Your brain is lying to you about 91% of the time.
A study published in Frontiers in Psychology tracked people with anxiety disorders and found that 91% of their worries never actually happened.
And for the 9% that did? Most people handled it better than they expected.
So why does your brain do this? It's not broken—it's evolved. Your nervous system is wired with a negativity bias designed to keep you alive. In prehistoric times, the person who worried about the tiger in the grass survived longer than the optimist who didn't.
But here's the problem: Your ancient brain can't tell the difference between a real threat and your inbox, a difficult conversation, or that presentation next week.
The result? You're running stress hormones 24/7 for dangers that will never materialize.
The good news? Once you understand this pattern, you can start to rewire it. Your thoughts aren't facts. They're predictions, and they're wrong 91% of the time.
What if you stopped treating every worry like a real threat and started questioning it instead?
Study: LaFreniere, L.S. & Newman, M.G. (2020). Exposing worry's deceit: Percentage of untrue worries in generalized anxiety disorder treatment. Frontiers in Psychology.
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