Letting Go of Worry

“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 Roche

Think about how much time you have spent worrying during your life. Did all of your worrying help you in any way or in hindsight do you think that time could have been put to better use?

How would you be different if starting today you were able to live in the present instead of immersing yourself in regrets about the past or worrying about the future? What would your life be like if you no longer worried?

Close your eyes a moment and imagine yourself living a life free of worry. Notice how your muscles relax and your breath comes and goes easier. Are you breathing deeper? What other changes do you notice in your body and mind?

Would you like to let go of your tendency to worry? If your answer is “Yes,” considering using one or more of the techniques I list below whenever you find yourself worrying.

Write a list of all of your worries. “I’m worried that _________.” Simply fill in the blank, over and over and over again, until you have listed all of the worries that you can think of. Write whatever comes to your mind whether or not it makes any sense. It is fine for you to write the same worry multiple times

Vince Horan, one of my co-therapists, frequently tells clients that “Fear needs information.” Take a good look at your list of worries and pick one. What information do you need to gather in order to relieve that fear? Go get it!

If you are ready to deal with more than one fear, then identify a second, third, fourth, etc. I suspect if you get the information you need, your fear will reduce, and so will your worrying

Play the “what if” game. For example, if you are afraid that you will lose your job, the “what if” might be “I won’t have enough money.” Next ask yourself “What if you don’t have enough money?” The answer might be “I won’t be able to feed my kids.” Then ask “What if you don’t have money to feed your kids?” The response might be, “I will go to a food bank.” Keep following the thread until you realize you will be able to deal with whatever happens.

FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real. Look at your list of worries and identify the ways you have been fooled into thinking you are in danger. Next to the false evidence, write the truth.

Immerse yourself in the present. You may need to get so focused on the present that you think, “I am moving my spoon towards my bowl of cereal.” “I am picking up a spoonful of cereal.” “I am bringing the spoon towards my mouth.” “I am putting the spoonful of cereal into my mouth.” “I am chewing my cereal.” etc. If you focus on the present this minutely, you will become absorbed in the moment, your mind will quiet and your body will relax.

You can create a variation of Jean Illsley Clarke’s fuss box exercise. Stand in a box or on a pillow, or just draw a circle in the carpet with your finger and stand in the middle of it. Begin to list all of your worries out loud. Don’t stop and think, just let them pour out, even if they don’t make sense. It can be helpful to be dramatic and even to exaggerate them. At some point, you will feel done. If you’ve been dramatic and/or exaggerated, you may even find yourself laughing. When you feel finished, step away from your worry box and identify something you will do to deal with one of the problems you mentioned.

Many years ago, I learned a technique from a therapist named Mary Goulding. She instructed us to push our tongues into our cheeks and then talk nonstop about all of the things we criticize ourselves for. When we talk about our worries that way they, of course, sound really strange. It is another process that often ends up in laughter.

Create an affirmation and use it as a mantra, such as “I am a competent, capable adult.” The mantra is likely to be something you don’t fully believe but would like to believe.

Say the mantra 1,000 times a day for the next 21 days. Better yet, consider saying it 10,000 to 20,000 times a day! If you find yourself saying the affirmation and worrying at the same time, speed up the mantra. It doesn’t matter how fast you go.

Imagine the power of filling your mind with a positive belief rather than a fear-based one. If you say enough of them, you may find the affirmation flowing through your mind automatically. You may even wake up and find it streaming through your mind during the night.

Think of all of the challenges that have come into your life unexpectedly. Reflect on how well you dealt with those. We are usually able to deal with whatever unexpected situations occur in our lives. It is worrying about things that haven’t happened, and probably never will happen, that saps our energy and pulls us into depression, anxiety and overwhelm.

Actively choose where you are going to put your attention. Decide if you are going to focus on worrying or focus on something else. If you choose to focus on something else, do it.

Listen to music that you find soothing. As you listen, practice breathing slowly and deeply. Focus on relaxing and letting go of tension.

Distract yourself by doing an activity that you really enjoy. Go for a walk, work in your garden, read a book, immerse yourself in a hobby, spend time with friends, etc

Call a friend and tell them you are worrying. Ask for reassurance or help in problem solving.

Create a 3-second contract, such as those used to break fantasy addictions in some 12-step recovery groups. Your contract might be “I won’t worry for more than 3 seconds.” You won’t break the contract when you find yourself immersed in worrying; you break it if you choose to continue worrying after you have become conscious you are doing it. Sometimes having the contract is enough. If it isn’t, consider creating a consequence you will do each time you break it.

When you are in a worry-free state of mind, write a letter to the part of you that worries. Give him/her reassurance and ideas for moving beyond the worry. Focus on messages that will give hope or help with problem solving. Then put the letter some place where you will be able to find it when you need it. Reading guidance from a stronger part of yourself may be more effective than advice coming from another person.

I’ve shared 15 actions you could take whenever you are worrying; there are certainly more. Add any others that you know, or discover, work for you. I suggest you keep a copy of this list handy so that you can use it whenever you are worrying.

At those times, work your way through the list, in any order you desire, until you find you have shifted out of the fear. The chances are good that you will be feeling better long before you do all of them.

I will end this post with two videos. You may even want to add them to your list of worry stopping techniques. They sure help shift my mood!

~

What helps YOU stop worrying?

Driving Out Darkness

Murshed Zaheed, from CREDO Action <act@credoaction.com> just wrote CREDO members and said:

“We are simply reeling.

The killings by police this week of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the mass shooting in Dallas that killed five police officers, shine a harsh light on the way that white supremacy, systemic racism, and a culture of gun ownership driven by fear and hate puts the lives of far too many Americans, especially Black Americans, at risk.

There is much to be said in the wake of these tragedies: That Black Lives Matter. That the fight for justice has too often been littered with unnecessary violence. That too many are living in fear.

We have much work to do. At the end of a week where the world feels dark, we are thinking of the message of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is love that calls us to resist hate, racism, and violence. It is love that calls us to imagine a better world, and to fight for it. It is only love that can drive out hate.”

Murshed asked that we send out this message/picture through Facebook and Twitter. It is a message I also believe in. Since I don’t participate in Facebook, I am choosing to post it here.

Martin Luther King

Letting Go…

This morning, a friend sent me this Zen Proverb. These behaviors are already values of mine but I know I will be working on all of them throughout my life. I think it is interesting that the one I do the least is the belly laugh.

Throughout the day, I reflected on how different our world would be if we all were able and willing to do these things.

1. Let go of comparing
2. Let go of competing
3. Let go of judgements
4. Let go of anger
5. Let go of regrets
6. Let go of worrying
7. Let go of blame
8. Let go of guilt
9. Let go of fear
10. Have a proper belly laugh at least once a day

Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone

These were the instructions for this week’s Dungeon Prompt:

This week, let’s step out of our blogging boxes and shake things up. If you normally write poetry try writing prose. Or if you normally write freestyle poetry, try writing a sonnet. If you normally write in the first person, write in the third person instead. If you normally write about other people, write about yourself. If you normally write a hundred words, try writing eight hundred. If you normally write over a thousand words, try writing a haiku (without a thousand words of explanation).

I had no doubt which form of writing is out of my comfort zone; it is writing poetry. I thought about it for a short time and then concluded that this might be the week that I didn’t participate in Dungeon Prompts. When I shared that conclusion with my blogging friend Cheryl-Lynn at Traces of the Soul, she suggested I write a Tanka. Continue reading “Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone” →

Weekly Photo Challenge: Boundaries

The shed in my backyard provides boundaries for all of the tools and gardening paraphernalia that I use. I also store the jars I use for canning there. But the shed was not always a shed. Until three years ago it was a 7′ x 7′ tree house!

Tree house

I had the tree house built in the mid 90’s and slept in it from April to October for five years. The boundaries of the tree house protected me from wildlife and the rain. Even though it had walls, there was also a skylight. That gave me a sense of being part of the tree, the sky and nature in general. Returning to the main house for autumn and winter months sometimes gave me a sense of being imprisoned. My cells yearned to be outside and feel free again.

I was always a little nervous walking to the tree house at night. After all, I live in the inner city and there could be intruders in the backyard. The lock on the door provided a boundary that helped me feel safe once I was inside.

One day, when I walked to the tree house at bedtime, two very large raccoons were standing upright on their back legs, in-between the tree house ladder and me. There was no boundary between us. I turned around and walked back to the main house.

I generally don’t have problems with fear keeping me from doing the things I want to do, but knowing there was no way to create a protective barrier between those big raccoons and me put an end to my sleeping in the tree house.

Written for Weekly Photo Challenge: Boundaries

Reflections on Fear

Over the years I have learned many sayings and acronyms relating to fear. I have found them to be useful tools in my own life journey and have also used them with clients in my psychotherapy practice. Here are the ones that come to mind at the moment:

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.

Fear and excitement are two sides of the same coin.

We can see fear as:

False Evidence Appearing Real

Forget Everything And Run

Feeling Excited And Ready

Face Everything And Rise

Other important factors:

It is important to feel Fear when we are in danger. The emotion indicates that we need to take action. Fight or Flight might be necessary.

Most of our Fear however is Fear of the future. We often feel much more Fear of what might happen then we would feel if it did happen.

Fear may also mask another feeling. That usually happens because there were unacceptable and acceptable feelings in our families of origin. In my childhood home, feeling Fear was fine. Feeling anger was not. Therefore, I learned to feel Fear at times when I was actually angry. Once I saw this pattern, I realized it was important that I ask myself if I was angry anytime I felt Fear.

There is so much I could say on this topic but instead I am going to end with the video that Sreejit used at the beginning of the Dungeon Prompt that inspired this post. I find the video deeply moving. It also demonstrates many of the aspects of fear I have addressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txPQC8NB_-M

Mixed Race Marriage/Mixed Race Children

The July 2014, AARP magazine reported that 15% of new marriages in the United States are mixed race marriages. Oh how times have changed! I don’t know what that percentage was when I married Al, an African-American man, in 1971, but it certainly was nowhere near 15%. Mixed marriage was even illegal in some places in the U.S. until 1967.

Our wedding was in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, but we moved to Seattle immediately afterwards.

Prior to our marriage, I was working at Highline County Hospital in Oakland. Just before I left for Seattle, an African-American colleague took me aside and advised me to keep my marriage a secret once I obtained a nursing job in Seattle. She said that if the hospital administration found out I had married a black man, I would be fired. Naturally, that news was very unsettling. Continue reading “Mixed Race Marriage/Mixed Race Children” →

Introducing Jeff Alexander and the Leap of Faith

I have been thinking about writing this post for some time. It is about an incredible teacher and a powerful workshop. It has been life changing for me and for countless numbers of people in my personal and professional life.