Can't Sleep: Why we worry for no reason

WHY WE WORRY

It sounds crazy to think that some of us might need to find something to worry about in order to feel ok. Worry is, after all, something we should try to avoid and engage with only when necessary right?

Yet, many people I speak to feel edgy when things are still and quiet. They start to feel anxiety about the future because – there is nothing to worry about in the future. They wake up in the middle of a still night, with cold sweats and a sense of dread. They open up Facebook and compare themselves to people they have never even spoken to, listen to the latest news and lie awake with their minds spinning and wondering why they can't get to sleep.

This kind of behavior might be easy to mock and dismiss as not applicable to you, but pay attention, there's a logical reason for it. The compulsive need to worry is evidence that – somewhere in your past and buried deep inside you had something difficult, sad or traumatic happen. Before you could make adult sense of it, there was a 'snake in the grass' type event that set an emotional trigger and your stress response was set to an ‘on’ mode and hasn't been soothed or turned to 'off' since.

Buried Trauma

But what is worse is that the original trauma has been forgotten. We don’t even notice that the inner alarms are ringing. The automatic worrier worries, about ‘everything’ because they are unable to process events from long ago. The anxiety that belonged to one particular distant time and place has been reapplied to hundreds of situations and events in the present relating to things you care about most (from relationships, to career stability, to what others think of you, money and children) because the true source of the initial trigger remain unknown to the sufferer.

We are using the plethora of everyday concerns as a substitute for a deeper trauma: Shame - I'm not ok; I don't belong - to my caregivers; I'm all alone - neglect or abuse. It's important to realize that something terrifying has been buried deep in the worrier's unconscious and triggers a continuous sense of dread of the present situation.

“The Catastrophe We Fear Will Happen Has Already Happened”

The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott captured the dynamic of this forgetting in a memorable phrase: ‘the catastrophe we think will happen has in fact already happened.’

We worriers, need the insight and love to look back at the past. Our feeling of dread is a symptom of a historic worry that isn't in the here and now. The trigger and alarm is a signal that the dreadful feeling in the inner self that was lodged in the past, doesn't equate to anything in the current outer world.

However don't mistake the fact that there isn't anything to worry about in the present, just that there is a lot less than the hyper-vigilant worrier tends to believe.

Furthermore, the worrier has far more coping ability and resilience than they can imagine, for they are operating with what is essentially a child’s sense of their own powers and capacity for survival.

Rather than constantly checking their phones or staring at the ceiling at 3 am, hyper worriers, should understand their feelings of dread occurred in and absolutely belongs in the past. They can then soothe themselves like they would a 6-month-old baby with the understanding and self-love that they are ok right here right now, even if it doesn't feel that way.