Worrying leads to reduced concreteness of problem elaborations: Evidence for the avoidance theory of worry

The Role of Experiential Avoidance in the Relationship Between Maladaptive Perfectionism and Worry

“…Furthermore, worry as a verbal activity has been linked to the avoidance of negative imagery (Borkovec & Inz, 1990;Stöber, Tepperwien, & Staak, 2000). Mennin, Heimberg, Turk, and Fresco (2002) also propose that worry may be utilized as a distraction from overwhelming emotions in order to control or avoid uncomfortable emotional experiences.…”

Do beliefs about the utility of worry facilitate worry?

“…Particularly, according to the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000), worry is the cardinal feature of the generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) (Decker, Turk, Hess, & Murray, 2008;Dupuy & Ladouceur, 2008;Fisher & Wells, 2009) and it is also present in 40-60% of all anxiety disorders (Barlow, 2002), mood disorders (Starcevic, 1995;Starcevic et al, 2007), somatoform disorders (Robbins & Kirmayer, 1996), and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (Foster, Startup, Potts, & Freeman, 2010;Morrison & Wells, 2007;Startup, Freeman, & Garety, 2007). At present, it is not surprising to note the relatively systematic investigation of the factors that produce and sustain worry (Davey, Eldridge, Drost, & MacDonald, 2007;Gosselin et al, 2007;Hirsch, Hayes, & Mathews, 2009;Ladouceur, Gosselin, & Dugas, 2000;Pratt, Tallis, & Eysenck, 1997;Stöber, Tepperwien, & Staak, 2000;Verkuil, Brosschot, Borkovec, & Thayer, 2009). …”

The Need for Absolute Truth and Self-Rumination as Basic Suppressors in the Relationship Between Private Self-Consciousness and Mental Health

“…Recent studies have operationalized concrete thought about self as distinct, situationally specific, unequivocal, clear, and singular; abstract thought, on the other hand, has been operationalized as indistinct, cross-situational, equivocal, unclear and aggregated (Stöber et al, 2000). The tendency to find the 'facts' about self (NAT) is clearly a higher-level representation of the self which is an abstract form of self-focus and valid in all contexts.…”

“…In contrast, low-level representations (focusing on "how"), concrete, contextual and subordinate, are more constructive and contributes to mental health. Similarly, Stöber, Tepperwien, and Staak (2000) differentiate concreteness from abstractness in the following way. In their study, abstractness was defined as indistinct, crosssituational, equivocal, unclear, and aggragated while concrenteness as distinct, situationally specific, unequivocal, clear and singular.…”