The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It

“Worry can become like a bad habit of the mind. The rule of neuroplasticity—that our brain keeps changing based on our repeated activity—says that whatever we do a lot we will get better at. So if we worry a lot, we will get really good at worrying.” In other words, once you start worrying about something, it can be hard to stop.

A number of psychological theories have been advanced to explain chronic worry. One of the most prominent is called the avoidance model, which explains how worry can become obsessive and intrusive in our lives. This model argues that inveterate worriers replace thoughts of clear outcomes of problems, especially potentially catastrophic ones, with a... See more