The problem of the future really does concern knowing what will come next. This can be stated as a research question concerning what might occur in any social context. Worry must not be confused with another fundamental question which is how the ego marks one representation of an object as an accurate one as opposed to judging what is an inaccurate representation. Patterns of the different forms of sense can be identified nevertheless. These questions relate to evidence and what it’s taken to mean. The evidence that really counts may not be available until sometime in the future when it’s too late to arrive at a destination that is unwanted and unintended from the point of view of the actor. Sometimes, the good reassuring evidence is not in sight; but neither should distress about the future be avoided.

So setting aside what has already been said about temporality and the notion of the individual world gained through social learning , let’s attend to the aspect of pessimism that worry shows. Pessimism in the context of worry is a negative anticipation that is a style of interpretation of the ego meeting objects that are already well-known. However, the hypothetical thinking in worry is severely pessimistic. Caution and planning serve a positive function in keeping people safe against realistic threats. However, the style of futural imagining in worry is hopelessly out of proportion to the actual dangers involved. So much so that strong negative emotions are evoked and they might prevent rationality and planning. The process of mapping the world is meta-representation . The way of moving into the future involves imagining how the world and its contents could be otherwise than they are. Meta-representation is what happens in looking in the kitchen to seeing that the supply of milk is running low and planning how to get to the shops to buy some before they shut. Caution and planning are about how to imagine things going right for self and others, how to look after oneself and a myriad other possibilities.

But pessimistic worry can become a way of life. The worrier thinks that they are looking after their own interests in defensively staying safe. At the same time, they are terrified of the possibilities of things that, by definition, have not yet happened. The interpretative pattern involved in pessimism and negative thinking is that the size of the problem is enlarged through repetitious visualisation of difficulties and negative self-talk and the ability of self to cope is decreased by avoiding building up the necessary skills and assertiveness. Something similar is happening in worry. The amount of uncertainty and risk is subjectively increased far beyond what it really is. The ability of self to cope with the amount of threat and deal with unforeseen possibilities becomes radically underestimated. However, what close questioning reveals is the involvement of worry and its other characteristics. In addition to those already mentioned, the ego can repetitively replay the same catastrophic visual imagining and provide the same voice-over in internal dialogues as an account of the possibility of harm that might be experienced. An additional aspect is an over-focus on the same topics many hours a day and for many days of the week. The objects imagined could be anything including the absence of worry, the nature of the self, the nature of the relationship to others, the possibility of illness for self and others (thus producing health anxiety), the possibility of harm or misadventure that can be forestalled through defensive actions (thus producing obsessive compulsive disorder), or any number of distressing events. So through understanding the mapping of the world as a meta-representational state of affairs, it is understood how the repetition of these catastrophic scenarios with an over-focus continues and how the physiological arousal of anxiety accrues. Because of the motivating sense of the vulnerability of self and loved ones to risk, actions are ‘required’ to defend self from the not yet occurred possibilities. One way of describing the outcome of anxiety is to state that once aroused, the mood of anxiety is like a burglar alarm that has gone off too soon. The setting is far too sensitive and this is because of the emotional effects of belief . However, once the pure psychology of worry is made clear in the individual case, then it becomes possible to work with that person to help them understand themselves initially, and secondly, help them plan their own recovery.

Figure 12.2 is a maintenance formulation diagram, an intentional idealisation in a general sense. Resetting the burglar alarm of worry can occur. The burglar alarm is really the non-egoic processes that are triggered by the catastrophic scenarios repeatedly being played by the ego : its imaginings and internal dialogue elicit emotional syntheses of anxiety that are felt in the body . So what is a defensive looking out for trouble, a hyper-vigilance to the merely possible gets believed as highly possible. Merely possible consequences are felt as though they had already happened. Thus, the ego ‘tricks’ its emotional non-egoic processes into feeling something dreadful is about to happen, then the emotions themselves can be taken as further evidence of the possibility of harm, so that retentional consciousness begins to pattern-match about the objects and emotions that the ego feels. When there is strong anxiety and depression, then a mood of alarm and despondency impedes consciousness and lends itself to misdirecting attention away from the other safer possibilities that could be imagined, of how to cope and how to plan, so anxiety erupts in consciousness for large parts of the day and night. Hence, the further consequences of people with chronic worry are waking up in the night and having anxiety-ridden nightmares. The whole process of worry becomes an automatic process, so that the ego no longer realises what it is doing in creating its own catastrophic mapping of the world. But the type of evidence in worry bears a relation to its ego and the non-egoic passive syntheses . False evidence is generated entirely by the non-egoic self repeatedly because the ego believes that itself is anxiety-prone. This is a circular series of ‘causes’ and effects where the overall pattern or process is not fully conscious. The worry is a belief-producing ontological problematic that takes areas of its own products as evidence that it believes to be real (Fig. 12.3).

Worry can be linked to hyper-vigilance about the mere possibility that something might be dangerous to self and bring more anxiety . This can become delusional in that although a good deal of checking for problems may have been done in the sphere of action. The belief that this is not enough can remain, as there just might be some area that has not been checked sufficiently. The topic of the modalities of belief is an interesting one because it completely evades the scientific approach to psychology (Owen 2009, 297–300). When there is doubt , there might be a need for physical actions to confirm safety (although such actions are needless by definition). Some worriers want to employ mental techniques to ensure their safety, but if they are anxious and depressed then their concentration and memory are likely to be poor, so that affects their ability to remember if they have locked the front door, for instance. Let’s bring in temporality too. Whilst the structure of the meaning of being for consciousness is always of the form past, present and future, when the attention of the ego focuses on the imagined scenes say, or on its own internal commentary that interprets what might happen as a consequence of what it imagines, then pre-reflexive presence , anxiety and the bodily reactions to strong emotion soon accrue.