The art of worry

The art of worrying.

If worrying were an artform, I’d be Picasso, or DaVinci, or some other famous savant in the craft. I combine my worry skillfully with millennia of guilt, thanks to my genetics and harsh upbringing. This 1 x 2 punch of worry and guilt paved the way for extreme bouts of anxiety and panic attacks later in life. From even a very early age, I recall behaving so rigidly, mastering the delicate balance between internal control and external chaos. I had utmost personal control until I was about 17. I had fallen prey to and overcome disordered eating and many more potentially damaging self-control behaviors to have some sort of balance in an unbalanced world. Once the anxiety and panic attacks began, it was significantly harder to control the deluge of emotion that had been bottled. 

However, as an adult, I’ve developed much better coping mechanisms. I focus more on positivity and meditation. I have expanded my consciousness in countless ways, over many years. I do yoga and practice gratitude for the things that I am so blessed with in this life. Stemming from making it this far, when I shouldn’t have, by all accounts. Yet, I still battle my worry/shame/guilt demons regularly.

With the help of more self-help books than I can even recall, some brilliant scholars and experts on these and many more topics of interest, I can mange these character flaws more readily. But I still worry. I worry about the things that have happened, that might happen, that are likely to happen, and that could not happen in a million years. I fret about the health and well-being of everyone I have ever, and never, met. Every animal, every tree, everyone. I worry about every-single-one.

Because I’m such a skilled worrier, I barely even notice that I’m doing it, until I notice I’m doing it. I’ll have 100 thoughts of things cross my brain before I pin point that I am worrying about nothing, or everything, as it were.

More to the point though, I am actively ending this cycle of needless worrying. I am focusing on all the things that I can do, of which worrying, will not accomplish. I am focusing on the immense sense of gratitude that I feel with each breath in my chest, each beat of my heart. I think not only of the worry in the back of my psyche, but also the love that I see all around. I see the helpers, doing great things and changing the world. I am grateful for them. I choose to feel the warmth of life, instead the coldness of heartache. I believe deeply in my soul that worrying accomplishes nothing productive, but rather takes all your forward momentum out of you, leaving you bobbing in the waves without a sail.

A friend asked for advice the other day and was stressing about something that wasn’t genuinely important to really anyone. Instead my friend used the better part of a day, thinking about something that they knew the answer to, but had to have confirmation. They had to “know”, so worrying all day took all their attention away from other things, and I felt sad for them. I recognized that they were fretting about nothing and they largely ended up exactly where they started when all was revealed. Except they and another person were heated, for no good reason. So much wasted energy and emotion over something that didn’t matter. But they needed the anxiety of “not knowing” to end. So, they worried and analyzed and turned it over in their head. I am so guilty of this. I do it constantly. I’ve done it as long as I can remember. Turning over things from the past, far beyond the reaches of anyone else involved. I’m positive that the other people didn’t give these scenarios a second look, and here I am dwelling for over a decade about something that was done or said. How much energy I’ve wasted on trivialities. 

I’m glad that I’ve embarked on this journey of reflection and self-actualization, because without it, I’d have taken a much longer time to recognize these things in myself that I do and feel powerless to change. I recognize my shortcomings and do better with every opportunity possible. I’m an imperfect human, bound to the confines of humanity… but I am striving to get better every single day.

This is not to discount the struggles of anyone else, by any means. I know that my friend does not want these intrusive thoughts, and they battle them often. My heart goes out to them and other like us that are often crippled with things in our heads that we cannot shake. I spent a large part of my evening one day this week rolling it over in my head how I “could have” prevented a tragedy that I witnessed. It still haunts my mind as I type this. However, my rational brain knows that it’s unlikely that there was anything that could have changed things. Possibly prolonged them, but the results were likely to be the same. It breaks my heart either way. I remember to breathe. Focus on the things that I can control in this world, and put simply, I can only control myself.

Thanks for reading.