Researchers at Michigan State University have evidence that suggests that women who worry, worry more than anyone else. Women who don’t worry are ok. Men who worry don’t worry as much. It seems that when worrying women engage in tasks a part of their mind is constantly assessing how well they are performing and whenever a mistake is made or something isn’t quite good enough then the worrying kicks in.
This anxiety interferes with task performance and uses up energy causing tiredness and exhaustion which again interferes with task performance. So if you are a worrier, doing anything is much, much harder for you than for anyone else, but if you are a female worrier – then life is really tough. It’s as if you have a super-critical overseer constantly looking over your shoulder.
Worry, anxiety, stress – whatever you want to call it is a huge problem in our society. 60 million people in the US receive tranquillisers each year. That figure is 12 million in the UK. That’s 20% (1 in every 5) of the population in each country. And the interesting thing is, that despite the popularity of medicating it – medication does nothing to change the situation. All it does is ease the symptoms.
That isn’t a solution.
The only lasting solution that I’ve found is to deal with the problem where it is. Where it is is the mind. Notice that I say mind and not brain. The problem is the thoughts you think, the reasons you think them, and your identification with those thoughts.
Because thoughts tend to appear within our own minds, and they tend to make sense to us, (and there are so many of them we don’t have time to question them) we go along with whatever they are saying. We might not act on them, but we do tend to agree with them.
“So and so’s a right b****, just look at what she did.” The thought is there, and we are in total agreement with it, as we smile sweetly when so and so walks past and says ‘hi’. We might not act on them, but we are in agreement.
So when we are engaged in a task, and we make a small mistake, thoughts like: stupid, careless, idiot, and worse may pop spontaneously into our thought space. Because they appear of their own volition and what they are saying fits with our reality – we believe them.
But we don’t like them.
So we become more vigilant. This takes more energy, so the task becomes more difficult and possibly slower (another cause for critical thoughts) and so starts a vicious cycle of self-defeating, energy-sapping thought activity.
There is a solution. There is a way out. It isn’t medication.
Michael
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