Why worrying isn’t as bad as you think

Extreme levels of worry are associated with poorer mental and physical health, for reasons ranging from disrupted sleep to avoidance of cancer screenings. Extreme, abstract and automatic worry – which is frequent and hard to control – is associated with generalised anxiety disorder. “Worry that has become generalised to lots of different concerns is more likely to be unhelpful and problematic than worry focused on a specific discrete concern,” says Edward Watkins, a clinical psychologist and mood disorder researcher at the University of Exeter. 

But at a more moderate, localised level, worry can be useful.