Why Worrying About What Might Happen Is Stealing Your Life
Summary: If your nervous system is currently powered by a low-grade hum of dread—about the next election, the next ICE raid, the next Google update that might tank your income—you are not alone. This post explores why chronic worry feels so inescapable, how it steals your life, and what liberation-focused therapy says about reclaiming your present.
Let’s start with the obvious: the world is a lot right now.
Headlines about California’s governor nearing the end of his term, ICE arrests happening in ordinary places, and Google’s September 2026 spam update rolling out across small businesses are all over the place.¹ ² ³ If you’re a small business owner, your traffic numbers may have felt about as reliable as a Magic 8‑Ball in a washing machine. Add in the regular rotation of existential threats—climate collapse, the erosion of bodily autonomy, billionaire tax measures on the California ballot—and it’s a wonder any of us get out of bed.⁴
But here’s the thing that nobody tells you when you’re doomscrolling at 2 a.m.: the worry itself is doing damage.
Worrying Is Not the Same as Caring
There’s a pernicious lie that gets passed around in progressive spaces: that if you’re not anxious, you’re not paying attention. That your vigilance is a form of solidarity. That the low‑grade hum of dread in your chest is the price of being a good person in a bad world.
I want to gently push back on that.
Worrying is not a political strategy. It’s not activism. It’s not even particularly good information‑gathering. What it is, neurologically speaking, is your brain’s attempt to solve a problem by simulating it over and over again—without any of the actual inputs or outputs that would make the simulation useful.
When you worry about an ICE raid that hasn’t happened yet, your body releases the same stress hormones it would if the raid were happening right now. Your heart rate spikes. Your muscles tense. Your digestion slows. Your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain that does complex reasoning and creative problem‑solving—goes partially offline. You are, in effect, experiencing the trauma of an event that hasn’t occurred, while being less equipped to respond if it actually does.
And the events you’re worrying about? Many of them are not things you can personally control. The governor’s term will end when it ends. ICE will do what ICE does. Google will update its algorithm whether you’ve optimized your site or not.
The Structural Stuff Is Real (And It’s Not Your Fault)
Now, I need to be clear about something, because this is where a lot of “just stop worrying!” advice goes off the rails.
Your anxiety is not a personal failing. It is not a lack of gratitude or a failure of resilience. It is, in many cases, a completely rational response to genuinely unsafe conditions.
Colonization didn’t end; it just changed its paperwork. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to function, and it will manufacture whatever justifications it needs to maintain one. White supremacy is not a bug in the system—it is the operating system. Patriarchy, structural racism, bigotry, and class divisions are not side effects of an otherwise functional society; they are the architecture.⁵ ⁶
When you are a queer or trans person of color, when you are an immigrant, when you are poor, when you are disabled, when you are any combination of identities that the dominant culture has decided are expendable—your nervous system is not malfunctioning when it stays on high alert. It is responding appropriately to a world that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is not safe for you.⁷
The problem is not that you’re worried. The problem is that the worry has become a full‑time job, and it’s not paying rent.
What Worry Actually Steals
Let’s get concrete about what chronic worry takes from you.
It steals your presence. When you are mentally rehearsing a future crisis, you are not here. You are not with your partner, your friends, your chosen family. You are not experiencing the small joys that make a life worth living—the first sip of coffee, the way sunlight hits your kitchen counter, the sound of a friend’s laugh. You are somewhere else, in a future that hasn’t happened, fighting a battle that may never come.
It steals your energy. Worry is metabolically expensive. It burns through glucose, disrupts sleep, and leaves you exhausted in a way that rest doesn’t fix. And for those of us navigating multiple systems of oppression, energy is not a luxury—it’s a survival resource. Every ounce of energy you spend worrying about a hypothetical is an ounce you don’t have for the actual work of living, loving, organizing, and healing.
It steals your agency. This is the cruelest part. Worry feels like preparation, but it actually makes you less prepared. It narrows your focus, rigidifies your thinking, and makes it harder to see the options that are actually available to you. When you’re in a state of chronic threat response, your brain prioritizes survival over creativity—which means you’re less likely to imagine new possibilities, build new coalitions, or take the small, concrete actions that actually move the needle.
A Practical Tool: The Worry Window
I’m not going to tell you to stop worrying. That’s not how nervous systems work, and it’s not a fair ask.
But I will offer you something that many of my clients have found useful: a worry window.
Here’s how it works. Pick a time and a place. Fifteen minutes, once a day, at the kitchen table or on the couch or wherever feels contained. During that window, you are allowed to worry about whatever you want. You can catastrophize. You can scroll. You can make a list of every terrible thing that might happen and every reason it probably will.
But when the fifteen minutes are up, you close the window. And when worry shows up outside that window—which it will—you gently remind yourself: “Not now. That’s for the worry window.”
This isn’t about suppressing your feelings or pretending everything is fine. It’s about giving your nervous system a container. It’s about teaching your brain that worry has a time and a place, and that the rest of your life is not that place.
Some people find it helpful to pair the worry window with a grounding practice afterward—a few minutes of breathwork, a walk around the block, a glass of water and a moment of silence. The point is to signal to your body that the worrying is over, and that you are safe in this moment.
The Bigger Picture
Let me be clear about what I’m not saying.
I’m not saying that if you just manage your anxiety better, the systems that are harming you will stop harming you. I’m not saying that individual coping strategies are a substitute for collective liberation. And I’m not saying that your worry is irrational or that you should just “focus on the positive.”
What I am saying is this: the systems that want you exhausted also want you distracted. They want you burning your energy on hypothetical futures so that you don’t have enough left for the present. They want you isolated in your worry, convinced that you’re the only one who can’t seem to get it together, so that you don’t look up and notice that everyone around you is drowning too.
Liberation is not just about dismantling the systems outside of us. It is also about reclaiming the parts of ourselves that those systems have colonized—including our attention, our energy, and our capacity for joy.
A Soft Place to Land
If this resonates—if you’re tired of living in a future that hasn’t happened yet, tired of feeling like your life is being stolen one anxious thought at a time—you don’t have to figure this out alone.
I work with queer and trans people of color, leftists, organizers, and anyone else who is trying to build a life worth living in a world that keeps telling them it’s not possible. Therapy with me isn’t about “fixing” your anxiety or making you more palatable to a system that was never designed to hold you. It’s about finding ways to stay present, stay grounded, and stay connected to what matters—even when the world is on fire.
If that sounds like something you need, you know where to find me.
Sources & Further Reading
Office of the Governor of California — https://www.gov.ca.gov/
ICE Newsroom — https://www.ice.gov/news
Google Search Central: Spam Updates — https://developers.google.com/search/updates/spam-updates
California Secretary of State: Ballot Measures — https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures
World Health Organization: Social Determinants of Mental Health — https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241506809
American Psychological Association: Racism, Bias, and Discrimination — https://www.apa.org/topics/racism-bias-discrimination
The Trevor Project — https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Disclosure: This blog article was written with the assistance of AI, however the topic, themes, sociopolitical perspectives, tone and style the author's own.