“When Suni was a little girl, she was… a handful. A busy one, but a delight.” Suni’s Mom in her Mother of The Bride speech, circa 2018.
I was fearless, a little reckless and generally unbothered as a kid. I always remember my mom, who was allegedly exasperated by my constant hyperactivity, short attention span, and overall lack of concern for the outcome of anything, saying: “Suni, sometimes you can be so careless!” I recognize that I was lucky to have parents who created a world for me where I didn’t usually have to worry about anything. It wasn’t until I got older that I settled into what I would consider myself to be now: Your Resident Full Time Worrier (and more often than not, I log several hours of overtime.) I worry about things night and day. I worry about the things that affect me, the things that don’t, things that are none of my god damn business and the things that I convince myself will happen in the imminent future that usually never do. In stark contrast to me, I managed to mentally, emotionally, and legally bind myself to the single least worried human being that has ever existed on the face of the earth.
I often think that if my husband and I were dinosaurs and the fiery comet that would wipe out our entire species was headed straight for earth, I would be running around, panicking, and frantically searching for our emergency extinction go-bags that I put together months in advance for such an occasion and he would just turn to me and nonchalantly say “it’s fiiiiine, Sunisaurus, I’m sure being extinct will be great! We can buy all that stuff when we get there.” I feel it is important to state that when one person who is worry-prone is married to someone who is literally never worried about anything, they tend to take on the worries of two people. At least that’s my justification for the hives I get when I’m worried there might be more traffic on the road than I had initially anticipated and Jack is looking up places to stop along the way for coffee. Sometimes, when I am really worked up about something that, deep down, he and I both know is completely ridiculous, Jack will look at me, lovingly pet my head or cup my face in his hand and say, “Oh, sweetheart. Sometimes I think it must be so hard to be you.”
I admit that a lot of times, I envy Jack and his constant state of ease and good temperament, and it makes me think about how much I would love to be less worried all of the time. However, if I did that, then who would get the worrying done? You know what they say, the worrying isn’t going to worry itself. I also don’t think that all worrying is bad. If I can worry about something ahead of time and plan ways to avoid the outcome that isn’t desirable for me, isn’t that a good thing? I tend to be more compulsive and a planner, whereas Jack is far more spontaneous, joyful, and usually without socks or a phone charger when we are on vacation.
We make each other better. I find that perfection usually lies in the middle of the spectrum of our drastically different lifestyles and we try and meet in the middle when we can. Being married and having someone around 24/7 to see how certifiably crazy I can be sometimes, caused me to look at the way that I worry and see if there is anything I can do to mitigate what may possibly fall into the category of unnecessary. Worrying has a huge impact on our health and when I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, I learned even more about the ways that my constant worrying was causing me to be under tons of pressure and stress and how it was negatively impacting my symptoms.
Long story short is that our bodies DO NOT like it when we worry. To worry is to cause yourself strain or anxiety about potential problems or outcomes, basically, things that haven’t happened yet and might never happen. So, knowing this and wanting to see if I could do a better job at redirecting myself to a much healthier place when my worries start to set in, I decided to conduct an experiment. I challenged myself to keep a running list of all of the things that made me feel worried. Then, I would go through the list and I would do three things. I would write down:
1. The percentage of likeliness that what I was worried about would happen
2. If there were anything I could do in the meantime to affect the outcome of the situation in a positive way
3. What actually ended up happening (to be filled out after the fact)
I know this sounds kind of simple and monotonous, but it was SO worth it. What I got from this exercise was very telling of what a lunatic I am, but it also helped me to purge a lot of pent up emotion. I felt more organized, I felt more in control of my thoughts and yes, I felt slightly less worried when I could take full stock of all of my greatest fears laid out in front of me on paper. Everything was there, I didn’t have that nagging feeling that I was forgetting something important. I could see it all at once and the sky wasn’t falling AND I wasn’t dead! I totaled up the sum of what life would look like if every single one of my worries came to fruition on that list, and I saw that things were going to be okay… no matter what! Sure, I’d be serving a jail sentence at a correctional facility that I thought was in a really bad neighborhood, but I redirected myself back to the percentage of likelihood that that would happen and it was only like 28%.
I would love to say that there was a healthy mix of things on my list that both justified my worrying and also allowed me to see that there are many areas where I could have worried less and been okay. I am a little embarrassed to inform you that 100% of the things on my list did not happen the way that I was worried they would. That was a huge learning experience for me, an even bigger wakeup call, and something that I hope my husband never finds out about.
Example 1:
Worry: I chipped my tooth, got it fixed, and then it chipped again 3 weeks later. I am so worried that the dentist is going to charge me again to fix it even though I feel that it shouldn’t have chipped again so soon if it were done correctly. I don’t want him to think that I was just careless or that I am trying to get free dental work or that I am a degenerate who can’t eat a sandwich without chipping her tooth.
1. I’m going to give this a 12% chance of actually happening. My dentist is kind, reasonable and super Asian so I think I could take him in a fist fight if I had to.
2. I can call the dentist’s office ahead of time and ask if they’re going to charge me again when I come in to get my tooth fixed, or look up their policies on their website about repairs.
3. I was not charged for the repair, my experience was so pleasant and my tooth is fine now.
Example 2:
Worry: I live in constant fear that there is someone waiting in our home to murder us every time we get home and it’s dark outside, or that someone will sneak through a window and bludgeon us to death while we’re asleep, Ted Bundy style (I should have never watched that Netflix documentary at the beginning of quarantine.)
1. The likelihood of this happening to us is probably somewhere around .8%
2. I can check and make sure that both of Jack’s war hammers (yes, my man has two different war hammers -in case any of you murderers are reading this- that were both gifted to him by separate friends of ours) are still tucked under his side of our bed. I can double and triple check that all of our windows and doors are locked every night before I go to sleep. We can install a security system in our home. I can stop watching Unsolved Mysteries.
3. We still have not been murdered.
Look, worrying has saved lives, it has on several occasions prevented major catastrophes, but most often, worrying serves to take us out of the present moment and lessen the amount that we enjoy the here and now. I do think that there is a time and a place for legitimate concern, but I also think that if you struggle with worrying the way that I do, this exercise might be super helpful to you, your significant other, or the pet that you have no doubt, stressed the fuck out with your negative energy and is probably ready for you to start working from the office again. I don’t think there is such a thing as a cure-all to a bad habit of worrying, but I do believe that we can make things better for ourselves by paying closer attention to how often we are worrying about things that we either know are HIGHLY unlikely, or that we have done everything that we can do to control and have to move on with our lives. I was able to acknowledge that the symptoms of worrying so much had an effect on my demeanor and state of wellbeing that was far more serious than so many of the things that I was afraid of.
So, my earnest recommendation to anyone who struggles with their worries is to give this a try and please, tell me how it goes. I genuinely want to know.
Lots of love,
Suni
Comments