5 Signs Your Worry Is Getting in the Way of the Life You Want

Worry can become so familiar that we stop noticing how much of our life it takes up.

You may be used to the constant thinking, the running list in your head, or the feeling that there is always something you should be figuring out, preparing for, or preventing. Maybe your shoulders are almost always a little tense, your stomach rarely feels completely settled, or you wake up at 3 a.m. and your brain immediately gets to work.

When you’ve lived this way for a long time, it might not occur to you that there is another way to feel. You may not even recognize how much time and energy worry is taking from you because, at this point, it just feels normal.

That’s the part I want to talk about.

First, what do we mean by worry?

Worry is our mind’s attempt to anticipate what could go wrong so we can do something about it. In small doses, this can be useful. If you’re worried you might forget your child’s doctor’s appointment, you put it on the calendar. If you’re concerned about a deadline at work, you make a plan.

The problem isn’t that you worry. The question is what happens when worry becomes a way of moving through your life, taking up significant time and energy and interfering with your ability to rest, connect, care for yourself, or enjoy the life you’ve worked so hard to build.

Sometimes we don’t recognize that this is happening because worry doesn’t always look dramatic. It can look like responsibility, preparation, research, problem-solving, or even being a really attentive mom. These are all things we tend to value, which can make it harder to see when they’ve crossed over from being useful into something that is actually getting in our way.

So how do you know when worry has started costing you more than it’s giving you?

1. Somewhere deep down, you believe worrying keeps the people you love safe.

Ask yourself what you believe would happen if you stopped worrying about the thing that’s taking up so much space in your head.

For many mothers, underneath all that worry is a quiet belief that if they stay on top of everything, think through every possibility, and remain vigilant, they can keep something bad from happening. Alongside that may be another belief that if they stop thinking about it, they’re being careless.

Of course you want to protect your children. You love them, and paying attention to real risks is part of caring for them. But worry and protection aren’t the same thing. Repeatedly thinking about something you cannot control doesn’t necessarily make your child safer, even though it can give you the feeling that you’re doing something in a situation where there may not actually be anything left to do.

2. You’re spending a lot of time worrying about things outside of your control.

Take an honest inventory of what your mind has been busy with lately. Will my child make friends? Am I doing enough? What if they struggle in school? Did I make the wrong decision? What if something happens to them? What will other people think? What if this behavior means something bigger?

There may be actions you can take around some of these things, but you cannot guarantee the outcome. This is where worry can become especially consuming because our minds keep trying to solve something that doesn’t have a solvable answer.

The thinking continues not because you haven’t thought hard enough, but because you’re asking your brain to give you certainty about something that is inherently uncertain.

3. Your response to worry is to research, fix, plan, and problem-solve.

When something makes you uncomfortable, notice what you do next. Maybe you Google it, read another article, ask someone else what they think, listen to a podcast, run through the options again, or search for one more piece of information that will finally let you feel settled.

These are incredibly useful skills, and they probably serve you very well in many parts of your life. The trouble starts when researching, planning, and problem-solving become your automatic response to every uncomfortable feeling, because you can spend enormous amounts of time trying to solve your way out of uncertainty.

Sometimes there isn’t another piece of information you need. Sometimes what you actually need is the ability to feel uncertain without immediately doing something to make the uncertainty go away.

4. Worry pulls you out of connection with the people you love.

Your child may be talking to you while you’re thinking about something that happened earlier, or you might be sitting at dinner with your family while replaying a conversation in your head. You can be reading a bedtime story while another part of your brain is busy trying to figure out what you should do tomorrow.

Your body is there, but your attention isn’t fully there with it.

This doesn’t mean you don’t love being with your family, and it certainly doesn’t mean you need to be perfectly present with your children all the time. None of us are. But it is worth noticing how often worry takes you away from moments you actually want to be inside, because those ordinary moments are your life, too.

5. Worry is interfering with the things your body needs to feel well.

Worry doesn’t only happen in your thoughts. It can show up as tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, a fluttery stomach, pressure in your chest, restlessness, or a general feeling that your body never quite settles. Over time, that can begin to affect the basic things you need to feel well.

You might be exhausted but unable to fall asleep because your mind won’t stop, or so preoccupied that you forget to eat and then grab whatever is easiest. Maybe you skip the walk that you know would feel good because there’s something you need to figure out first, or you find it hard to truly rest because some part of you always feels like there’s something else you should be doing.

Sleep, nourishing food, movement, rest, time outside, connection, and pleasure aren’t extras. They’re part of what allows your brain and body to function well, and if worry is consistently getting in the way of them, it’s worth paying attention.

You may not realize how much better you could feel.

I think this might be the most important part of all of this.

When you’ve lived with worry for a long time, it can start to feel less like something you’re experiencing and more like part of who you are. You might think of yourself as someone who has always been a worrier, someone whose brain just works this way, or someone who needs to think things through more than other people do.

Maybe you’ve become so accustomed to the spinning thoughts, the preoccupation, the tightness in your body, and the sense that something always needs your attention that you don’t even notice how much effort it takes to live this way.

But what you’re used to isn’t necessarily the same thing as what you need.

The goal isn’t to never worry. That’s neither realistic nor necessary. The goal is to begin noticing when worry has stopped helping you respond to your life and has started preventing you from being fully inside of it.

You can care deeply about your children without being consumed by worry about them. You can be a thoughtful, responsible mother without mentally preparing for every possible outcome, and you can love your family fiercely while also allowing yourself to sleep, laugh, work, eat, play, rest, and be with the people you love without constantly scanning for what might go wrong.

If you’ve been living with worry for so long that it’s hard to imagine what any of that would feel like, it may be worth getting curious about something you haven’t considered before.

Maybe this isn’t simply how life has to feel.