Learning To Cope With Your Worries

Are you someone who worries all of the time, afraid of saying the wrong thing or overly concerned with how you look? You are not alone. More than 19 million Americans are classified as chronic worriers.

Psychologist Robert Leahy believes it's a problem that can be overcome and he has written a book on the subject, "The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You."

Leahy shared some advice and insight from his new book with The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

To read an excerpt, click here.

According to Leahy, there is a big difference between worry and anxiety.

"Worry is almost always in the form of thoughts that people have, like the thought that I won't get here on time, I'll have cancer, you know, terrible things are going to happen. Whereas, anxiety, the way that I like to think about anxiety is in terms of physical arousal, tension, sweating and so forth," Leahy explains.

Leahy says that research shows that when people are worried, they are actually less anxious.

"That worry, which is almost always in language and abstract thinking suppresses emotional arousal and the emotional arousing after you have the what-ifing, the emotional arousal bounces back in the form of tension," he says.

Leahy says some people are born to be anxious, saying 40 percent of it is due to genetics. But some of it, he says, is learned behavior.

"What we know from research is worriers come from families where the mothers are overprotective, watch out, look both ways, watch out what people say," he says. "And so kids are sort of learning the world is dangerous. The other thing is that parents who are worriers teach their kids to worry."

In his book, Leahy says 38 percent of people worry every day. "People who are chronic worriers, who worry almost every day six months or longer, 80 percent become depressed and stay depressed for years," he says.

Learning to identify productive versus unproductive worry is one thing Leahy says you can do to deal with your worries.

"I'm not saying that people should not worry," he says. "Because I think being human means you worry. Productive worry always leads to an action list. If I'm going to drive from New York to Boston, my action list is do I have a car? Do I have gas in the car? Do I know the route?"

What is unproductive worry?

"What if I get there and people don't like me? What if my car breaks down? What if there is a terrorist attack? Those are things I can't do anything about," Leahy says.

He also says worriers have to accept reality and commit to change. It's a tall order. Leahy says worriers are always trying to get absolute certainty.

"They say, yes, but I could be the one. The key thing in life, as you know doing live television, you're dealing with uncertainty every day," he says. "Imagine if every guest you had said verbatim the same thing as the previous guest every single day. We have a need for uncertainty for novelty and so forth. So worriers equate uncertainty with danger. Research shows 85 percent of the things people worry about turn out to be positive."

Leahy says worriers should try to stand up to their habit.

"So what I ask people to think about is 'What is the evidence that's happened in the past?' It has probably never happened in the past. I ask people to think 'What did you worry about five months ago?' Most can't remember," he says.

"All of us have a certain personality style. Some people think they have to be perfect. Some think they have to be loved by everybody. Your worry is probably related to your core personality issues. So you really need to get in touch with that. You can turn failure into opportunity. That's one of my mantras. It's not a breakdown. It's a breakthrough."

Leahy says worriers have a negative view of painful emotions and think they should never feel sad or anxious or worry. "Being human is all of the emotions."