This Weeks KeyNote

Love and Worry

When I was a young woman and my mother would say, “Be careful; I worry about you,” I took her words to mean, “I love you. Take good care of yourself.” In my world people showed how much they loved you by how much they worried about you. After all, why would anyone put in the time and the energy that worrying requires if they didn’t care?

Apparently my older daughter, Nicole, ingested this belief system along with whatever else I fed her because whenever she and her younger sister, Lisa, parted, Nicole would say, “Call me when you get home. I’ll worry until I hear from you.” When Lisa complained to me about her sister’s “over protectiveness,” I smiled because I took Nicole’s words to mean, “I adore you. You are my little sister and I love you more than I can say.”

Lisa, it turned out, did not ascribe to the family worry theory. She was quick to explain that in her world, worrying about her was the same thing as doubting her competence. When Nicole expressed worry, Lisa felt unsupported and deskilled instead of loved and valued. Lisa’s perspective was very different from the one I had grown up with. Initially, I’d thought of her desire not to be the recipient of worry as the natural desire of a younger sibling to be seen as adult and competent in the world. But the more I listed to Lisa without trying to get her to see my perspective, the more I began to see how worry could be a real burden to the recipient.

That led me to read books and articles about worry. Eventually I came to see worry as a thought process that actually steals time and energy from thoughts of love and support. It is, I found, impossible to think loving, supportive thoughts about someone and worrisome thoughts at the same time.

Now, several years after Lisa first complained about being the recipient of worry, my perspective is significantly different from the one I grew up with. I have come to believe that not only does worrying do no good, it has the potential to convey doubt and fear which might actually harm the recipient, affecting her ability to access her natural wisdom and effectiveness.

Vol. 2, No. , December 18, 2006

What if love really means never having to say, “I worry about you.”