MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
CAN WE TALK ABOUT WORRY?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never
happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – Mark Twain<\/p>\n
I don’t want to worry you, but can we talk about worry? I\u00a0come from a long line of worriers. My mother was a pro, especially when there
was money involved. I called her some years ago and told her that when I was\u00a0shopping for a dress for a wedding, I found a second one that fit really well\u00a0so I got both of them. She went silent. Later that night, it was nearly midnight\u00a0in the east where she lived, the phone rang. It was my mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never call this late,\u201d I said. \u201cIs everything okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReturn the second dress,\u201d she blurted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don’t need it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was stunned. She had no idea how many dresses I had and I\u00a0could easily afford two. She hadn’t asked asked me what they cost but she had sat\u00a0up until midnight, freaking out about money. My money. I tried to talk her down\u00a0but I bet she didn’t sleep much that night.<\/p>\n
This was not an uncommon incident for her. She never spoke\u00a0about it, her generation kept those things to themselves, but I often noticed
her knit eyebrows and the look of fear in her eyes. She must have seen that\u00a0kind of behavior from her mother who saw it from her mother. Granted, they probably\u00a0had things to worry about, but constant fretting doesn\u2019t solve anything and it\u00a0really hurts. It\u2019s a painful and useless way to spend time, it saps our energy\u00a0and finding a way to stop it can be extremely challenging. But if we don\u2019t, if\u00a0we get in the habit of always expecting the worst, our lives become
unmanageable and filled with anxiety.<\/p>\n
I once wrote a book proposal for a man who worked in the\u00a0field of major disaster relief. I remember him telling me, \u201cMy job is to worry
about what could happen and figure out how to get ahead of it. If I\u2019m doing the\u00a0job right, I always expect the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had a good excuse to expect the worst but what about the\u00a0rest of us? Granted, bad things happen, but the degree to which we fret is
usually far greater that any event we experience. We stew over money,\u00a0relationships, health, careers, and the state of the world. In my life, worry shows\u00a0up in strange and sudden ways. I\u2019m going about my day, doing what’s in front of\u00a0me, nothing bad is happening, when suddenly I feel anxiety in my chest and I realize I\u2019m fixated on something that doesn’t exist. Or that hasn’t happened. I\u00a0don\u2019t even know I\u2019m doing it but when I become aware, my first impulse is to
beat myself up. What on earth are you fussing\u00a0about? I scold myself. You have a\u00a0privileged life, you\u2019re healthy, you have a roof over your head, the\u00a0refrigerator is full, you have good friends who support you, and here you are,\u00a0fretting and feeling badly. \u00a0<\/p>\n
That kind of harsh knee jerk reaction does a lot of damage. It\u2019s\u00a0the last thing we need when we’re upset. It\u2019s like having an open wound on your\u00a0leg and instead of applying a healing balm and putting up your feet, you hit it\u00a0with a hammer. As if you’re not already suffering enough. I try to remember\u00a0that worrying is not an effective mode of preparedness. Breathing and giving myself\u00a0positive messages helps a lot more.<\/p>\n
We all have fears about the unknown, human beings hate being\u00a0out of control, but I wonder why we are so quick to abandon ourselves when we\u00a0need comfort. I try to imagine myself as a child. It’s okay, I tell myself. I\u2019m\u00a0here. I\u2019m not going anywhere. I\u2019m a smart girl and I\u2019ll figure it out. I always\u00a0do. I know that sounds kind of infantilizing and corny but I don’t care because it makes me feel better.<\/p>\n
The Dalai Lama says, \u201cIf a problem is fixable, if a\u00a0situation is such that you can do something about, it there is no need to\u00a0worry. If it\u2019s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no\u00a0benefit in worrying whatsoever.\u201d A spiritual teacher that I know suggested that
if we\u2019re fearful about something, instead of getting stuck on it, we could\u00a0choose a designated time to address the problem. Knowing we\u2019re going to deal\u00a0with it frees us up to concentrate on other things. It has worked for me in the\u00a0past and I try to remember to do it, but what if I forget?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s something else to worry about.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG CAN WE TALK ABOUT WORRY? \u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which neverhappened.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – Mark Twain I don’t want to worry you, but can we talk about worry? I\u00a0come from a long line of worriers. My mother was a pro, especially when therewas money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2109,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions\/2109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}