It is normal to worry on occasion, especially if you are dealing with stressful circumstances or experiencing a high degree of uncertainty in your life.  Worry actually serves a useful purpose when it alerts us to potential problems and motivates us to take action to prevent or solve them.  Worry is not helpful when it alerts us to hypothetical future problems or problems that are not solvable in the moment.   For someone with GAD, the volume and frequency of worries is unhelpful, distressing, and difficult to control.  Their thoughts often jump from topic to topic, like a never-ending game of "whack-a-mole."  As soon as one worry is resolved or let go, another one appears.  The unproductive cycle of worry feels overwhelming and can lead to fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability, fear around decision making, and physical anxiety.

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Talk therapies like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy are effective for overcoming Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  These therapies help you to identify and reframe the distorted thoughts that fuel unproductive worry.  You will also learn to disengage from unhelpful behaviors that trigger worry and keep you stuck in a ruminative cycle. 

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Exposure Therapy enables you to face intrusive worry thoughts head-on.  Most worry is centered on topics that seem reasonable to worry about (see below) such as health, financial security, or safety.  It is important to remember that it is not always the content of the worry that is problematic; it is a person's relationship to their worries that is unhelpful and distress-causing.  If worries help point us towards problem solving, they are useful.   If they keep us stuck in anxiety, they cause suffering.  Exposure Therapy helps you to change your relationship to worry and the behaviors associated with it.  You can learn to use worry productively when helpful, and disengage from it when it's not.

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Therapy for GAD is challenging work ... that works!