Worrying can work well for you

My friends and I lean on one another to ease our worries, whether over dinner, e-mail or a weekend away. But no matter where we are or what we’re doing, we worry.

One friend is an uber-worrier. She even worries that she worries too much. She recently had a work issue she needed to iron out. She fretted about it. She discussed with friends and her husband what she would say. And as soon as she and her boss finished their conversation Monday, she called me to say the issue was under control.

My friend, who is too worried that her co-workers might recognise her to let me use her name or mention what her work issue is, worries herself through challenges.

"I get a knot in my stomach. I have trouble focusing on anything else until it’s done. I think about it and think about it," she says. She practices what she will say to her boss and edits any e-mails she might send. She also asks others to read the e-mails (ahem) before she sends them.

"It’s stifling for sure,"my pal says of her worrying. But that worrying gets her through a situation with aplomb. Never is there a mistake in her e-mails. She is prepared for the what-ifs of any conversation.

Without realising it, my dear friend worries well. Worries can work for us as long as they don’t grab us by the throat and paralyse us from ever making any decisions.

"Worry is normal," says Holly Hazlett-Stevens, assistant professor of psychology and author of "Women Who Worry Too Much." "It comes from our natural adaptive ability where we can anticipate things that we might want to take action to prevent."

In a work situation, that’s actually useful. Worrying can help us see things coming, and if that leads us to act, the worrying can be productive, she says.

I know what you’re thinking, though: Your worrying isn’t so productive. I and my sheep-counting know all about it.

"I spent 10 years in a toxic environment and now I find that I’m a terrible worrier. I’m afraid that anybody I work for or with will go off on me at any time," wrote a woman who spoke on condition of anonymity because she is job-hunting.

Companies realise that work is fraught with worry, and many try to do something about it: More than 90 per cent of the Fortune 500 firms provide employee assistance programmes, which often offer free counselling services and stress seminars. About 50 per cent of small and mid-size companies provide such programmes, according to ComPsych Corp., an employee assistance management company.

"The number is growing as these companies also realise keeping employees productive and focused is of the utmost importance," says Richard Chaifetz, ComPsych’s chief executive.

We lose our focus when worrying becomes counter-productive, such as when we start to worry about vague things that can’t be immediately solved, Hazlett-Stevens said. (See also: My boss looked at me weird today. I think he hates me.)

So what to do when the worries won’t let go?

For starters, Hazlett-Stevens says, when those counter-productive worries start to creep up, stop and ask yourself if there is anything you can do about it right then and there. "If there is no action you can take, postpone it to a worry period," she says. "Promise yourself to look at it more carefully at a time when the worry won’t interfere with what you’re trying to do at this moment."

According to a study Hazlett-Stevens worked on, even people with worst-case-scenario tendencies fared well in reality. The study monitored what people with anxiety disorders worried about and how they coped if the worst happened. The study found only 15 per cent of the things the subjects worried about really did turn out badly. Of those bad things, the people coped better than they feared in 79 per cent of the cases.

Dee Bringle, manager of human resource administration with a major studio, used to be a constant worrier. But she learned over the years that even if people were telling her that the sky was falling, it probably wasn’t. The more she understood that worrying would get her nowhere if there was nothing she could do about it, the happier she was. Recently, her boss even asked her why she wasn’t reacting to another frazzle-inducing situation. "I said, ‘I’ve handled it to the best of my ability. So why take it home and brood?’ ‘’ she says.

Last Fall, her studio laid off a lot of people. She was becoming unpleasant, and friends were getting tired of her constant complaining and worrying. She realised she was spending all of her time worrying about work and knew there was more to life than that. She discovered she needed to have confidence in her own ability. She knew her job and did it well. She put herself on the line only after she really did the best she could, and she always made sure to do due diligence on all of her work. When she let herself understand that, she was able to sleep at night.

"A lot of the worrying comes from setting expectations in your own mind," she says. And when she stopped constantly worrying, her life suddenly seemed much easier. "The roof didn’t cave in."

Amy Joyce