The subtle but radical difference between worrying and caring
Understanding the difference will save you tremendous amounts of time & energy | GR 114
I wish I could simply tell you
“Hey, this is but a gentle reminder that worrying is not the same thing as caring—that worrying is the disempowered version of caring. Please use worrying as a superpower to acknowledge a threat but don’t over-depend on it, otherwise you can end up paralyzed by fear or, worse, anchor your body to become addicted to it that you will subconsciously produce situations to stay tethered to that emotional cocktail. Worry was always meant to be transmuted into care (effective action). Your worry serves nobody—especially the thing you’re worrying about—when it just stays as worry. Worry is like base/raw material and, as the alchemists we are by nature, we get to turn it into meaningful action.”
But I’m afraid the intertwining and worrying and carrying runs deep in our culture and more context is needed. So I’m writing this Gentle Reminder with the genuine hope that somebody out there begins to experience the growth available from no longer confusing the two.
As someone who grew up in a family of worriers, the insight inside this Gentle Reminders have changed the way I respond to challenge—I no longer have to take my body through overwhelm, stress, anxiety, in order to effectively care.
May you find something between these lines that also support you. Let’s dive.
Most of us have been conditioned by the busy, modern world, our society or household to use the powerful energy of worrying in a disempowering way. So it’s not so immediately clear that there might even be a distinction between worrying and caring.
And for a lot of us, worry was a learned behavior and one of those things that we have to unlearn for our own sake. So I’m dedicating this piece to those who may have also come from a household of worriers and whose body now gravitates by default to that sensation of survival that gets in the way of real progress.
worry
/ˈwʌri/
verb
to feel or cause to feel anxious or troubled about actual or potential problems.
“He worried about his soldier sons in the war”(of a dog or other carnivorous animal) tear at or pull about with the teeth.
“I found my dog contentedly worrying a bone”
A creature with the superpower of fear
Weird question but: have you ever wondered why we worry? Take a moment to consider it.
At the evolutionary level, what could have possibly been so advantageous about worrying that made our species keep this emotion/sensation as something advantageous? What could possibly be so valuable about the ability to freak out when considering unfavorable outcomes or circumstances?
For me, it seems likely that we began to develop the ability to worry so that we may perceive threats (actual or potential) and be able to do something about them. Our ability to worry and act upon threats seem key in surviving and thriving on this planet through millennia.
When I see our ability to worry as this extra-ordinary sensorial ability that allows us to minimize the risk of future pain, it actually sounds like an amazing technology that the human animal comes equipped with—doesn’t it?! Imagine not being able to worry at all and constantly being met with unfavorable circumstances. All of which could have been prevented if only you had some sort of telepathic ability to sense future pain.
Yet somewhere along the way, we began over-relying on this superpower. So much so that it became an unconscious default mode, making us live like a prey out in the woods, always fearful for its survival.
And it didn’t help at all that at some point we associated this emotional cocktail of helplessness + anxiousness with something so very human, like caring.
Far too often we erroneously use the weight of our worry to measure just how much we care.
And this inability to distinguish worry from care brings about so many unnecessary problems: from falling in draining cycles of overthinking, to developing chronic anxiety, to analysis-paralysis, insomnia, to the feeling of being disconnected from this very moment because our minds may be somewhere else, worrying about something that’s not even right here & now in front of us.
Our superpower of worry, it seems, becomes a double-edged sword if we don’t learn how to use it. That’s why a conversation I had with a mentor 7 years ago—about the difference between worrying and caring—brought forth this important realization for me; that worrying is not the same thing as caring. That there is a difference. And that I had been living my whole life misunderstanding the two and suffering the consequences for it: chronic anxiety, looping in patterns of inaction due to an overwhelmed nervous system, procrastination, a lack of creativity and mental clarity, to name a few.
Hi, my name is Jovanny and I’m a recovering worrier
I used to worry all the time. About my future, about my loved ones’ future, about the state of the world, the state of the country, the state of my community, the state of my household—the state that my room was in!
Man, when one goes down that rabbit hole… you realize that, right at this moment, there can be so much to worry about! There are even things that I’m not even aware of at this moment that, as soon as I open up my newsfeeds, I know I can certainly worry about. I can literally bring my body into a state of worry at any single moment. We all can. That, to me, is mind-blowing. The fact that we can bring our body to a state of worry on command.
And let’s be real. Despite the discomfort it brings, worrying can also feel oddly satisfying: having something to worry about—that shows that we care, right? It shows that there are things we give a damn about. We might even begin to see worry as a badge of honor.
Well—that’s why it’s so difficult for people to let go of it. And that’s where the unlearning begins.
Why the distinction between worrying and caring matters
The sooner we’re able to channel worry, the better equipped we’ll actually be to act upon the challenges we individually face.
Unnecessary worrying undeniably fed the stress and anxiety levels that I would feel on a daily basis for many years. Worst of all, I thought that I couldn’t help it; that I was simply born like this: with this gift/curse to worry about everything and everyone I cared about. On one hand, I was glad that I “cared” about something. On the other, I didn’t understand why it had to be so painful!
What changed my life was when I finally was able to distinguish useless worrying from valuable concern.
At this point, I have to make an important disclaimer: Worrying is not a mental hurdle. We can’t always just think our way out of worry. Worry also carries huge somatic resonance. When we worry, it’s not only our thoughts that are bothersome but the sensations in the body that accompany it. For many, worry likes to cling to the back of the neck or sit like a heavy load on the shoulders. For others, it’s a tightness around the chest or the stomach, messing with our posture. For many, it’s a faster heartbeat, shallow breaths and the feeling that you are in danger - even if there is no clear, immediate threat to our life around us. And for many more, worry pierces its claws in the forehead, right between the eyes.
This is why, within my mentorship programs, somatic experiencing is a foundational tool to support anyone living inside a body that’s become too familiar with worry. Because we don’t heal by thinking or “making sense” of things alone. No. The foundation of this untangling work is somatic. With somatic work, it becomes easier to let go of the unconscious, chemical addiction our body has to the neurotransmitters and hormones of worry.
For more information or to enquire about my 1:1 mentorship programs, just send me a message with your questions or click here for more info.
Having said that, this doesn’t mean that we cannot begin making progress at the mindset level though. Perception & perspective still matters. Since I cannot guide you through a somatic experience with words alone, we’ll focus on mindset work in this Gentle Reminder.
Here are some meditative questions I invite you to consider as you learn to untangle worrying from caring
Feel free to use these as journaling prompts.
Is it possible for care to exist without worry?
Can we care about something without worrying about it? What would that look like? How would that feel in the body?
Is worry a prerequisite for caring? Or can we stretch our imagination and imagine a moment in our lives in which we cared without having to take our body through worry?
And now, a tough pill I had to swallow:
I can worry all I want and it would not bring about all the progress I need.
That’s because worrying is not progress. Caring is.
Caring implies action. Only in action can there be progress.
Far too often our ability to worry fools us into believing that we are actually doing something productive about the thing we care about.
Worry uses up so much mental & physical energy that it feels like work. But it’s only an illusion of progress. Just like staying busy is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying not to worry about anything at all and stop giving a sh*t about things that matter to you. That’s absolutely not the point of this Gentle Reminder.
What I’m saying is this: worry effectively.
Remember, worrying is valuable - it’s a superpower. The ability to perceive a threat to that which we care about is a lifesaving technology we come equipped with. But the purpose for summoning that fear is so that we may come up with action that is aligned with a solution.
And that’s where the real value of worrying is. In transmuting the energy of fear into meaningful action. The fear found in worry is to be balanced with the love found in a caring action.
Worrying is like standing over a bucket with a leak, staring at the water pouring out, and panicking about how fast it’s emptying. You can stand there for hours watching the water drain, thinking about how bad it is, imagining what will happen when it runs out, telling yourself you “care” because you’re paying so much attention to what is happening.
But the bucket doesn’t fill back up just because you’re now worried about it. Worry may feel like effort—which is true, your brain and body are burning so much energy during the effort of worrying—but it doesn’t change the state of the bucket.
Caring, on the other hand, is when you finally kneel down, press your finger against the hole, get a patch, or lift the bucket and go refill it. Notice the difference: care engages the body to interrupt the leak.
Worry = monitoring the leak.
Caring = repairing the leak.
Caring implies an action that restores the integrity of the thing you value.
And the leak is the whole point of the nervous system’s alarm.
The fear is there to simply alert you, not to throw you into a trance of that immobilizes you.
Remember this mantra: care but don’t carry.
It is possible to care about something without carrying it like a burden.
If I begin, right here in this moment, to consider everything that is wrong with the world and carry it as if it was my whole responsibility to make it better… well, I don’t know of a quicker way to collapse under so much stress and anxiety—rendering me unable to do something about anything that I care about.
Care but don’t carry means you can do something about that which you care about without putting your body through unnecessary levels of stress and debilitating worry.
And yes, I know, it’s easier said than done; unlearning the unhealthy ways in which we react to the world around us may very well be one of the hardest things we get to attempt in life. But what you gain from knowing how to do it is way more worth it than what you keep by staying in the familiar suffering.
Again, you may be reading this information and saying to yourself “Ahh, I think I get it now.” But this is understanding does not mean that you’re suddenly healed from ever experiencing again the trigger of worry—especially if your body has been practicing worry consistently for a long time. Information is not transformation.
Below, I’m share some practical steps you can make to being detaching your care from your worry.
Imagine your body no longer have to be flushed with overwhelming sensations of fear and helplessness before acquiring the clarity to take meaningful action. Yes, it’s incredible! Untangling the worry from care has been one of my greatest achievements within my own healing journey. It’s saved me tremendous amounts of energy and time.
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