Who’s in Charge?

It is part of the human condition to worry. Used to your advantage it is a way to problem solve. It also guides us to do a good job, make preparations, treat people with kindness or help to keep them at arm’s length. It gives us motive to do something in the present that will help us in the future. It also shows us how much we care about those we love, including ourselves.

But what happens when worry takes on a life of its own? It is the uninvited whisper in your ear that pretends it is helping you. It’s the fiction that keeps on getting more preposterous the more airtime it is given. It comes with a soundtrack that builds to a loud crescendo, making your heart beat faster and your palms to go damp. It starts to colour our everyday with grey and becomes a weight that holds us down. Don’t put worry in charge – it’s out of control!

Worry is focussed on a potential future. Will it turn out how we want? Or, in the language of worry, will it not turn out how we want? More importantly, how will we be able stand it? Worry is trying to hold us back in order to avoid difficult feelings in the future – failure, shame,  discomfort, embarrassment, loss. Will we be able to bear it? The irony is that worry brings difficult feelings into the present instead and crowds out the good. It’s a challenge to hold these two opposing feelings at once and one of them usually wins out. So, don’t put worry in charge – it’s out of control!

If we carry its weight on our shoulders with its scaly fingers covering our eyes, it will use up our energy resources and blind us from seeing the solution. Wouldn’t it be better to invite it to walk beside us instead? We can then be free to ask its advice, challenge its narrative to discover truth, or ask it to be quiet so that you can think straight. We can give it a name that is not our own and allocate the time we are willing to spend in conversation with it. Creating this distance between it and you means that you get to be in charge. It can come for the ride but it’s you in the driving seat.

Most of what we worry about doesn’t turn out as badly as we imagined it would. It can be difficult to live with the uncertainty of the future. But if life is unpredictable then that means good things can come along too. If we use up our energy trying to control the future we have less available to have fun – or at least to be comfy with simply being ok.  And for most of us being ok is just fine. Being ok is peace.