Working out your Worries - Part 1

For me, anxiety is often a precursor to depression.  When faced with a situation that is uncertain and unpredictable, I tend to get overwhelmed.  It can feel like the typically well-ordered files within my mind get shuffled around and I lose my ability to concentrate.  My husband calls this “shutting down”.  He knows I’ve reached that stage because I can no longer make a decision or communicate a coherent thought, resorting instead to sputtered starts to a sentence or complete withdrawn silence.  Sometimes it’s insignificant and short-lived, such as when we’re in the midst of a Saturday project that turns out to be way more complicated and involved than we expected.  In those cases, I have to take a step back, often remove myself to a place of order, reset my expectations, and to quote Disney’s Frozen 2 “do the next right thing”.  I start focusing on one small component of the project and little by little we work it to completion.  When recognized and dealt with, the shutdown lasts less than an hour.  When it comes to the bigger topics in life (e.g. employment, family planning, relocation, health) I have been known to shut down for days, weeks, or even months.  Sometimes the entirety of life is much more complicated than I had pictured it, or things become so suddenly different, I can’t quite picture the future.  Some of you, or some people you love may be nearing this point as they feel like everything is changing due to COVID-19 and the consequent social distancing measures being taken.  

The current situation is primed for serious anxiety.  As I write this, over 16 million people have lost their jobs.  Many more are worried about losing their livelihood should the crisis continue beyond the end of the month.  Others are worried about their vulnerable loved ones, understandably not wanting any to succumb to such a horrific end.  Some are sick themselves worried about their own health or having income while they cannot work.  Almost everyone knows someone who’s working in healthcare, potentially coming into contact with the virus, likely without the appropriate protective equipment.  And those are just the big obvious groups.  There are other worries too.  For example, couples experiencing infertility will have to wait even longer to get their chance to start a family.  Those who’ve been receiving treatment for chronic pain from their chiropractor grapple and groan with those services being deemed “non-essential”.  Students of all ages are worried about succeeding in an online format as they and their teachers adjust to a medium of education that neither signed up for.  College and high school seniors wonder if they’ll ever see some of their friends again.  International students are stuck alone on campuses wondering when they’ll get to go home.   The list of wonders and worries is endless.  Unchecked, those worries can transition from concerns to cognitive catastrophes that layover in “shutting down” territory on their way to an extended stay in depression valley.  If you find yourself or a loved one heading in that direction, managing the anxiety can help prevent a further decline into hopelessness.    

When there’s so much worry and panic swirling in our heads, an easy way to start untangling the worry web is to write down what we’re anxious about.  If, for example, we were to go to the grocery store for a few items, we can try to remember the items we need by continually bringing the list to our consciousness and creating imagery for each item.  We can picture ourselves going through the store to the areas where those items reside and imagine picking them off the shelves.  By rehearsing our shopping and keeping our mind fixated on that task, we can imprint into our memory so that when we get to the store, we will remember the majority of the items we needed.  But what if we need to add another item?  Now we need to rework the mental routine to fit in that item.  What if we need to work on something else in the meantime?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t split my focus like that and do both well.  I will be distracted from my current task while I rehearse my shopping for later and then later my shopping accuracy will be less than ideal.  Trying to keep that mental list straight is taxing.  Alternatively, we can simply write down our grocery list, pull it out when we need to add to it, and then cross the items off as we put them in our carts, ensuring we get everything we needed.  

Similarly, I find that when I am anxious about the future, I am unable to focus on the current tasks because my brain continues to rehearse what horrible thing it imagines for the future.  If something in the current moment changes that projection, my mind then spends an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to incorporate that new information into its doomsday predictions.  Try as I might, my mind will not let these things go.  I mean, what if I were to forget about what I was anxious about or forget one of those future possibilities?  My mind simply won’t have it!  But I find that if I write my worries on a list, like writing down my grocery needs, my mind will release them, at least temporarily, granting me some relief and the ability to focus on the tasks set before me.  It also helps to get your worries out onto paper so you can start doing the deeper work of getting to the root of your fears and motivations that are feeding your anxieties.  

Today I encourage you to start making your list.  Just sit down with your computer or a pad of paper and a pen and start writing down whatever comes to mind.  It can be big worries or even small ones.  Once you think you’ve got most everything down, return to your normal activities.  You’ll probably find that it won’t be long until another worry grips your mind.  Pull out your list, write it down, and then move on.  After a day or so, you’ll probably have a fairly comprehensive list.  We can then move onto the next steps of digging into those worries to eventually put them to death.