Why we hide worry — and how letting it go can heal us

In a culture that tells us to keep smiling and push through, many of us bury our worry until it grows into overwhelm, anxiety and chronic stress. But acknowledging what’s weighing on our minds may be the first step toward relief.

Like so many of my Gen-X cohort, I used to brace myself while walking past a construction site for fear of the words, “Cheer up love, it might never happen,” being lobbed in my direction by a random builder. The inference was clearly that a woman who wasn’t relaxed and smiling needed to fix her face in order to be acceptable for their tea-break viewing.

Even today, the fact that the beauty industry is worth so much, and encourages us to smooth out our frown lines and face tension with all manner of lotions and potions, makes it clear that worry lines are simply not acceptable.

Worry, clearly, is seen as something that ought to be internalised and kept in the recesses of our minds, not displayed for all to see. But when you keep schtum about what’s bothering you, or try to suppress or bypass it, the load builds. In short, when you stick a mask over what matters, life gets heavy.

The pressure to hide our worry

“It’s natural to worry. In fact, it’s often useful to worry,” says BACP-accredited integrative counsellor Georgina Sturmer. “It keeps you in check. It reminds you of what you care about, and it helps you to stick to your own internal compass.” However, society’s insistence that worry is something to be hidden can confuse us.

“When you start to get to grips with the worries that flood your mind, there can sometimes be a sense of shame,” says Sturmer. “There can be a sense that everyone else is coping and doing fine, and that you are doing things wrong by being worried or anxious. You might also feel that your worries might not be socially acceptable. But the reality is that so many of us are walking around with a head full of worry.”

In Sturmer’s therapy room, she finds that concerns about finances, living spaces and physical safety often top the list of her clients’ worries. If these needs are met, other worries often emerge around health and job security. Other worries tend to be related to two key areas — our relationships with others, and how we see ourselves.

“When it comes to how we see ourselves, many of our worries relate to whether we dislike aspects of ourselves, such as how we look, how we appear and how we behave,” says Sturmer.

Why worry, anxiety and overwhelm build up

“In many cases, we are worried about things that are entirely out of our control, such as the financial or political climate, challenges at work and decisions that others are making,” says Sturmer. “And that lack of control can leave you with a sense of helplessness.”

In a world that is full of sources of stress, individual worries can compound, with worries about the past, present and future all joining forces. But the driving force is often the past. Your response to worry can be shaped by early life experiences and the attachment patterns that you formed in response to your upbringing.

“In some families, a sense of worry was always in the air. You might have been worried as a child and not known what to do with that worry, nor had anyone to share it with. That can mean, as an adult, it’s difficult to shake off worries,” says Sturmer.

What’s more, worry doesn’t just stay in the mind, because the body perceives each worry as a threat it needs to gear up for. In turn, it releases the stress hormone cortisol to help you focus and respond. But if your worries keep looping, the stress response doesn’t get a chance to switch off.

“When your worries become prolonged, your cortisol levels can remain high,” says Sturmer. “This keeps you in an elevated state of stress and makes it difficult for you to switch off your threat response system and rest.”

How to release worry and reduce stress

Worry follows a well-worn process, but how you experience it — in a bodily sense — is unique to you. So start to notice where it sits in your body.

Sturmer asks clients to describe their worries using a metaphor. The idea is to turn something abstract and intangible into something concrete that they can face together.

“People often describe worry as being in their head, their shoulders, their chest or their stomach. Or it might feel like something external — a hamster wheel, a gilded cage, or a tall tower made of bricks,” she says.

By articulating it in this way, you can start to challenge it or reframe it.

“Draw out the shape of your worry on a piece of paper, or record a voice note describing it. Then lean into it further. How often is it there? What brings it on? Can you notice the triggers? What helps it to feel smaller or less imposing?”

Time to take action?

Sometimes, a simple action like confronting a friend about their behaviour or asking for clarification about a work task can stop worries in their tracks. The courage to step forward and make a definitive move can pay dividends.

Releasing worry through breathing, movement and visualisation can also help you to shake things off. But other times, worry remains amorphous despite your best efforts.

“If worrying has become an ingrained coping strategy, then you might be concerned that if you simply let it go, you wouldn’t know how to cope with life’s challenges,” says Sturmer.

In this case, it can help to tackle the root cause in the context of a supportive therapeutic relationship. A problem shared isn’t always a problem halved, but there is power and grace to be found in speaking up. Feeling less alone gives you one less thing to worry about.

Words: Greta Solomon, Images: Shutterstock