Worry and planning both stem from the same root – the need to create projections of the future in order to maximize our chances and wellbeing when faced with possible future events and situations that might affect us, which is anything large enough to reverberate to our personal life and gets picked up by the brain which is trying to figure out the best course of action.

You plan things with the regulatory part of your brain which allows you to imagine a future of some sort and your place within it. That’s the neocortex. On the other hand, panic, fear and anxiety and emotions such as aggression and threat sensitivity are processed i the amygdala. Amygdala has the power to override the neocortex’s reasonable stances because… because it had to be able to do that in order to keep you alive. It’s no use to gaze in to the distance and contemplate the implications of you disappearance from the gene pool if a lion is chasing you. For pending time sensitive disasters there is no upside to taking your time to do pros and cons for every imaginable course of action. The amygdala says fight, flight or freeze until the danger passes.

Worry is actually a backup mechanism if planning goes wrong. Have you ever noticed that facing something hard but knowing what it is and how to fight it is not really as stressful as not knowing what you’re fighting. Thee doubt and threat of the unknown chaos is far worse than facing a real knowable and therefore manageable challenge. Corona is so fear and panic inducing because there are so many things we don’t know about it (yet). We worry because there are no detailed information to go on except the news on the new numbers of infected and died and rudimentary precautions that should keep you safe(r). In order for the neocortex  to do it’s job in regulating panic and worry it needs real data to process and be able to shift us into planning mode. If the data are not there, we still need to plan but absence of concrete points to grab and orient in relation to results in unproductive semblance of planning – this is what worry is – unproductive, aimless mimicry of planning. Worrying gives you the illusion you’re doing something and being in control. It keeps you busy. Brain likes not being busy all the time but times of rest make sense only if intermitted with times of straining and analysing. Worry is therefore imagining unrealistic non fact based scenarios so your brain would have something to do. We’d love to say: “Just stop it!” but that’s not how it goes. You can’t think your way out of panic and worry once you’re worried because the regulatory rational frontal cortex is offline leaving the amygdala to do the legwork.

So what you need to do is turn the frontal cortex back online. Asses what you know, what are the facts and what you can do with them, go study up on epidemiology or virology, get grounded. Hold on to the facts of limiting contact and work with the firm information we have so far. All else is guessing the worst case scenarios in our mind over and over again and emotions react as if they were real. Sometimes we just need to wait things out and set not making it worse by irresponsibility as the prime directive. Stay safe. Worry less. Plan more.