UNPRODUCTIVE WORRY

Unproductive worry displays the following characteristics:

• It imagines all sorts of unlikely outcomes.
• It assumes that one bad outcome will cascade into a series of even worse outcomes.
• It worries about events far into the future that don’t need a solution right now.
• It assumes that your worrisome thinking is valid and reflects the realistic truth.
• It assumes that your negative feelings are accurate measures of the importance of the worry.
• It rehashes negative experiences in the past.
• It demands that you have control over just about everything in your life.
• It refuses to accept that negative experiences are part of life.
• It makes the approval of others an overly important need.
• It accepts only perfect, or near perfect, solutions to problems.

PRODUCTIVE WORRY

Here’s what makes this kind of worrying adaptive and functional:

• It helps you solve a problem or resolve a situation.
• It doesn’t demand certainty.
• It’s not overwhelmed by emotion.
• It turns a worry into a problem to be solved.
• It explores appropriate ways of finding a solution to a problem.
• It doesn’t get stuck in evaluating unrealistic outcomes.
• It defers those worries that can’t be solved until a future point in time.
• It’s not long lasting and can be ended in a relatively short period of time.
• It accepts that loss and tragedy are a natural and expected part of life.