It’s 11:40 at night. You were almost asleep when a thought drifted into your head about something tomorrow. Something small. Maybe something that hasn’t even happened yet.
Twenty minutes later, you’re wide awake, running through three different ways everything could go wrong.
And the really ridiculous part? Nothing has actually happened.
You’re lying in bed having an argument with an imaginary future.
I’ve done that more times than I care to count.
For years, the usual advice was to stop worrying. Think positive. Put it out of your mind. Get some sleep.
Wonderful advice, except for one small problem.
If I could simply decide to stop worrying, I probably wouldn’t be lying there worrying in the first place.
That’s why I found the work of Dr. Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Brown University, so interesting.
Brewer has spent years studying how habits form, including habits that don’t look much like habits at all.
Like worrying.
What if worry is something your brain learned to do?
We usually think of habits as things like biting our nails, reaching for a snack, or checking our phones.
But Brewer suggests that worry can develop through a similar process.
Something happens that makes us uncomfortable. Maybe there’s uncertainty about tomorrow, a problem we can’t solve tonight, or something somebody said that keeps bothering us.
Our brain wants to do something about that discomfort, so it starts worrying.
We imagine possibilities, rehearse conversations, and try to anticipate everything that might go wrong.
And for a moment, that can feel almost productive.
We’re doing something, after all.
Never mind that we’re lying in bed at midnight trying to solve a problem that may not even exist.
The worrying itself can create a temporary feeling of control. Our brain learns that response, and the next time uncertainty appears, it reaches for the same familiar activity.
Eventually, worrying can become almost automatic.
That’s an interesting way to look at it.
Instead of asking why we can’t control our thoughts, we might ask why our brains keep returning to a behavior that doesn’t seem to be helping.
The strange alternative: curiosity
One of the things Brewer has investigated is what happens when people stop automatically following the worry and start paying attention to the experience itself.
Not trying to force it away. Not pretending everything is wonderful.
Just getting curious.
The next time you notice yourself worrying, consider what is actually happening.
Is your chest tight? Are your shoulders creeping toward your ears? Is your stomach uncomfortable?
And what are you getting out of the worrying?
Are you solving anything? Making a useful decision? Or just going over the same possibilities for the fifteenth time?
That’s a question I particularly like.
Because sometimes we spend an enormous amount of energy doing something that accomplishes absolutely nothing.
And we don’t even notice we’re doing it.
Curiosity interrupts that automatic process. Instead of being completely caught up in the story our mind is telling, we have an opportunity to notice what’s happening.
Sometimes that’s enough to change our relationship with the worry.
Sometimes it isn’t. But it’s a different approach from trying to win an argument with our own thoughts.
They actually studied this
Brewer and his colleagues developed a mindfulness-based program called Unwinding Anxiety, designed to help people recognize and change worry habits.
In a randomized clinical trial published in 2021, 65 people with generalized anxiety disorder were assigned either to continue their usual care or to receive usual care along with the program.
After two months, the group using the program showed a substantially greater reduction in anxiety symptoms.
The researchers reported a 67% reduction in anxiety scores in the mindfulness-training group, compared with 14% in the usual-care group.
Those are impressive results.
It’s worth remembering that participants followed a structured program over two months. They weren’t simply told to get curious for ten seconds and sent home.
But the findings suggest that learning to recognize and respond differently to worry can make a meaningful difference.
And I like that the approach doesn’t require us to treat every uncomfortable thought as an emergency.
Back to 11:40 at night
Here’s where this becomes useful to me.
When I catch myself worrying about something that hasn’t happened, I can continue following the story. I can imagine what might go wrong, what somebody might say, and how I’ll respond.
I can probably keep myself entertained that way until two in the morning.
Or I can notice what I’m doing.
There’s that familiar tightness. There’s the mind trying to solve tomorrow before tomorrow gets here.
And I can get curious about whether any of this is actually accomplishing anything.
Sometimes the whole thing starts to look a little ridiculous.
I’m lying in a perfectly comfortable bed, in a perfectly safe room, getting worked up about a conversation that hasn’t taken place.
The conversation might never take place.
And if it does, I can probably handle it when it happens.
That doesn’t mean every worry disappears. Some concerns are real and deserve attention. And people dealing with persistent or severe anxiety may need more support than a little self-observation.
But I’ve found that noticing the habit gives me another choice.
I don’t have to follow every thought wherever it wants to take me.
An old habit can become a different habit
There’s something encouraging about thinking of worry this way.
A habit isn’t necessarily permanent.
We’ve all changed habits over the years, sometimes deliberately and sometimes without even noticing.
And if our brains can learn to respond to uncertainty by worrying, perhaps they can also learn to respond with curiosity.
I like that possibility.
Especially at 11:40 at night, when my brain has apparently decided it’s time to hold a meeting about tomorrow.
The meeting can wait.