Fear and Worrying

4. FEAR AND WORRYING

Fear and worrying are closely related, both placing formidable ceilings on our happiness.

It’s one thing when our instincts are warning us about a dark alley when we are alone, but most fear is based on future events that may or may not happen. Fear is not being present. Fear is trying to predict or control an outcome that you may not have influence over. You will be okay, and the outcome will be what it is regardless of how much you worry, obsess or plan. In fact, you’ll be more level headed and influential if you stay present.

I used to have to know an outcome. I obsessively sifted through every possible outcome I could predict so that I could do my best to “prepare” for the feelings and consequences to come. This was all based on not feeling in my core that I was going to be okay.

How did it serve me to worry about things before they happened? The act of obsessively thinking through every option so I could “know” my options was more predictable, made me feel like I had some control (which is delusional), and set me up to try to manipulate an outcome.

I thought by proving I was really “doing something” about the potential issue, it would be less likely to happen because of “fairness.” Part of me thought, “Will I deserve a good outcome if I don’t really worry or obsess about it? If I don’t prove that I am really concerned about this potential problem, will it be more likely to slip through the cracks and into my life? Will it happen more easily if I don’t put up a fight?”

In hindsight, I can see the ridiculousness of my thoughts and convictions, but at the time it was all I had to hold onto: the hope that someone, or God, or the Universe would see how much I really didn’t want this to happen, and that my worry would be enough to convince this force not to proceed.

I never had any control over these situations, but pretending like I did seemed like the only chance I had at protecting myself from being unhappy.

Now I know that I will be okay, and that it’s okay to feel sad or angry or hurt. It won’t last forever, and I have inspiration by my side to uplift me when these feelings arise.

WOULD I REALLY BE HAPPY IF ALL MY WISHES CAME TRUE?

I used to be a little superstitious. I made wishes on shooting stars and I held my breath through tunnels. I ensured I blew out a candle on my actual birthday because “that’s when it had the most power” to make my wish come true.

While, admittedly, I still get some nostalgic joy from these practices, after some major life changes a few years ago, I had an epiphany: What if all my wishes in those moments had come true?

In hindsight, I don’t think I would have been as happy as I thought in the moments I made those wishes. I would have married the wrong guy before I learned how destructive my codependency was. I would have missed out on so many amazing experiences I couldn’t have predicted.

And that’s the point. We really don’t know. I’m a huge advocate for working towards our dreams, using confidence and determination to ask for what we want in life. But I also would have given everything I owned to marry Phil Collins when I was eight years old. I definitely spent a lot of wishes on Phil Collins over the years because he inspired me, and apparently as an eight year old, I needed to marry my inspiration to keep it forever.

Even though I still make wishes, I wish differently. Even though I believe we can manifest what we want by extending energy with that intention, I also believe in what spiritual leader and personal inspiration source, Iyanla Vanzant, says: “You will never miss out on what is meant for you, even if it has to come to you in a roundabout way.”

I have had enough experiences to look back and see how not getting what I wanted ended up so much better than I could have imagined.

The challenges we face, the big ones and little ones, are just continuing us on our path, and we can’t see what’s around the corner. Different religions and philosophies have their own way of messaging this concept, but the basis is that trying to control outcomes is useless. Nevertheless, we aren’t helpless in creating our life story.

Pursue what inspires you, ask for what you want, and when you get a “no,” trust that you will be okay. There is something else waiting for you that you would have missed out on if all our wishes came true when you made them.

PRE-EXPERIENCING TO NO AVAIL

Why do we worry? We’re scared. We’re bored. We need something to do or something to think about. We worry about what we already did. What he or she did. We worry about the future. Either way, we don’t trust that we’ll be okay. We feel safe thinking we’ve obsessed about every possibility so that we are prepared. We don’t want to experience discomfort, and yet we’re ironically inflicting discomfort in order to try to avoid it.

What are we afraid of? Being unhappy. Being uncomfortable or sad or mad or scared or alone. If we anticipate and practice the feelings that we are hoping to avoid, we essentially are already experiencing these feelings as if they are real.
As reported by Calm Clinic, “Adrenaline is one of the most common causes of anxiety symptoms. Your body releases it when your fight or flight system is active, and it causes the increase in heart rate, muscle tension, and more. In some cases, long term stress and anxiety may damage your ability to control adrenaline, leading to further anxiety symptoms.”

If we are anticipating and role playing to practice handling a scenario, if we activate our fight or flight response, then we are pre-experiencing the exact stress that we are trying to avoid.

Absurdly, we are choosing to feel unhappy because we’re afraid of possibly being unhappy later. How silly we can be!

How do we stop worrying? By not worrying about worrying!

THOUGHT SUPRESSION DOESN’T WORK

Trying to suppress thoughts actually keeps what you’re trying to suppress more top of mind.

The psychological principal of ironic thought suppression is that the more we suppress thoughts or try not to think about them, the more they are present. Consider this excerpt about a thought suppression experiment, shared by Ira Hyman Ph.D. from his article, “Don’t Think About It:”

“Erskine and Georgiou conducted an experiment in which they looked at the effects of suppressing thoughts of chocolate. First, participants engaged in a task of recording their thoughts. One-third were asked to think about chocolate, one-third to suppress thoughts of chocolate, and one-third to simply record their thoughts with no suggestions about content. Later all participants were asked to rate some chocolate on several qualities related to taste. The issue was not their ratings, but rather how much chocolate they ate. People who had tried to suppress thoughts about chocolate ate more chocolate! Suppression not only led to a rebound in chocolate thoughts, but also to a rebound in eating chocolate.”

Here are some examples of how the ironic thought pro-cess works, excerpted from the article, “Ways Your Brain Is Tricking You into Being Miserable” by Kathy Benjamin and Dieter Melsens:

“Psychologists call these ironic thought processes. They are the reason why you only want the stuff that you can’t have, why trying to suppress laughter only makes you laugh more, why you fail at stuff when somebody is watching, and so on.

Telling yourself not to be afraid of failure puts failure right at the center of your thoughts. It’s the difference between overweight people who are always counting calories and rail-thin people who have to be reminded to eat at meal time because otherwise they just ‘forget to eat.’ The over-weight dieters are constantly failing because staying under the calorie count requires them to do the one thing they should be avoiding: thinking about food.”

So if we aren’t supposed to think, or worry, about not having chocolate, happiness or positive self-talk, what are we supposed to think about? We might try to distract ourselves from the present by providing ourselves some kind of temporary escape. But it’s far more healing and recharging to find distraction in the present—in an inspired moment.

We don’t have to try to suppress our judgments about being unhappy. We don’t have to bother with happiness at all. We can fill our time and thoughts with inspired moments and let the rest take a break for a while.

If we do this enough, we won’t have time to worry. We’ll be too busy being inspired in the present to remember how much we’re supposed to think about the past or future. This is the new norm we want for our brain, and if we practice this mindset enough, inspiration instead of worry can be-come our default.

Today, right now, choose to change your mindset about worrying. Choose inspiration as your coping skill. Seek information if you need to, but don’t worry; worrying is just unnecessary, unhelpful and self-imposed stress.

Trying to prepare for an outcome by pre-experiencing it will not change if it will happen, when it will happen, or how it will happen. Trust that if whatever you’re worrying about comes to fruition, you will have access to the necessary strength and courage—qualities that you already possess, but that may not be realized until they are needed.

We are capable of astounding resiliency if we free ourselves to let it flow and release our unfriendly “crutch” of worrying.