Sunday evening, half past ten. The children are asleep, the school bags are ready by the door, and you are lying in bed with a tired body and a mind still running at full speed. Friday's conversation with your manager. Wednesday's deadline. The dentist you still haven't rung. You turn over and check your phone. Quarter to midnight.
Worrying feels like thinking. It seems as if you are working towards a solution, and that is exactly why it is so hard to stop. Yet if you look back honestly, an hour of worrying rarely produces a single plan. Just an hour less sleep.
You are not the only one. In Sciensano's Health Interview Survey 2023-2024, only half of Belgians aged 15 and over say they sleep well. One in five (22%) experiences severe psychological distress: stress, tension, low mood and poor sleep because of worries.
Why your mind won't switch off
Worry is an attempt to get uncertainty under control. Your brain plays out scenarios in the hope that you will be ready if things go wrong. In itself that is not a bad reflex. Thinking ahead lets you prepare. The difference from useful thinking lies in where it ends. Thinking ends in a decision or a next step. Worrying ends in a new question: what if?
On top of that, worrying keeps your body in a mild state of alert. Your heart rate is slightly raised, your shoulders creep up, your breathing stays high in your chest. Falling asleep becomes harder, and after a bad night you are more sensitive to worries the next day. The system feeds itself.
A third mechanism is less well known. People who worry a lot often also have thoughts about worrying: that it can't be stopped, that it will drive them mad, that it says something about how they are doing. Psychologists call these metacognitions. It is precisely the belief that you have no grip on it that keeps worry going. Once you find that it can be steered, it often feels less threatening.
What you can try today
Breathe out for longer than you breathe in
Your breathing is one of the few controls of your nervous system you can operate directly. Breathe in calmly through your nose for a count of four, then breathe out slowly over six to eight counts. Do this for a few minutes, on the train, or in the car before you leave the office car park. A slow, long out-breath puts the brakes on your body. It won't solve your worries. It does take the edge off, and that is often enough to think clearly again.
Write it down, but not in bed
Early in the evening, take a sheet of paper and write down what is on your mind. Add a second column: can I do anything about this now? If yes, note the first small, concrete step. So "ring the school at nine on Monday", not "sort out childcare". If no, deliberately leave it there. The effect lies in the difference between a vague feeling and a sentence on paper. A vague worry is huge and has no edges. A written-down worry is something you can look at, and sometimes it turns out smaller than you thought.
Don't do this in bed. Your bed is better kept as a place for sleeping, not for running through your to-do list.
Schedule a worry slot
It sounds counter-intuitive: agree with yourself to worry for fifteen minutes every day at a fixed time, say six o'clock after dinner. If a worry comes up outside that slot, tell yourself "later" and jot it down. At the agreed time, you sit down with it, pen and paper in hand. Often part of the worries will already have faded on their own.
Psychologists call this worry postponement. It doesn't work by pushing thoughts away, which rarely succeeds. It works because you experience that you are the one choosing when to deal with them. The research is nuanced, though. In people without an anxiety disorder, the technique seems to work well. In people with generalised anxiety disorder, earlier research found no clear effect. In a randomised trial from 2024, worry did drop clearly in that group, but the technique was taught in two guided sessions, with an explanation of why worry can be postponed. So if it doesn't work for you straight away on your own, that says nothing about you.
Bring your attention back into the room
When tension rises, in a meeting or stuck in traffic on the ring road, you can deliberately shift your attention to your senses. Name in your head five things you can see, four you can feel, three you can hear, two you can smell and one you can taste. It takes you out of tomorrow's scenario and back into the moment. Think of it as an emergency brake, not a solution.
Move, even when you don't feel like it
A brisk ten-minute walk during your lunch break. The bike instead of the car to the station. Movement gives your body an outlet for the alertness it builds up, and gives your mind something else to do. You don't need to exercise. You only need to get moving.
When self-help is not enough
These techniques help with ordinary worry, the kind everyone knows after a busy week. They fall short when your worries have a clear cause that you can't resolve alone: a conflict at work that is escalating, a separation, mounting debts. Breathing helps for a while, but the problem remains. What you need then is someone to think it through with you, or a concrete solution: a conversation with HR, legal advice, a budget plan.
Likewise, if worry has had you in its grip for months, self-help is often not enough. Generalised anxiety is more common than many people think. According to the same survey, it affects 12.8% of the population aged 15 and over, compared with 6.1% twenty years earlier. The good news is that it responds well to treatment, for example cognitive behavioural therapy.
Take these signs seriously:
- You have been sleeping badly for weeks, or you keep waking earlier and can't get back to sleep.
- You are withdrawing from people and things you used to enjoy.
- You often feel empty, irritable or overwhelmed, even at weekends or on holiday.
- You have an extra drink in the evening to unwind, or reach for sleeping pills or sedatives.
- Your body is protesting: headaches, palpitations, stomach or bowel complaints with no clear cause.
If you recognise yourself in this, talk to your GP or a psychologist. That is not a sign of weakness, more of common sense. Your employer may also offer confidential support through Meapy Health, where you can request a free conversation with a psychologist or coach, by phone or video.
Are you having thoughts of harming yourself? In Belgium, call the Zelfmoordlijn on 1813 (Dutch) or the Centre de Prévention du Suicide on 0800 32 123 (French), both free and available day and night. If there is immediate danger, call 112.
Sources
- Gisle L., Hermans L., Duveau C. (Sciensano), Gezondheidsenquête 2023-2024: Geestelijke gezondheid (Health Interview Survey 2023-2024: Mental health, report in Dutch), 2025. sciensano.be
- Krzikalla C. et al., Worry Postponement From the Metacognitive Perspective: A Randomized Waitlist-Controlled Trial, Clinical Psychology in Europe, 2024. doi.org/10.32872/cpe.12741
