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Inner Light

“Inner Light: Navigating Mental Wellness” features psychology, philosophy, relationship, and mental health articles for wisdom-seekers.

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Worry Is Not a Choice: It’s a Condition

4 min read6 days ago

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A man looks at a view while holding his hands on his head, indicating worry
Photo by Sadeq Mousavi on Unsplash

Those of us working in the self-help and mental health arena often give the impression that worry is a choice. We don’t mean to. We just know certain mindset changes we suggest can help tremendously when you’re prone to worrying. However, I’d like to explain that chronic worry usually requires a multi-target approach to cure.

Worry is not a choice: it’s a condition.

You get to choose what colour paint to put on your walls and what to eat for dinner. You don’t get to choose your mental state (condition). But you can influence it, which makes you a powerful contributor to a calm mindset or a worry-based mindset.

We’re frequently led to believe that there’s something wrong with us if we can’t control our minds. Advice given like “pull yourself together” and “snap out of it” doesn’t help. It implies we should control something shaped by many factors: our state of mind.

Even so, we can take positive action that impacts our well-being, and it starts with realising that worry is a condition, or state.

When we talk about the state of something, let’s say a car, for instance, we mean several things. We consider its physical appearance, how well it runs, and the internal…

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✨ Bridget Webber
✨ Bridget Webber

Written by ✨ Bridget Webber

Former counsellor. Current psychology writer. Compassion, wisdom, and insights.

Inner Light
Inner Light

Published in Inner Light

“Inner Light: Navigating Mental Wellness” features psychology, philosophy, relationship, and mental health articles for wisdom-seekers.