The Worrying Disease - A Personal Reckoning

There’s a particular kind of worry that takes root in the bones. It doesn’t shout. It hums low and constant, like a generator in the background of your life. You go about your day—sorting laundry, checking your phone, making lists of things to fix or buy or finish—and all the while, it’s there, drumming a quiet panic behind your ribs.

I know this hum well. It came to live with me during the many years I raised my children as a single mother and the constant fear of not having enough money for food, bills and so very often the heat and the world felt like it was holding its breath. It stayed, even after the snow melted. Even after things got better. And if I’m honest, it had been there long before, disguised as industriousness or planning or caretaking.

But it was worry. A fever in the mind. A fog around the soul.

In the old stories of yoga, they call it chinta. Not just worry in the way we toss the word around, but a deep brooding of the mind. A soul-knot. In Hinduism and yogic philosophy, it’s said that worry is a form of avidya—ignorance of who we truly are. That landed hard the first time I heard it. Not ignorance in a shaming way, but in a “you’ve-forgotten-your-light” kind of way.

We worry because we think everything depends on us. Because we believe we are the sum of our bank accounts, relationships, or how many plates we can keep spinning in the air. We worry because we are attached—to outcomes, to people, to our carefully imagined futures.

We think worry is a form of love. We think it proves we care.

But it doesn’t. It just drains us.

I’ve come to think of worry like a virus. It spreads silently, feeding on attention, multiplying with each new scenario you invent in your head. One worry spawns another, and pretty soon your inner life is a crowded subway of worst-case outcomes.

It jumps person to person too. You walk into a room full of anxious people, and suddenly your chest feels tight. The air feels thinner. That’s because worry isn’t just a thought—it’s an energy. A storm cloud looking for company.

And like any virus, it weakens your system. It clouds your judgment, tightens your muscles, steals your sleep. I’ve seen it make good people mean, and soft people hard. I’ve seen it take up permanent residence, turning a whole life into a waiting room for something bad that might never happen.

But there are ways to break the cycle. I’ve learned them slowly—mostly by stumbling. Mostly by remembering, forgetting, and remembering again.

1.  Show Up to the Moment You’re In

There’s a line in the Bhagavad Gita that says you have a right to your actions, but not to the fruits of those actions. That used to make me furious. I wanted the fruits. I wanted guarantees. But now I understand—this is where the peace is. You do what’s yours to do, and then you let go. That’s karma yoga. And it’s the most radical act of faith I know.

2.  Put Your Hands to the Earth

The cure for mental static, I’ve found, is often something physical. Pull weeds. Chop vegetables. Braid someone’s hair. Worry lives in the future. Your hands are always now.

3.  Breathe

Pranayama—yogic breath control—isn’t just for monks or people who drink green juice. It’s a way of reintroducing trust into your own body. I do alternate nostril breathing when I’m unraveling. It reminds me that my body knows how to come back to balance, even when my mind does not.

4. Talk to the Divine (However You Name It)

Sometimes I hand my worry over like a child handing over a broken toy. “Here,” I say to God or the trees or my ancestors. “I can’t fix this. You take it.” That’s bhakti, the path of devotion. Not because I’m so spiritual. Because I’m desperate. Because I’ve finally learned I’m not in charge of everything.

5.  Tell the Truth

Worry thrives in silence. Speak it out loud. To a friend. To the sky. To a journal. Worry, named and seen, shrinks like a spider under a cup.

6.  Detach Without Disconnecting

This one’s the trickiest. How do you love something and not cling to it? The yogis call it vairagya—non-attachment. It doesn’t mean not caring. It means loving with your hands open. It means letting people be who they are and letting life unfold as it will. It’s a practice. And a mercy.

What I know now is this: worry is not a personality trait. It’s not love in disguise. It’s not proof of responsibility. It is a habit. A mind-virus. And like any illness, it requires care, attention, and sometimes—hard truth and rest.

The world will always give us reasons to worry. But there is another truth running parallel to that one: we are not alone. We are not powerless. And the sky does not fall just because we imagined it might.

When I feel the old hum start up in my chest, I go sit down in a quiet place. I lay one hand on the ground and the other on my belly and remind myself: I am here. I am breathing. I am not in charge of tomorrow.

And for a moment, the fog lifts.

And I remember who I am.

Hari  Om  Tat  Sat