Generalised Anxiety and Excessive Worry

A mind that won't switch off, and worry that jumps from one thing to the next without ever quite resolving, is exhausting in a way that can be hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it.

What This Can Involve

This pattern usually involves persistent, hard-to-control worry across several areas of life at once — health, work, relationships, money, or a general sense that something bad is going to happen — often alongside restlessness, muscle tension, difficulty concentrating, and disrupted sleep. It tends not to be about one specific fear, but a broader, harder-to-pin-down sense of threat or dread.

Possible Associations

Persistent worry across many areas of life can occur with generalised anxiety, prolonged stress, and other psychological difficulties. Trauma-related difficulties can also involve worry and a heightened sense of threat, so there can be genuine overlap between the two rather than a clean dividing line.

What Helps Clarify the Picture

The pattern, triggers, history and impact of the worry help a clinician understand what may be contributing — for example, whether it began around a specific event, how long it has persisted, and what tends to make it better or worse. A website conversation cannot establish this; a proper assessment can.

Where EMDR Fits

Where excessive worry is genuinely connected to a traumatic experience, EMDR may be relevant as part of treatment. Where it more closely resembles generalised anxiety without a clear trauma basis, other evidence-based approaches are often considered. Which applies to you is a question for assessment, not something a symptom description alone can answer.

If this sounds familiar A Comprehensive Psychological Needs & EMDR Suitability Assessment looks at your history and current difficulties in full, and can clarify what may be contributing and whether EMDR may be relevant.

Frequently Asked Questions

I worry about everything. Is that anxiety or trauma?

It can be either, or both — persistent worry occurs in generalised anxiety, but trauma can also involve a heightened sense of threat that shows up as constant worry. This overlap is exactly why assessment, rather than a single description, is needed to understand what's contributing for you.

Can EMDR help with generalised worry?

Where the worry is connected to trauma, it may be relevant. Where it isn't, other approaches are often considered first. This is established at assessment rather than assumed from how the worry is described.

Ask Whether EMDR May Help