When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
But Bonnie Burns had no lemons — and she probably worried about that.

“I worried about everything,” says Burns. “All the time.” The 52-year-old Valley Internet guru says that, back in her nail-biting heyday, she could even worry about laundry.

“I’d tell people, ‘Oh, I can’t leave the house right now, I’ve got the washing machine going,’ ” she says with a laugh. Her uptight, fret-overeverything style became her trademark. “One of my friends said to me, ‘Oh, Bonnie, we’ve always known you were the CEO of The Worry Club.’ ” It was a damning assessment of how anxiety dominated her life, and yet the title was kind of prestigious.

So Burns took her worries, her Web skills and the title and built her way out. Today, she actually is CEO of The Worry Club, a real club designed to help inveterate kvetchers like herself.

KVETCHER IN THE WRY

The Worry Club is a multifaceted, multiplatform tonic for those demons that haunt our every step. Burns’ fiveyear-old Web site offers humor, online games and a call center of fretting experts to coax the obsessive monkey off a worrier’s back.

“I wanted to make fun of (worry),” Burns says. “So the site is a fun site.” Strewn with the faces of comic book characters in angst, The Worry Club Web site — www.theworryclub.com — tries first to pry its clients from their cares with a smile.

“People need to know: ‘Hey, don’t look at your problem so seriously,’ ” she says. “Humor is one of the best ways of treating stress and anxiety because it forces you to take a new perspective. Sometimes, a different way of looking at (a problem) is all you need.”

Worry also feeds upon the attentions of an underchallenged mind, and The Worry Club site is stocked with free games to draw focus from hemming and hawing to pointing and clicking. “Our stats show a lot of people come to the site to play the stressfree games,” says Burns. “It gives you a way to divert your mind and your energy into something other than worry.”

If your concerns have a little more substance, The Worry Club’s hot line — (866) WORRY 4U (967-7948) — offers interactive solace. “There are some things you just need to talk over,” she says. Callers can vent free for the first five minutes, and $1.99 a minute thereafter. The Worry Club’s on-call panel fields a broad variety of concerns.

“We’re not doctors,” she says. “If a caller needs professional help, we’re going to direct them toward local resources.” But most callers fall between mild concerns and mental health issues. “What they need most is a sounding board, and that’s what we do,” she says. “We don’t judge callers, or tell them what to do. We just listen and give them a perspective they can’t get from friends or family members.”

Callers often speak to Burns, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in Holocaust studies. Or they may be relayed to her on-call panel, college graduates skilled in hot-button topics like mother issues, business worries and substance abuse concerns.

“We’re the anonymous voice at the other end of the phone,” she says. “You can talk without worrying about running into us at the supermarket.”

KNOWING WHAT YOU NEED

The Web site averages 11,000 hits a month, and the call center averages about 10 a day “except during the holidays, and then we get racked,” says Burns. “People are so funny what they worry about: ‘I’m going to burn the turkey,’ or they’ll stress about stressing out. I had a woman tell me, ‘My 18-year-old is going to hate me unless I get him a PlayStation3, and I can’t afford it.’ I said, ‘He’s 18. Tell him to get a job and get his own PlayStation.’ ”

One interesting aspect of worry, says Burns, is that people often have their own answers. “Once we start talking about it, a lot of people know what they need to do,” she says. “They’re either afraid to do it or don’t have the energy because they’re depressed. They need somebody to give them that little push.”

Burns works her call center time around her freelance job, working on corporate Web sites. The Worry Club was her own “little push” from when she was a CEO in name only.

“I was going through my own hard time,” she said. “I needed separation from my worries. So I developed the Web site. Did it in 24 hours, nonstop.” Turning her technical skills toward the issue of worry “took my mind off worrying. It allowed me to concentrate on something with my whole head.”

Bonnie Burns still has her worries. “Oh, worry is here to stay. You have it every single day of your life, no matter what: ‘Did I remember to close the garage door?’ I always forget. I have a yellow Post-it on my rearview mirror: ‘Remember to look in front of you.’ ”

But her concerns are smaller now. “I’m grateful I don’t have to deal with (obsessive) worries anymore,” she says. “The ones I have, I’ll always have. But they’re basic, and I laugh at them.”

Who’s on the line

When Bonnie Burns set up her Worry Club hot line, “what surprised me most is that people were willing to call,” she says. “There’s so many scammy things out there. But if people are willing to call (900) astrology numbers to help with decisions, why not call someone for help with your worries?” So, who is calling?
Women: By a ratio of 3 to 1.

“Women call about anything,” says Burns. “Family, children, relationships, an overall feeling of not being happy. I get a lot of calls from women these days about online gaming issues, and family members with computer addictions.”

Men: “My very first caller was a man,” she says. “I was shocked. But some of them feel they can’t talk to their wives. Society puts this stigma on men: You don’t worry. You don’t ask for help. You don’t even ask for directions. With men, it’s often a divided issue: handling the job and the kids; handling work and stress; sometimes there’s been an illness with the wife and they need someone to talk to.”

Oddballs: “People can worry about almost anything,” she says. “One woman said, ‘I’m afraid to vote.’ She was afraid if she went out to vote, she’d be killed. I said, ‘You could be killed going out to the supermarket. So vote.’ ”

Her oddest caller sought career advice. “She said, ‘What do I wear to an interview with Google? I really want to work for Google.’ ” Burns told her that Google would hire someone who stood out. “I told her to dress like a hot dog. And she did. And she e-mailed me and told me: She got that job.”