Our Invisible Dragons: Learning to Conquer Anxiety

Worry heaps the troubles of tomorrow onto the troubles of today

Rather than worrying about what might happen in the future, focus on what is going on right now. (Fei Meng)

“What, me worry?” was the slogan of Mad Magazine’s fictitious Alfred E. Neuman, whose boyish image became the magazine’s logo. Cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, who helped develop the icon, remarked that his was “a face that didn’t have a care in the world.”

In truth, few people past the age of 18 have carefree faces, and by the age of 25, even fewer would adopt “What, me worry?” as a guiding principle of life. “The world is too much with us,” William Wordsworth wrote, and for most of us, that’s just a plain fact. Unlike Neuman, we worry.

Some of these worries are easily put to rest. When we take the car in for servicing, we have the mechanic check the air in the spare tire. If we are afraid that we’ll forget a friend’s birthday, we mark it on a calendar or put it in our phone.

But these small anxieties aren’t the fears that add stress lines to our foreheads or keep us awake until all hours of the night. There’s no quick fix for those voices in our heads, the whispers of apprehension and imagination kicking into overdrive. These are childhood terrors—monsters under the bed, ghosts in the attic—transformed into dragons for more mature audiences. The pre-med student is certain he’s going to flunk his first college calculus test; the expectant 28-year-old is worried sick that she’ll be a terrible mother; despite his exemplary record, the software salesman is terrified every day that he isn’t measuring up and will find himself unemployed.

But here’s some good news: A number of researchers have found that most of what we fret and fume about never comes to pass.

In “How Often Do Your Worries Come True?” Seth Gillihan reports on one such study at Penn State University, in which subjects kept track of their short-term worries. All of these participants, incidentally, had general anxiety disorder. The results? Ninety-one percent of their fears never saw the light of day. And of those worries that did become reality, a third of them induced less stress than anticipated. These results, Gillihan points out, are examples of what some researchers have called “worry’s deceits,” the scenarios we act out in our minds that usually never appear.

Nor is worry about the future necessarily a bad thing, at least when kept in check. Worry can give us time to strategize possible outcomes, to consider options and tactics should the imagined fear become real, and to muster up courage in the face of looming disaster.

Sometimes we try to conquer these worries about the future by confiding in friends. A kind word, some sound advice, a pat on the back—and in certain circumstances, a kick in the rear—can be helpful. When Douglas MacArthur went to take the exams to enter West Point, tests for which he had dedicated months of preparation, he was so afraid of failure that he felt physically sick and wanted to give up and return home. With her encouraging words, his mother pushed away those doubts, and MacArthur ended up outscoring the other candidates by far. He entered the Academy, excelled as a cadet, and went on to become one of the most famous generals in American history.

Other tips for fighting worry can be found online. Google “How not to worry about the future,” and a battalion of websites pop up, with suggestions ranging from learned optimism to breathing exercises.

Perhaps the best bit of advice, which appears on many of these lists, is to focus our attention on today’s tasks, or as some call it, mindfulness. Barring grave catastrophes, when we take care of the present, the future generally takes care of itself.