenly Father looks after the birds and the flowers, he knows what we need and considers us of infinitely more value than the birds and flowers that he provides amply for.

Throughout life, we face many questions with few answers. We don’t always know why illness comes into our lives. We don’t always know why we must contend with lack and hardship. We can’t always understand why our relationships face significant challenges.

What walking by faith and trusting God with our lives calls us to do is to live with those questions and find our way as we follow in Jesus’ footsteps by the Spirit. We may fall into worry because we aren’t sufficiently trusting God. We try to shelter ourselves from those hard questions by living as though we hold the answers to all our questions and uncertainties, and we simply need to figure our way out of it.

To stop worrying, we need a true spiritual transformation that can only come through deep and meaningful communion with the Lord. Knowing the various verses about not worrying can only go so far. What those verses point to is that at the heart of not worrying is knowing who God is, and who we are in relation to Him. We can only know this through his Word as we are in intimate relationship with Him.

Christian counseling to stop worrying

Speak with a trusted friend (who is not a worrier, themselves, as that can make things worse), your pastor, or even a mental health professional such as a counselor. Talking with others can help you reduce the possibility of feeling overwhelmed by those worries, and it can help you gain perspective on your worry.