Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.
— Arthur Somers
The other night I tossed and turned, got up, went back to bed, got a cup of tea, checked my email (sheezzz!), watched the weather station, drifted back to sleep and… awakened, again as worry after worry ricocheted against the edges of my messy mind. What a waste of good sleeping time! Not to mention brain power.
These days, I’ve plodded forward “doing what needs to be done” to set various affairs to right. And I’ve intentionally avoided some big ones. Why? Well, I suppose because I could, because I was pretty sure there would be no harm done in the delay, because I just wasn’t up to tackling them.
Then, the day before my sleepless night, I forayed into one of those important but not urgent tasks that I’d been avoiding. I’d figured out a few “baby steps” (as PattiAnn advised in a recent post) and felt I could do these little bits, no problem. Well, it turns out, almost no problem, because blithely and unwittingly, I stepped into a molehill. And stumbled in the night as fears burrowed up into my consciousness, some frivolous, some formidable, all stomping about my sleepy mind, waking me so I could worry-worry-worry.
And so I fretted about: Continue reading » Three Ways to Quiet Worries that Burrow Up in the Night
Well, the big trip is over. I have gone to visit my father and nothing is changing. Not that Dad hasn’t changed, he has. Just that not enough has changed in the underlying situation to allow us to make any decisions about the best way to proceed.
For as long as I’ve known him, Dad has had a temper. His response to unexpected circumstances was to rage. If you happened to be close by, you became the target. He was never physically violent that I am aware of, but then he is a little guy – under five feet, wirey and muscular but at a distinct disadvantage when it came to taking on most of the world.
Continue reading » Still Living With Uncertainty
Experiment with distancing yourself from your worries and let us know how this works for you.
Have you ever found yourself stewing over something that happened and didn’t go well for you? Berating yourself because you blew it big time and you’re mortified remembering what you said or did? Castigating yourself for your oh-so inappropriate reactions?
Continue reading » Distance Yourself from Your Worries
I think many of us, especially me, live our lives acting as though Murphy’s Law and its corollaries predict our future:
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Everything takes longer than you think…
And that, I’m guessing, is what leads us to build “Worst Case Scenarios”. I myself think it’s a good thing to do. And so does Julie Norem, who gives a name to the process in her book, The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Using Defensive Pessimism to Harness Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak
. She calls it “‘defensive pessimism’ … a process that allows anxious people to do good planning.”
Continue reading » Worst Case Planning Got You Down?
Sometimes, as a way of relaxing and letting go of the worries of the day, I listen to a guided imagery recording. The faceless voice, accompanied by soothing music, encourages me to imagine a “special place” where I can relax and refresh my spirit. Here’s the story of my secret garden…
Legend has it that once upon a time, nestled up in the foothills at the end of a paved city road where it turned into a rough and potholed dirt track, past the abandoned kids’ camp and the rusting reservoir tank, there was a flower nursery. They say that bulbs planted by the nursery owner appear every year, row upon row of sweet blooming narcissus. And I’m here to tell you, it’s true, it’s true!
Continue reading » Wistful Memories of a Secret Garden
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