An Anxiety Trick

I love this comment! In my opinion I think society has taught women and mothers especially, what is “right” and “wrong” and how to “properly behave”. Everyone is judged, but in specific women and mothers because for one, every mother is differently and wishes to raise their kids differently, but according to society everything they do is wrong or out of the norm. If we all women learn to accept our wrongdoings (whether its telling children not to do this and that) then we would have less anxiety ! I believe the unnecessary comments from society increase anxiety and self depreciation. :)

What book is this from?

Your post is so validating for me! I do this too, and similarly feel that it’s helped me to think through situations and prepare, and I also experience not being able to turn it off. I’m a school counselor, so I try to teach kids how to turn it off, and my most successful tricks have been exercise, mindfulness meditations (I use the calm app) which have taught me to remove myself from the feeling, acknowledge it with kindness, observe it, and grounding techniques that bring you into the present. I teach kids the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique and I also use it when I’m try to relax and be in the present at home: what are 5 things you see around you? 4 things you can touch? 3 things you can hear? 2 things you can smell? 1 thing you can taste?

Thank you, Annie and Anna, for these recommendations!

Yes, it is actually helpful the think through what we would do in worst case situations. I learned about this more on The Happiness Lab podcast.

A therapist once really helped me to see my anxiety as not inherently bad, and to understand the difference between being (correctly) anxious and letting it ruin my life/day/etc. He said that anxiety is the thing that helps us makes decisions and not put ourselves in harms way. What is bad is when we make decisions from a place of fear based anxiety that holds us back from being happy and doing things we want to do that are reasonably “safe.” It really helped me to reframe anxiety to “thanks for helping me” instead of “anxiety is the bane of my existence and I need to stop all and every anxious thought.”

It’s the only comments section I read–and cry over sometimes! It would seriously make an amazing book series. The people here are the best.

As having been through this, my heart hurt reading this. Sending you lots of positive energy. You will get through this and come out stronger. In the meantime be gentle with yourself. I love your little reminder you are not alone. You most certainly are not, and you will feel love and joy again. This season will pass.

++++ this!

There is a book by Australian journalist, Leigh Sales, called “Any Ordinary Day” which is about people who have suffered tragedy and then gone on to live positive and hopeful lives. It’s a great read and I found it very helpful after my father died.

Jones, your comment broke my heart because as I was reading the article, I was thinking about my own “tragedy dress rehearsals” and they do often involve my sister and how she means the world to me and what I’d do if anything happened to her. And then your comment was the first one I read.

I’m going through something different that’s kind of awful right now, and I just try my best to remember/accept that life can be really really awful sometimes and also really beautiful at other times. And it’s so hard to wrap our heads around the extremes. But maybe all we can do is turn towards the good things when we feel able to? And cling to each other like lifeboats the rest of the time. I don’t know if that helps you at all (probably not) but anyway, sending you a lot of love.

I really understand this. Just sympathizing. People you love deeply who should not die can and do die. You just have to sit there in that hospital room and they really die, right in front of you. I was ‘What if! a miracle happens!’ until the end, and then I couldn’t think half full anymore either.

I feel you – this is hard. I lost a friend (a vibrant, healthy, 37 year old woman) to a disease that took her in less than a year and felt blindsided because even at the end I didn’t fully think “well what if she doesn’t make it?”

I think the thing I glean from this quote is that bad stuff will happen in life, but if we’re always thinking of bad things that could happen, we’re stealing joy from ourselves now. Focusing on enjoying the people and things we’re experiencing now is time well spent. Would my time with my friend have been any better if I had realized she was dying? I don’t know. I might’ve said some things I never got to say, but as it was I focused on helping her heal and that was also time well spent.

I’m so sorry for the loss of your sister.

This. Exactly this. I’m in therapy right now after having cancer while young, healthy, and in my 30s (and a whole bunch of other “bad” things), and it’s not so easy to just flip to “just think positively!”. Clinical anxiety and depression … not so simple.

I was going to post something very similar. I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ve always had some anxiety, but it was manageable. Sometimes my imagination would wander, but I didn’t truly believe something really bad would happen to me. But several years ago my husband was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer while I was pregnant with our first child (it happens to be colorectal cancer awareness month, so going to take this opportunity to remind anyone who might read here that colorectal cancer is significantly rising in younger adults and to please take some time to learn more!). He died a little over 2 years later at 41 y/o. Once you actually know and have experienced that one of the worst things that you can imagine can actually happen to you, it’s impossible to forget. I’m not sure that I have great advice, more so just here to say that I understand. I would say that mostly I try not to anticipate the future too much one way or the other. I work very hard to pull my mind back to only the present moment as much as possible. I try to focus on the fact that things are okay in this exact moment, and take things only a day or actually just a minute at a time. I have to very consciously do so all the time and it feels like I’m constantly practicing it, but it does help at least some of the time.

Hello Jones, I am so sorry to hear about your very great loss. I recently read “Any Ordinary Day” by Leigh Sales with my book club – and highly recommend it (I’ve been persuading all my family and friends to read it!). Leigh is an Australian journalist, and she writes in the book about people who have experienced a life altering unimaginable event – and what happened afterwards. So many people were so generous in sharing their experiences with her, and the personal stories are also interspersed with academic research and interviews with people who work in related fields. I finished the book feeling comforted that although dreadful things do happen our lives, there an incredible capacity for love, resilience, and hope. Stuart Diver was one of the people who agreed to be interviewed (he lost his first wife in a terrible accident, and the second to cancer) he tells Leigh that in his experience “We can carry so much more than we think we can, whether that is love or pain. The pain is love. It’s just the manifestation of the sad side of losing someone, as opposed to them being with you.” Leigh also interviewed Juliet Darling, whose husband and his daughter were killed, she said the thing she hoped people would take away from her story was that “in pain, there’s also joy. You can’t be in the presence of just one thought, that life is good, or life is bad, or life is sad. There’s all these things. And there are so many good people in the world, actually, so much kindness. It’s everywhere.” Sending love to you in your grief xxx

This sounds like grief rather than a generalized anxiety. I’m so sorry about the loss of your sister. It’s so hard to lose a loved one and even harder yet when you have an extra special bond. Grief has played a strong role in my life and, from what I have seen, it seems to follow it’s own unique path for each individual. Grief does lose it’s sharp edges over time and eventually practicing positive thoughts becomes a little easier. As my husband says, “You start with the little things.”

I’m so sorry you lost your sister. That positive thinking thing can be problematic, I think. I don’t have any specific advice but I recently found this short video helpful and thought-provoking: https://youtu.be/wKfUK1Gd6YM

Dear Jones, I am so sorry for the loss of your sister. Know that even in the far reaches of the internet I sit with you as you grieve. Sending a hug, hand on your shoulder or just and ear to listen.

I’m so sorry about your sister, what a devastating loss. I’m not sure there is an easy answer to your question.
Since you asked how other people manage, I thought I’d share what I do. I struggle with serious health issues and sometimes when things are bad, I feel the same as you. Fortunately I have some wonderful people around me who don’t expect me to “put on a brave face” or “be positive” all the time – it’s ok to find life hard sometimes. Life can be bloody hard! But on a good day I try to remember to look at (or get into) nature. Noticing a little spring flower or leaf buds on trees or just giving my indoor plants some water can be enough to lift my spirits without my even noticing. I also have a list of “Dos & Don’ts” for a bad day e.g. do call my best friend and tell her how I truly am, don’t start something new, do look out the window…
I’m so aware that none of these things will help you in your grief, but I hope that at least you know that you’re not alone. Sending you lots of love and sunshine x

Nothing beats death. It’s what makes life worth living and losing someone is excruciatingly painful. I’m very sorry for your loss. And you’re right, it could happen again. We all stand to lose the ones we love the most, but that’s a hard place to stay in. Your sister would probably want you to feel the ease of walking outside on a warm day, sun shining but not too hot and to feel unburdened joy. I’m not trying to say you have to force yourself to get there. I do hope you find your way though.
Thinking of you Jones ❤️

This really resonates with me. My older sister died some years ago and I too tried to think positively during her illness – and the worst still happened. There was no silver lining, it was just a sad time. The grief fades and I do find joy in things. Positive thinking doesn’t influence outcomes, in my opinion – if someone is dying of cancer your good vibes won’t cure them – BUT if you can help them have a ‘good’ death, if you can spend time with them, you’ve done your best.

Eighteen months is still very recent, you are still processing what happened. You don’t have to think positively when something terrible happens.

I am so sorry to hear abt your sister. Your last lines hit close to home, as I too felt similar feelings and had similar thoughts when my husband passed away, and then I found myself unexpectedly pregnant with our fourth child. When the worst has happened and you are still reeling from it & dealing with it (years on), it is hard to really believe joy and contentment and all that is good are ever possible.

I could not “think positive” for a long time. I just focused on getting through the hour, the day, the event, the week, whatever was manageable. Just getting through. And after enough “getting throughs”, my brain got strong enough to realise… if I could get through what was literally my worst nightmare… well, I can get through anything.

I hope you will get through this. If you need help, I hope you will get the help you need to get through this. It may be a long “getting through”; it may be short. But may you get through this, one step a time.

I’m so sorry for your loss. I haven’t lost a sibling but I’ve had other very hard losses and tragedies throughout my life, all in my childhood. It is very hard to look ahead at life and expect the best when you have a really keen awareness of the worst and how likely it is. A friend who lost her son told me that at first she was so angry that it happened to her because she didn’t deserve it, but then she realized that bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it all the time and if she only got angry when it was about her she was selfish. It’s a strong perspective but it gave me two things: 1. Now I get angry about hard things happening to other people, not just to me. That has woken me up and given me so many chances to help alleviate suffering for others, which really helps me too. When you’re involved in a culture of giving you are able to help others but also realize that you will have help if you ever need it. 2. There is community in the hard stuff. I always call it my crappy club of people who know about real life. But we’re out here and you’re not alone, and connecting even just mentally to all the people out there going through something has helped me feel less alone. And less on the wrong/bad/horrible path. It’s just life and sometimes it’s messy, but even this painful road is full of wonderful people. I think being surrounded by wonderful people is one of the greatest joys of living.

Like a “Mental Health Uniform” series!