stop worrying all the time

I should just face facts.No matter how much I want to do this – it’s beyond my capabilities to change what basically am…a worrier.So from now on I’ll try to stop worrying about worrying all the time.

than I’m up with insomnia for the first time in months at 4:00 in the morning.

My main worries:
-the $210 I had to spend today on that towing/ticket.
-the arbitrary floortime assignments at the RE office that’s just not working out for me lately and knowing I need to bring it to my broker as an issue
-the fact that my daughter’s going away for a few weeks
-the expense of my Sebago vacation coming up and the worry of that whole trip
-the worry that my daughter is moving onto a different phase in life and so I need to too (empty nest setting in)
-the worry of aging and feeling that my time is limited. I want to live forever and I no longer have that illusion at all.
-the need to get laid and the recent aversion to dating..bad combo. It’s still been since Robert. That’s getting quite lengthy.
-a to-do list that’s just completely overwhelming.
-the fact that my daughter’s spending 2 extra weeks on the east coast with her dad’s family. Worried for her well-being like I always do and worried for my own loneliness while she’s gone. I’m just so used to her being here..it’s hard for me…I always have a rule that if my only reason for denying her an opportunity to do something is that I will be here alone…then I must keep that to myself and let her go. Little does she know how many times in her life I’ve been inclined to tell her “no” to something for selfish reasons but I stifle that.

These things are all bothering me and I can’t sleep. My heart feels a little crushed at the moment with all this worry.

Yet at least I can put a finger on some of the causes…instead of my head just spinning with anxiety and not being able to figure it out. That alone makes me feel like I have a better handle on worry than I used to.

Please keep your fingers crossed for me and wish me luck.

HUGS, Melissa

to where I don’t have to “worry” about this right now. ;0) melissa

Frankly, I’m a deep thinker and am very worried about the life cycle right now, and where I stand in it. I’m also worried that I seem to be such a loner when it comes to romance. I don’t seen to know how to stay bonded to someone…I have chosen to be by myself too much….without a partner. It may cause me to lead a lonely life after my baby girl moves on with hers…at some point I will not draw the male attention I now do and the options may not be there.

Those are my two deepest concerns at this time.

I don’t know if I can ever take worry off the list of my main personality traits. I was trained from a very young age to be full of anxiety and fear…my mind requires rewiring to get rid of this and truthfully, that’s a tiring endeavor and I don’t know if it’s worth it to me to expend so much energy on it.

So, I’m at the point that I sleep 8 hours on most nights…..that’s how I guage my worry..if it’s not enough to keep me up at night, I can remove this goal from the list for now.

Worry is still an intregal part of my personality…but improvement noted.

I have a friend who has recently inspired me. She claims that we create our reality through our thoughts, which I can agree with. I believe our thoughts dictate how we perceive the world…and what you look for is what you find…and so our thoughts preempt our experience of the world. We have a lot more control than appears on the surface.

My friend has recently reminded me that worry, although unconscious, preempts the very situations, conditions, etc. that I am afraid of. I draw the subject of my worry to myself with my focus.

It’s very vague, what I’ve written here…yet the examples in my own life are very specific. She has encouraged me to refocus my energy, time, and thoughts into more positive directions, and to consciously interrupt worries with positive thoughts and train my focus elsewhere.

She perceives our focus as a choice. She reminds me that our time on earth is limited and we must focus on only the best things.

I’m working part-time at the public library. The office (which I share with one or two co-workers, although not simultaneously most of the time) moved to the first floor so now I don’t have to climb three flights of stairs every time I get to work. It also has a ridiculously large window looking out on Yale University Press (a nice piece of property), which has my step-father jealous.

I’m a strong proponent of the theory that environment is a major factor in stress level and general health, so it makes sense to me that having a first floor office would reduce stress (especially since many of the books I search for are on the first floor and basement levels). But I have mixed feelings about my new environment, since my title is “library assistant” or “library aide”, so I can’t help thinking that I’m supposed to be over-awed with it (and partly I am, although my imagination has conceived of greater wonders), as though maybe this is that moment in every young adult’s life where they taste something better, for the last time.

But returning to the issue of relaxation, for many years I have taken some pains to turn my thoughts wherever they are flexible towards peace and happiness, but not always with success. Sometimes it simply results in a kind of bitter angst about the ugliness of things, and my failure to wish with sufficient mental strength.

Every now and then I find myself in a situation where I am reminded that there are far better things, things I am not always certain can be attained consistently, as though they might lose their promise. Gardens, a passing beauty, a conversation—much of my life they remain figments which inform my concept of the ideal, but whose value remains transient (not to be overwrought). I start to wonder if its only product is a wistful memoir, or nostalgia, or some sort of beauty engendered by bitterness.

Quietly I hope that my creative efforts will add up; that they will amount to a garden of happiness, or even not of happiness, but a garden in any case—even of machines, or stone terraces, or fountains, or towers, or clotheslines…

So much of my life is a search for a garden.

For as long as I can remember I haven’t been able to relax. Its a very rare day when I can do something that should be enjoyable, and feel satisfied.

This has led to sleeping in (no motivation to get up), staying too long at cafes without saying anything to anybody (no reason to leave or say anything), general listlessness etc.

The overall feeling is that I’m wasting time, and that’s my job. I call this kind of existence “filler”. Its like my whole life is filler, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Part of me says that my awareness of filler is proof that I deserve better. Another part of me says that the fact that I haven’t been able to do much about it is proof that someone has it in for me.

Whatever the case, maybe some of this has to do with worry. If I didn’t worry about looking immature if I enjoy myself (my father was always serious), if I don’t worry about the consequences of friendships, or about becoming a different person than I have been, or losing the potential for life that I have been carrying with me, it seems like life would be a lot easier. I’d even get more accomplished.

Yet there is so much grit and frustration in my life that when I calm down a bit I feel like I’m letting down my defenses. What would I do if someone insulted me when I was feeling vulnerable?

There’s so much abuse going on, so much loss of what might have been, that from a certain standpoint its unjustified to be anything other than a perfectionist.

Yet having lived one way for so long its clear that I can’t take many more steps in that direction without being more practical and proactive.

Its clear that my passive attitude, or at least the conditioning that led to a passive attitude, is a curse. I have freed myself to the extent that I have certain types of creative output, but I haven’t been able to make any sort of living off of the things I do that I consider valuable. That I am unable to do so in a capitalist society engraves in me constantly the impression of a bodily insult.

Against these sensations of deservedness it is difficult to see how I can relax without admitting defeat. The defeated who once deserved better seem very foolish indeed.

I have been struggling with the idea that I am discontent with my life being overall tragic, comic, or tragi-comic. Would it do any good to find a new kind of theatre? For clearly ideas are without inherent cash value in this world… at least when it comes to improving what matters—quality of life.

At the end of the year. I was up for 2 nights just upset and worrying about any number of topics. I think it’s natural to worry at this time of year and I’m going to consider it an abberation. Last night I got mediocre sleep…better than the two previous. Tonight I will do whatever I can to relax and get a good night of zzzzzzs.

I have had a few exceptions…I’m a lifelong worrywort to the nth degree. But I’m very happy with my progress. It is no way to live, constantly upset about what could, may, might happen…never feeling a sense of well-being in the world. It sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of life and I’m very pleased that I am finally after 37 years getting a handle on it. This problem was deeply ingrained by the time I was about 5 years old…it is really a very old, deep problem, so there is a lot of magnitude in my progress.

If I can make it into March with decreased worry that I have had recently, I’ll mark this as done! :0) I’m still having the same issues, just worrying less!

I have been swamped for two weeks straight; I have not even had time to come to this website and relax a little bit. I am very unhappy at the moment as I see no break in sight. I’m sure I’ll get through it fine, it’s just that I’m not happy with it. Obligations and chores from 5:30am to 10:00pm every day.