Worry help! Anxiety Help! Stress Help! The Worry Club -a humorous look at life, worry, anxiety,stress

Worry is the uninvited guest who spoils all our fun, making our shoulders droop and forehead crease just when we should be feeling triumphant or carefree or filled with hope.

Did I make my co-worker look stupid at the conference? Did my buddy take that ribbing seriously? Did I forget to send someone an invitation?

Worry, a steady companion since college, has set up permanent residency at Bonnie Burns' Peoria home. This despite the fact that she has a happy life with good friends and a successful Web site optimization business.

"I worry that I left the garage door open and actually have to come back and check," she says. "I won't leave home with the washing machine going, because what if it busts and I'm not there to turn something off? I worry about how the seat belt on the plane is going to protect me at 30,000 feet."

That's the funny thing about worry. Sometimes it's a good friend, reminding us to use good sense. And sometimes it's a bully, making us crazy about things we can't control.

"We need the good worry," says psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell, author of Worry: Hope and Help for a Common Condition (Ballantine, 1998, 16.95 paperback) and Dare to Forgive (HCI, 2004, $19.95 hardback). "It's like a warning signal. It can lead us to take constructive action."

But worry can turn toxic.

"Sometimes it paralyzes you," he says from Connecticut. "That kind of worry can lead to high blood pressure, a lowered immune system, colds, flu, even higher risk for strokes and cancer. Toxic worry is the real culprit, the one we need to regulate."

Yes, worry is a habit that can be changed, especially if it's a learned, not genetic, response.

"Some people are born more vigilant, more on guard," says Hallowell, who calls himself an inveterate worrier. "But sometimes parents train their children to worry. They model worry every day. They say don't trust people. If you have this conversation at the dinner table every night, you become a worrier."

Hurtful events also "damage our capacity to trust people and increase our propensity to worry," he says, "and a good way to download the worry in such cases is to forgive.

"That doesn't mean we condone or we forget. But in forgiving, we get rid of the anger."

Burns, 49, looks for the humor in her habit of turning molehills into mountains. Prescription drugs and counseling aren't for her, she says. Instead, she keeps busy with her work, talks with friends and tries to accept the fact that things can go wrong no matter how obsessed she becomes about them.

After friends jokingly dubbed her the CEO of the Worry Club, she started the Worry Club Web site (www.theworryclub.com).

The club's "professional worriers" - Burns and her friends - offer to worry for people who browse the site so they can get on with their lives. They also share serious information, including links to organizations and books that can help worriers.

"Building the site helped me through a hard time in my personal life," Burns says. "I was channeling all this worry, just ridiculous stuff that I couldn't control, and I put it into the fictional Worry Club."

She gets e-mail from people shifting their worries to her shoulders. Most of their anxiety concerns health, relationships, jobs and money. One man told her he fears there's an insufficient supply of blood available at blood banks. A girl said she was worried that her best friend wouldn't be in class on the first day of school.

"I'm going to be worrying anyway," Burns says, "so I might as well worry for them."

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