Now, worrying is a fact of life. It involves thoughts about future negative events that might happen. If you find yourself asking a, “What if…?” question, you are probably worried about something. And that is the difference between healthy worrying vis-à-vis unhealthy worrying.
If you are worried about something specific, such as whether your soufflé will fall, that is healthy worry. Unhealthy worrying involves chronic and constant concerns about anything and everything in a person’s life. Worrying constantly about non-specific situations is a hallmark of generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD.
Do you worry about worrying too much?
That is a sign that you may be cognizant of a problem. If you can shift your thoughts to something else that is not worrisome, you probably have healthy coping strategies. But constantly worrying about something in the future without the ability to put it aside, causing mental and physical distress may be a sign that you suffer from GAD.
"The distinction between an anxiety disorder and just having normal anxiety is whether your emotions are causing a lot of suffering and dysfunction," says Sally Winston, Psy.D., co-director of the Anxiety and Stress Disorder Institute of Maryland in Towson.
GAD affects nearly 7 million adults, or more than 3 percent of the U.S. population, every year. Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with this disorder. It is thought that family background, biological factors and life experiences, especially stressful ones, may be contributing factors to GAD.
Signs That You May Be an Excessive Worrier, or GAD Sufferer
The definition of GAD is feeling anxious and worrying excessively for six months. Another way of looking at it is if you worry a lot more than your friends and find it difficult to stop worrying once you start, you possibly have GAD. This chronic worrying typically interferes with lifestyle, appetite, relationships, job performance and sleep.