What Are a Worrier’s Two Most Over-Used Words?

You nailed it if you answered “What if…?”

Now I say this is an advantage, because these two words can point out to you that you’re being lured into worry as surely as the sound of a starter pistol indicates the start of a race, or the siren of an ambulance behind you indicates the need to pull over.
Maybe you don’t think that’s an advantage! You might be so accustomed to trying to suppress and ignore your worrisome thoughts that anything that brings attention to them seems unhelpful. It might seem to you that you’ve been barely holding back the tide of unwanted worry, and that you’d be better off keeping it out of your awareness.
And yet, we saw in chapter 3 that “anti-worry” techniques usually make the problem of chronic worry more chronic and severe. Such techniques look like helpful solutions, but they’re actually wolves in sheepdog’s clothing. So bear with me! Suspend any disbelief on this point, at least until you’ve digested this chapter.
The “what if” words are a useful signal. However, if you’re like most chronic worriers, you probably don’t often notice them, and you may well underestimate how often this phrase appears in your thoughts and conversation.
“What if” probably sneaks around your attention the same way a pickpocket does. You’re more likely to notice, and react to, the phrase that comes after the “what if…?” That’s where all the upset of chronic worry comes from. “What if” is the bait that gets you to bite into something that will give you a real bellyache.
You can’t change your relationship with worry if it catches you unawares. So it will probably be real helpful for you to get better at noticing the “what if” words and taking in their meaning. That will set the stage for you to start training yourself to respond differently to the worry, and developing a new way of relating to it. If this sounds like the opposite of what you’ve been trying—well, this is why we have the Rule of Opposites!
Let’s start this work by diagramming the typical worry sentence. It’s no longer part of the standard grade school curriculum, but when I attended grade school, we learned grammar by diagramming sentences. We’ll do something similar here.

Diagram the Worry Sentence

Here’s the actual structure of the overwhelming majority of chronic worries. It’s composed of two clauses.

What if… ? (Insert catastrophe here)

It starts with the “what if?” clause. It’s followed by the catastrophe clause.
Let’s consider the “what if” clause for a moment. What does the “what if” clause mean here? What are we trying to convey when we say “what if”? What meaning does it add to the sentence?
You might not be so sure of what I’m getting at here, so let me explain. Think about when we’re likely to get into “what if” thinking. If a dog comes up and bites me, how likely am I to say, or think, “What if a dog bites me?” Not very likely, right? I’m just gonna say, “Ouch!”
If a dog comes up to me and growls, fur on end, showing teeth, and in every way looking like a dog about to attack, how likely am I to be thinking, What if this dog bites me? Still not very likely, right? I’m much more likely to be looking around for the dog’s owner, or a stick I can use to defend myself, a fence I can hop, or a tree I can climb. I’m going to be focused on protecting myself any way I can.
So when do I say (or think), “What if a dog bites me?” What do you think?
I think the answer is: when I’m neither being bitten nor about to be bitten. I don’t say it when a dog has his teeth on my leg. I don’t say it when a dog is in front of me, preparing to attack. I’m too busy protecting myself to be thinking much of anything! I say, or think, “What if a dog bites me?” when I’m not being threatened by a dog; I say it, or think it, when my cerebral cortex has center stage, and my amygdala is on standby in the background. For instance, if I had a dog phobia, I might have this thought just as I was ready to leave the house, ready to walk a few blocks to catch my train. However, if a dog actually charges me while I’m walking to the train, my amygdala will take charge, silence the blabbing of my cortex, and fill me with the energy and the urgency I need to protect myself. That conversation with the committee of old guys will have to wait until I’m no longer threatened by the dog!
Dog attacks don’t cause worrying—they cause self-protection!
So what meaning does the “what if” clause add to our sentence?
It means “let’s pretend.”
Does that work for you? Does that describe the meaning of “what if” that appears in your worries? “Here’s something that’s not happening in the external world now, and let’s pretend it is.”
It’s actually more specific than that. When’s the last time you found yourself thinking, What if I wake up tomorrow, feeling real good, happy with myself and my place in the world, love in my heart for everyone, knowing that those feelings will last for the rest of my life?
Not so recently, right? In fact, probably never! People generally don’t “what if” about good stuff. It’s all about negative, terrible, dreadful things that could possibly happen in the future.
So “what if” really means “Let’s pretend something bad.”
Maybe, though, you’re thinking it really means “This could happen,” or “It’s possible that…” You might think that this could be an important signal about some bad thing that is possible. If this is the case, I have another question for you.
What would be some things that are clearly, irrefutably impossible?
Take your time, but I don’t think you’ll come up with much. There’s really nothing that seems impossible if we think about it long enough. That’s one of the differences between your internal world and the external world. In the external world, there are rules that govern reality. In our minds, there are no rules. We can imagine anything, no matter how improbable or impossible, and be unable to prove that it’s impossible.
This doesn’t give you much guidance to live by. And our “what if” thoughts don’t cover all the things that seem possible—just the really bad ones. This is how my wife and I ended up so concerned with my son’s jaundice, as I explained in chapter 1.
What goes in the catastrophe clause? Whatever you happen to be most worried about that day, week, month, or year. It’s a fill-in-the-blank choice, and if you’re presently most worried about your job, or your health, or your spouse, or your furnace, that’s what’s going to show up there.
So here’s what we have:

Let’s pretend… . (Some catastrophe)

The “what if” part of chronic worry is all about pretending. When chronic worry tricks you into pretending something is true, it doesn’t matter how important or unimportant that pretend content is. Pretending is like multiplying by zero! It doesn’t matter how big a number is, when you multiply by zero, you still end up with nothing.