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.
