How to Spot the Difference Between Worrying and Problem-Solving

The telltale differences between helpful and unhelpful ways of thinking about your problems

And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. — Shakespeare, Hamlet

Worrying is a common problem. It can often be understood as a failed attempt at problem-solving. (As can worry’s more past-oriented cousin, rumination.) In many cases, people find it much easier to manage their worrying if they’re able to distinguish more clearly between helpful and unhelpful, good and bad, or healthy and unhealthy ways of thinking about problems. I sometimes call this the difference between good and bad forms of worrying or you could say it’s the difference between worrying and rational problem-solving — for our purposes, it amounts to more or less the same thing.

In this article, I’ve made some rough notes on the many differences that researchers, clinicians, and clients, have highlighted between worrying and rational problem-solving. If you want to tell apart good and bad forms of worrying, you will need to reflect on this question for yourself. The effort to notice the difference, in the real world, is crucial. You won’t get much benefit from simply being told the answers, unless you use the list of typical differences below, for instance, as a guide for self-observation. However, in some cases, it may be sufficient simply to spot one key difference that helps you to distinguish helpful from unhelpful ways of thinking. I typically ask clients to draw two columns, and list the key characteristics of good versus bad ways of thinking about problems, which they can observe in their own thinking. Here are some of the most common things that people tend to mention…

Photo by Toru Wa on Unsplash

Quick Guide

Here’s a cheat sheet with a summary of a few key points.

• Emotional State: Anxious versus normal

• Self-Talk: Frantic versus calm and relaxed

• Attention: Hypothetical (future) worst-case scenario versus grounded in reality and the here and now

• Cognitive Biases: Catastrophic “What if?” thinking versus decatastrophizing “So what if?” thinking — problem seen as a threat rather than as an opportunity or challenge

• Control: Dwelling on problems (outcomes) that aren’t directly under your control versus focusing on your real locus of control (actions)

• Process: Circular, vague, and problem/question oriented versus linear, specific, and solution/answer oriented

• Social: Isolated thinking and interpersonal venting versus constructive social problem-solving and collaborative solution implementation

The article goes into these in much more detail below, and also adds many other observations.

Physiology

One of the most obvious differences, which people tend to notice first, is that morbid worrying is typically accompanied by anxiety whereas rational problem-solving is not, or at least it’s accompanied by less anxiety, and it is experienced as more manageable. Anxious arousal may be associated with various cognitive biases mentioned below. You can think of the difference in terms of two distinct “modes”, as they’re called in cognitive therapy — the normal mode versus the “threat mode” or “anxiety mode”. These are as different as being drunk versus being sober. You wouldn’t operate heavy machinery when drunk; you’d wait until you had sobered up. In the same way, you may want to postpone trying to solve complex interpersonal problems until your anxiety has abated, and you are thinking more clearly. When your brain is in the “threat mode”, associated with the fight-or-flight response, it functions differently. Problem-solving is naturally impaired and your judgment is clouded by a battery of cognitive biases, most notably catastrophizing, as we shall see below.

Worrying, paradoxically, does not always trigger the usual physiological markers of anxiety, such as significantly increased heart rate and blood pressure, or these may be present but somewhat muted compared, for example, to phobic anxiety. People report high levels of subjective anxiety but, surprisingly, their heart rate and other physiological symptoms of nervous arousal may not reflect this. One notable exception is muscular tension, which is often pronounced during episodes of worrying, especially frowning and tension in the neck and shoulders, but also sometimes in other parts of the body. The nervous arousal and muscular tension may be associated with changes in breathing, such as more rapid and shallow breathing with fewer pauses. Changes in breathing, in turn, usually lead to changes in the sound of your voice. That is, if you were to speak, you might sound worried to other people.

Paralinguistics

Almost as if they’re experiencing an internal (“covert”) version of the increased muscular tension and change in speech, worried people tend to report that their inner dialogue sounds more frantic. Their internal conversations may be more rushed. The tone of voice in their heads may be higher pitch or otherwise sound more anxious. That may go hand-in-hand with more dramatic (“histrionic”) use of language. We focus on the worst-case scenario. We might curse and use other forms of strongly emotive language, which are normally designed to provoke an emotional response from others but have a similar effect internally — when we think using anxious language we make ourselves feel more emotion. Non-anxious thinking, such as rational problem-solving, may be associated with a calmer more relaxed internal voice, slightly slower rate of speech, and less evocative, more neutral and objective use of language.

Linguistics (Rhetoric)

Worrying can be viewed as a form of rhetoric. Rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, has evolved over thousands of years as a means of using language to influence other people, often by evoking emotions such as fear and anger. Politicians and advertisers use rhetoric every day to manipulate their audiences. However, you also use rhetoric internally, in your own thoughts, in a way that evokes your own emotions. Most of the time we don’t think about our own use of language in this way but we’re continually exploiting language, unintentionally, to influence our own emotions. Swearing, exaggerating (hyperbole), generalization, selective thinking, and other features of language can contaminate our inner monologue when we’re worrying, and bias our thinking. Worrying tends to be characterized by certain verbal patterns. For instance, it often consists of a higher ratio of questions than rational problem-solving. These are often vague and lead to circular thinking, e.g., “What if this happens, what if that happens, how will I cope?” Rational problem-solving tends to use more specific questions and to proceed to try out different answers (solutions) in a more linear fashion, rather than going around in circles.

Look out for other linguistic markers of anxiety and worry. For instance, expressions of shock, surprise, and confusion are typical in anxiety but less common in rational problem-solving. You may say “WTF? I can’t believe this, how is this possible, why would anyone do this, how am I supposed to cope?” Notice that these phrases, which are often (but not always) framed as questions, tend to imply a sense of helplessness, and an inability to cope. When you sound surprised, it’s as though you’re telling yourself you have no idea how to respond, and so problem-solving tends to be derailed. When you’re thinking rationally, though, you’ll tend to view even severe problems in a more matter-of-fact way, with less surprise, and more confidence in your ability to arrive at a practical solution, or a way of coping.

Verbal Fusion

Arguably the most important factor. Worrying is typically associated with very high levels of verbal fusion (aka “cognitive fusion”). That means that we become more immersed in the content of our thoughts, as if we’re lost in thought, as if reading a novel or watching a movie, and totally engrossed in the content. Fusion and belief are closely-related but not identical. We can become highly immersed in thoughts that we know are not true or, conversely, remain detached from ones that we believe to be true. I like to compare verbal fusion to self-hypnosis. Worrying can be understood as resembling a sort of morbid or negative self-hypnosis. Our anxious thoughts dominate our mind and temporarily exclude other competing perspectives. We develop a sort of “tunnel vision” for the worst-case scenario and our catastrophic thinking. By contrast, rational problem-solving is often associated with verbal defusion (low levels of fusion) in which we retain more awareness of our thinking processes and are to observe them with greater objectivity and detachment. Rational problem-solving involves more “metacognitive awareness”, the term psychologists use to refer to our ability to think about our thinking — as if we’re watching ourselves as we think through the problem. For instance, that allows us to change the direction of our thinking of we’re not arriving at a solution, or to suspend it completely and “come back to it later” if we observe that our thinking is becoming circular and unproductive. When people are highly fused with their thoughts they lose that ability to manage the process. Their worried thoughts control them, rather than the other way around.

Focus of Attention

Worrying tends to be preoccupied with threat appraisal, or “what could go wrong”, whereas rational problem-solving is more oriented toward finding solutions. That often means that worrying is excessively (or even exclusively) future-oriented whereas rational-problem solving keeps at least one foot, as it were, in the present moment, where we have control and can take action. People who worry often seem distracted or lost in thought, right? That’s a sign that their attention is focused elsewhere. They’re not grounded in the present moment, nor are they mindful of their own actions. Instead, their attention has become narrowed in scope and rigidly absorbed in the content of their thoughts, they particularly tend to focus their attention more than normal on the worst-case scenario. By contrast, in rational problem-solving you will often retain more self-awareness, and may continue to be aware of the present moment and your surroundings.

Worry, like anxious thought in general, tends to be focused on the future, such as thoughts about something bad happening. You could say worry is preoccupied with the realm of hypothetical future problems, or the imminent consequences of real problems. It’s not grounded in the present moment, although that’s where your thinking takes place. Shifting attention back to the present moment has long been observed to be antagonistic to worrying. Grounding your attention in the here and now can snap you out of the trance of worry, as it were. Of course, you may still have real problems to solve but doing so with at least partial attention to the here and now, dividing your attention somewhat between the present and the future, can prevent you from becoming too lost in thought, and allows you to retain more control over your thought processes. It also tends to mean that you’re remain more aware of the passage of time, whereas, as we’ll see, losing track of time is often a key marker for worrying.

Cognitive Biases

When your brain is in “threat mode”, your body is tense, and your fight-or-flight response is activated, various cognitive “schemas”, or deep-seated beliefs and attitudes, will tend to be activated. Your thinking will be profoundly biased in this state of mind, on several different levels. This is obvious when you observe other people who are highly worried — they’re clearly not thinking straight, right? When you worry, though, you’re probably less able to notice how biased your thinking has become. We all tend to have a pronounced blind-spot for our own cognitive biases, especially during episodes of intense worrying.

Catastrophizing is the most obvious cognitive bias in worrying, and, indeed, in most anxiety. Catastrophic thoughts tend to exaggerate the probability and severity of a perceived threat, and also to underestimate your coping ability. It’s as though you’re repeatedly thinking: “Something awful is about to happen and I have no idea how I’m going to handle it!” You can also describe this as the activation of schemas associated with vulnerability and helplessness — deep feelings of being overwhelmed unable to cope are triggered. Rational problem-solving judges threats more objectively, which usually means appraising their probability and/or severity in more realistic terms, and your coping ability in more positive terms. A simple way of putting this is that rational problem-solvers often view problems more as challenges or opportunities than as threats. Arnold Lazarus, one of the pioneers of behavior therapy, used to say that decatastrophizing is about turning “What if?” thinking into “So what if?” thinking.

We can also understand catastrophizing as a tendency to focus excessively on the worst-case scenario. By contrast, rational problem-solving may acknowledge the worst-case scenario, and attempt to manage severe risks, even if they’re unlikely to happen, but then it will usually shift focus on to preparing for the most likely scenario, rather than remaining stuck on the worst that could happen. Once you begin to focus on the worst-case scenario, because it typically activates the threat mode, it can capture your attention and prevent you from being able to focus more realistically on the most-likely outcome, if you’re not careful. So it takes a certain degree of self-awareness (metacognitive awareness) to prevent thoughts about severe threats from turning into morbid worrying.

Many other cognitive biases tend to be associated with worrying. For instance, there’s often pronounced selective thinking, which focuses on signs of danger, and ignores or dismisses potential evidence of safety, or your ability to cope. As we’ll see, selective thinking can also be used to explain the typical pattern of mental imagery found in worrying. When we worry, we’re not telling ourselves the whole story. We also tend to to make unfounded assumptions when worrying, such as jumping to conclusions prematurely about what will happen in the future (“fortune telling”) or what other people may think or feel (“mind reading”). Worrying is also characterized by overgeneralization, such as thinking that bad things “always” happen or that things “never” work out in a good way. Rational problem-solving, of course, tends to exhibit fewer of these errors. It’s not necessarily that these errors are completely absent, when we’re thinking more clearly, but rather that we notice them and realize that they’re distortions — we are able to see through them.

Mental Imagery

Worrying tends to be highly verbal and cognitive compared to other forms of anxiety. It’s often therefore more vague and abstract, which may be partly why it is circular. We ask vague questions and fail to come up with answers: What if this happens, what if that happens, how will I cope? Rational problem-solving tends to be more specific — actually it moves more systematically between abstract and concrete levels of thinking. Because it is more specific, rational problem-solving is often more visually oriented. In our mind’s eye, when problem-solving, we picture specific problems, in specific situations, and imagine specific ways of coping, and their likely consequences. Mental imagery in worrying tends to focus specifically on the most anxiety-provoking aspect of a problem, such as the worst moments of the worst-case scenario. We get stuck on repeat, going over and over that clip from different perspectives. You may also notice that threats are perceived as escalating very quickly when you worry about them, which contributes to the feeling of being overwhelmed. By contrast, when thinking rationally, we may picture threats escalating more slowly, which gives us more opportunity to imagine taking preventative action. We may also move past the worst moments and picture the aftermath, and how we would cope with the consequences, recover, and move on. Imagine asking yourself: “So what if the worst happens? What would probably happen next? And then what would probably happen? And then what?” If necessary, focus specifically on how you would cope if you were acting wisely, or in accord with your core values, even if the worst did happen.

Worrying is like a horror movie about our own lives where we constantly replay a “jump scare” moment, rather than allowing the movie to continue to a conclusion where the threat is eventually resolved. Think of the visual aspect of worrying as if it is a movie that you are editing. Why would you choose to visualise the problem in the least helpful and most anxiety-provoking way possible? Edit your inner movie, instead, in a way that allows you to see the lead-up to the problem, the peak, and then how you would cope, and move forward in life. In fact, many people find that simply reminding themselves to keep moving the mental imagery forward is sufficient to derail worries and turn them into rational problem-solving instead.

Control

Unproductive worrying tends to focus on aspects of a problem that are not under your direct control. That’s one of the reasons that it tends to be circular and ro go on for long periods, without arriving at a practical conclusion. By contrast, productive worrying tends to focus on your locus of control. Excessive focus on aspects of the problem over which we have little or not control fuels the sense of futility, frustration and helplessness that tends to accompany worrying. People who worry often complain of feeling “overwhelmed” by problems and this is probably related to their poor appraisal of their own coping ability and sense of helplessness. In fact, often the only means of coping of which a worrier can think is to continue worrying.

Another striking feature of unhealthy worrying is that it tends to be strongly associated with low appraisals of control over the process of worrying itself. In other words, the more unhealthy your worry, the more you are likely to believe that it is uncontrollable or spiralling out of control. People who see their worry as under their control are more likely to think about problems in a rational and constructive way. It comes as a surprise to many people to discover that worrying generally consists of voluntary thought processes. To be more precise, worry is often instigated by an automatic anxious thought, which is not under our control. It may just pop into your mind spontaneously or be triggered by something you notice in your environment. What happens next, however, largely consists of voluntary thinking, taking the form of a sort of conversation you have with yourself, that constitutes the work of worrying. Turning unhealthy into healthy worrying typically depends on the realization that, even if the initial catastrophic thought is automatic, the subsequent process of worrying is largely, or at least potentially, under your voluntary control.

Avoidance

Worrying is invariably contaminated with avoidance. Most obviously, it often leads to procrastination, delays, and avoidance of tackling problems, by implementing solutions, or sometimes even attempts to avoid thinking about certain problems. People who worry often vacillate between two extremes, either dwelling too much on problems, by worrying about them unproductively for hours, or trying to avoid thinking about them altogether, because they have come to feel overwhelming and unbearable. Tom Borkovec, one of the leading researchers on the psychology of worry, introduced the influential “cognitive avoidance” theory of worry. Based on various scientific findings, this maintains that, paradoxically, worrying about a problem, although it feels like a way of confronting it, actually functions as a subtle form of avoidance. When we worry, we often dupe ourselves into thinking that we are facing our fears, and problem-solving, when, in fact, we’re skirting around the issues, skipping from one aspect to another haphazardly, and sneakily distracting ourselves from the real work of solving the problem. It’s fake problem-solving, in a sense, whereby we create the appearance, in our minds, that we’re doing something constructive, when, in reality, we’re just procrastinating internally, by thinking about things in a vague and unhelpful way, that maintains chronic anxiety without ever resolving the issues causing it.

Rational-problem solving, on the other hand, does not avoid problems or procrastinate about them. It tackles them systematically and in a timely manner, without dwelling on them excessively. It focuses on the true cause of our problem, in a pragmatic way, and thinks through potential solutions, testing them out in our mind, and planning how to put them into practice and evaluate them. Rational-problem solving, therefore, does not get stuck at the “analysis” stage but proceeds to actually implement solutions. Anxiety causes us to revert to dichotomous “all-or-nothing” thinking, which leads to perfectionism — we must get the perfect solution before we can do anything. That invariably leads to paralysis. True problem-solving usually involves an experimental attitude, and a willingness to engage in trial-and-error learning. Rational problem-solving typically arrives at “good enough” solutions, and then tests them out in practice, adapting them, and improving them, until the problem is solved. Worrying is scared to do that, and goes round in circles, stuck in “pen and paper” thinking, chasing after a perfect solution, which it never finds. It gets stuck in a rut, and goes round in circles, because excessive focus on the worst-case scenario has made us too afraid to test out “good enough” solutions in practice, and that fear inevitably leads to ongoing avoidance and procrastination.

Perfectionism, and fear of failure, are related to “intolerance of uncertainty”, another trait that researchers have linked with worry and procrastination. Learning to accept a degree of uncertainty, and take manageable risks, is essential for rational problem-solving. We can’t usually wait for absolute certainty before taking action. That means we must learn to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity, within reason.

Duration

Healthy problem-solving tends to take less time, partly because it’s less circular and you’re more able to pause, set it aside, if you observe that you’re not arriving at a conclusion. Unhealthy worrying can go on for hours. You might find yourself still awake at 3 or 4am lying in bed worrying about some problem. One of the most striking markers of unhealthy worrying is that we tend to lose track of time. When thinking about things rationally we tend to remain more aware of the passage of time, because we’re less fused with the content of our thoughts.

Conclusion

Finally, I would add that worrying tends to be overly-preoccupied with external outcomes, which are by their nature located in the future, and are not entirely under our control. Placing too much emphasis on that sort of outcome orientation naturally fuels our anxiety. Rational problem-solving, by contrast, often pays more attention to our core values, particularly insofar as they relate to character traits, such as wisdom, integrity, fairness, compassion, endurance, self-discipline, and so on. Those qualities exist in the present moment, and naturally orient our awareness more toward mindfulness grounded in the here and now, bringing many of the benefits already mentioned above. Ask yourself, for instance, whether worrying about your problems is that’s aligned with your core values and the type of person you want to be. How would you approach solving your problems, then, if you were acting in accord with your core values?

For an added bonus, you may also notice that there are pronounced interpersonal differences between worrying and problem-solving. Worrying tends to be primarily a solitary pursuit, although when overwhelmed we may seek to reduce anxiety by venting or seeking reassurance from others — both subtle avoidance strategies. By contrast, rational problem-solving, although it can be solitary, is more likely to engage in healthy interpersonal behaviour, such as consulting experts, eliciting practical support from other people, brainstorming ideas together, and so on. Two heads are better than one, as the saying goes, so good problem-solvers tend to be adept at making use of social support and appropriate input from other people.

These are just some of the most obvious differences between bad worrying and good worrying, or, if you prefer, between worrying and rational problem-solving. It’s important that you observe your own behaviour and try to clearly differentiate between the signs of unhealthy and healthy thinking about problems in your own case. You may spot some of these stereotypical differences but perhaps not all of them apply to you. You may well notice other signs, closely related to these, or perhaps completely unique to your own thinking and behaviour.