god forbade...must reading

Worry

     Worry...feeling threatened to any degree...is stress.

    Not worrying more than we have to may be the best thing we can do for our health.

      Dr. McEwen's ‘allostasis’ means our body can adjust to being under stress. All those systems that get turned up or down, when we really feel threatened, will come back into balance.

    "The Perception Gap", when our innately subjective, instinctive, emotional system of risk perception leads us to worry about some threats more than the evidence suggests we need to. As much as we need to heed what Dr. Robert Adler and others have taught us about the biological dangers of stress, we also need to apply the wisdom that Paul Slovic and Dan Kahneman and many others have gained about the psychology of risk perception. Their research has revealed why our fears don't always match the facts. Understanding why the perception gap occurs, and why some risks feel scarier than the facts and probabilities indicate, is a self-awareness we can use to minimize the dangers of disproportionate worrying.

   We could just pop some valium and ativan and xanax or other drugs to combat stress. Or we can also try to apply our understanding of what makes some risks feel scarier than others to try to keep our fears in perspective. That sort of self control, overriding our instincts, will be hard. But it will be easier if we first recognize, and feel actually threatened by, the hidden but huge risk of stress that comes from worrying more than we need to.

David Ropeik

in How Risky Is It, Really?

Psychology Today