How to stop worrying about things you can't control

Worry about something outside your control doesn't prepare you for it or prevent it, it just runs on a loop your rational mind can't out-argue. In one small study of 29 people with generalized anxiety disorder, 91% of the worries they recorded over 10 days did not come true (LaFreniere and Newman, Penn State, Behavior Therapy, 2020). The instinct that fuels worry often seems to respond to something other than logic, so the way through isn't more thinking, it's redirecting the restlessness itself.

There's a version of worry that feels like preparation. Like if you think about the worst-case scenario enough times, you'll somehow be ready for it. Or that if you stop thinking about it, something will go wrong that you might have prevented.

This is one of the more convincing lies the brain tells itself.

Try it yourself

Clear Your Mind

A guided way to externalise the worry. Get the loop out of your head, without analysing, without solving.

Knowing this doesn't make the worry stop. If it did, you'd have stopped already.

Why you can't just decide to stop

Worry does not take instructions well from the rational mind. Much of the brain's threat-detection runs underneath conscious thought, and it does not neatly separate threats you can act on from threats you can't.

A health scare you're waiting on test results for. A relationship that feels uncertain. A job that might not be secure. The future in general.

Your mind tends to treat all of these the same way: as problems to be solved. And so it keeps thinking. Keeps running scenarios. Keeps returning to the same unresolvable question, looking for an exit that doesn't exist.

The harder you try to push it away, the more it tends to come back. In the classic white bear experiment, people who first tried not to think about a white bear thought about it more often afterwards (Wegner et al., 1987), and a meta-analysis found a small to moderate rebound overall (Abramowitz, Tolin and Street, 2001).

Knowing why worry persists doesn't dissolve it. But it does point at the kind of intervention that actually works: not arguing with the worry, not trying to think your way out, but giving the loop somewhere else to go.

What actually helps

A few things that create genuine relief, not distraction, but actual interruption of the loop:

Write it down and close it. Get the worry out of your head and onto paper, not to analyse it, just to externalise it. Unfinished business tends to keep returning to mind, and in experiments, making a specific plan for an unfinished goal stopped the intrusive thoughts about it (Masicampo and Baumeister, 2011). Writing a worry down and deciding what, if anything, you will do about it may work in a similar way, although that study was about goals rather than worry. If a pen and paper aren't enough, Solace's Clear Your Mind tool gives it a more guided place to go.

Name what you're actually afraid of. Worry is usually a surface. Underneath it is something more specific: I'm afraid this means I'm not good enough. I'm afraid I'll lose something I can't replace. I'm afraid of how I'll feel if this goes wrong. When you name the fear under the worry, it becomes something you can actually look at, rather than a fog that surrounds everything. Checking whether that fear is an accurate read or a worst-case distortion is cognitive reframing, and it is often where the worry starts to lose its grip.

Set a boundary on it. Give the worry a container. Ten minutes, once a day, where you're allowed to think about it as much as you want. Outside that container, when it comes back, and it will, you're allowed to say not now. This sounds too simple, but a small preliminary trial of a daily 30-minute worry period, kept to one time and place, reduced worry in people who worry a lot (McGowan and Behar, 2013).

Change your physical state first. Worry is a body experience as much as a mental one. A walk, a few minutes of slow breathing with Solace's breathing tool, or cold water on your face can help some people: they change how your body feels, which can change how the worry feels. For slow breathing there is some evidence. In one study of 22 older and 25 younger adults, a single session of deep, slow breathing reduced state anxiety in both groups and raised a measure of vagal tone (Magnon et al., Scientific Reports, 2021). A longer exhale than inhale has not been shown to matter more than an even breath (Meehan and Shaffer, 2024). The thought often quiets when the body does.

The harder truth about acceptance

Acceptance gets a bad reputation. It sounds like resignation, like giving up, like not caring. That real giving-up pattern has a name: learned helplessness.

It isn't.

Accepting that something is outside your control doesn't mean you don't care about the outcome. It means you've decided to stop spending energy on a lever that isn't connected to anything. It means you're choosing to live in the present rather than in an imagined future that may never arrive.

You can hold uncertainty without being consumed by it. You can care deeply about something and still accept that you can't determine how it goes. These things coexist in people all the time.

The worry will come back. That's fine. It doesn't need to stay.

You don't have to solve the unsolvable thing. You just have to notice when you're trying to, and do something else instead.

Sources

• LaFreniere, L. S., & Newman, M. G. (2020). Exposing worry's deceit: Percentage of untrue worries in generalized anxiety disorder treatment. Behavior Therapy, 51(3), 413-423.
• Magnon, V., Dutheil, F., & Vallet, G. T. (2021). Benefits from one session of deep and slow breathing on vagal tone and anxiety in young and older adults. Scientific Reports, 11, 19267.
• Wegner et al. (1987). Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5-13
• Abramowitz, Tolin & Street (2001). Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression: A Meta-Analysis of Controlled Studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 21(5), 683-703
• Masicampo & Baumeister (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667-683
• McGowan & Behar (2013). A Preliminary Investigation of Stimulus Control Training for Worry. Behavior Modification, 37(1), 90-112
• Meehan & Shaffer (2024). Do Longer Exhalations Increase HRV During Slow-Paced Breathing? Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 49(3), 407-417

Solace offers calm, practical tools, not medical advice. If worry is persistent, severe, or affecting your daily life, it is worth speaking with a doctor or a qualified professional.