Episode 72: Unproductive Worry

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Transcript

Do you worry about things all the time? I mean to the point that you can’t stop worrying about them and then feel stuck in that worry?

I was there for a while and it wasn’t a good place to be. 

Right after my husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 I jumped into the deep end of trying to find ways to cope with the loss of control of the things that were happening in my life. 

My world wasn’t just being turned upside down… it was taken from me, thrown in a blender, and then thrown back at me to try to make something of it. 

I tried holding on to something by researching everything I could about his cancer trying to prepare myself and learn as much as I could.

As much as I tried to keep myself busy, I couldn’t stop worrying about things.

Worry about getting him into scans and the competency of his doctors.

Worry about how long he would live, his surgery, and the treatments after.

Worry about if cancer would change him, his personality, his ability to love, and how he saw the world. 

Worry about our relationship and if it could hold strong under the stress it would be put under.

Worry that I would miss an important phone call. 

Worry that I couldn’t be as good a mom as I wanted to be.

Worry that I couldn’t be a caregiver.

Worry about what my life would be like as a widow, how I could find the strength and how I could afford to live on my own with my daughter and where home would be.

Worry that if I told anyone that I worried about these things they would judge me.  

The effects of this worry started to show up slowly in unexpected places but it always involved me crying.

It started with sappy commercials, tv shows, and movies. That didn’t feel too alarming. That could happen on a good day. So I wasn’t too worried about it. I figured it was a cathartic way for me to let go of some stress. 

Then it started happening any time things didn’t go right. Break an egg yolk? tears. Forget to do something inconsequential - I’d cry. It started to show up in the morning and at night and I started to become alarmed. 

I would drive to work and cry. I’d have a quiet moment while teaching a yoga class and have to stop myself from crying. 

It was everywhere and it started to worry me. 

So finally I talked to my doctor and after asking me a couple of questions she said.

Charlotte, this is unproductive worry. You have to stop worrying about the things you have no control over. It made me happy to know there was a term for what I was going through but then I asked her what I could do she told me to start meditating and I got pissed!

Not because she told me to meditate but because I was creating and teaching meditation classes during this time. 

I was so stuck in the middle of all this worry while trying to piece together my life and work to help other people through my classes that I didn’t realize I had the tools to help myself all along. 

It was like believing I was going to drown when I was actually only in 2 feet of water. I needed someone to tell me to 

Just

Stand 

UP

Once I had a way to name what was going on and a tool to use that I already owned I had something different to focus on - myself!

Even though I had meditated before, this time it felt harder. Meditating to work on my worry was difficult to do and I had to be prepared to be uncomfortable. 

When I found myself worrying about something I would stop myself when I noticed it. I would ask myself if I could control what I worried about and then I would sit and breathe without answering that question. After 5-10 minutes of just deep breathing, I would resist what I was worried about and asked myself again if I could control it.

Most often the answer was no. 

Then I would remind myself that worrying about something I had no control over was taking energy I could give to myself and my family. I would try to do my best to distract myself from that worrisome thought instead of fueling it and as hard and uncomfortable that was… it started to work.

After a while, I could spend some time during the day to check in to see if there was a worry I needed to address. Other times, when a worry surfaced I could simply ask myself if it was productive to worry about it or not. Did I have control over what was happening or no?

That’s not to say I didn’t have moments when I found myself crying but it showed up less frequently. I could have a bad moment in a day and then come back to being functional again much quicker. 

The meditation made me more resilient and allowed me to respond to my worries instead of reacting.

We all have the ability to help ourselves, to change our perspective, and to learn how to respond instead of react. 

Sometimes when we feel like we are drowning we need someone to tell us to just stand up


 

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