How does one go about retraining a brain?
These past months my anxiety has been a constant state of being, not just fleeting moments. I have to take something at night to help me sleep, or else I would be up with my anxiety all night.
Today, while I was creating the worst-case scenarios in my head (where my landlord finds out we didn’t have enough to cover the rent check and they tried to get a hold of me but my phones been shut off, and when will they get their money? (I don’t know, is the answer)) I realize that I am the instigator in most of my anxiety. Really, I kept watching the door because I was sure they would come a-knocking at any moment. And what would I tell them?
So, I tried to get myself to focus on that exact moment. The dishes in my hands. The warm suds. The methodical cleaning of the kitchen. There was nothing to worry about in that moment. There was no need to be anxious or jumpy because the dishes were minimal and easy to clean. Because nothing bad was happening that very second.
And that...being in the moment...is so very hard for me. I run on a cycle of “what’s next?” And “what if?” And I do not know how to stop. I do not know how to get my mind to stay in the moment and let worry happen when it was actually necessary.
I don’t know if I have ever been able to do that; be in the moment. As a child I was worrying and anticipating my mother’s moods and if she would speak to me that night, or if I would have to tip-toe even more carefully. Or I spent hours and hours waiting for a father who had made a promise and then never showed up. They taught me to worry. They kept me from living in the moment because I was always trying to anticipate what they would do. My anxiety was how I survived their parentage (relatively unscathed...sort of). It was the fight-or-flight upbringing that made me who I am right now.
And I want to learn how to turn that off.
But I don’t know how. So, I’ll just keep worrying about worrying, I guess, until it all becomes too much and I actually fall to pieces.
