Even though I wish I could worry less I also have a suspicion that my worrying habits make me the productive person that I am. In a strange, almost sadistic way, I feel worrying is beneficial to me. It helps me to get stuff done in a timely manner, and anticipate the aforementioned disasters.
At university my friends used to marvel at my ability to start an essay weeks out from the due date. While all-nighters were being pulled all around me, I’d joke to my disbelieving friends, “I’ve just got early worry peak.” Well in advance of the due date, my anxiety about an uncompleted task would become far more uncomfortable than actually completing the task.
Now that I’m an adult with a portfolio career, the demands on my time are more complex and more numerous. Unsurprisingly, so are my worries. Sometimes I feel like they are an amorphous, ever-multiplying pack, tentacles reaching out to taint every area of my existence.
At times I have worried so much that my anxiety levels feel unbearable and all I want to do is sleep… except that my dreams become cortisol-fuelled nightmares in which my worries become looming monsters.
While worry is sometimes a motivator, at other times it turns me into a procrastinator. My anxiety about completing a task - such as making a potentially uncomfortable phone-call – becomes so immense that I put off doing it. In my imagination I construct a castle out of my worry, adding numerous turrets of possibility, gorgons of portent. When I finally harden up, the task is never and I mean NEVER as bad as my intricately decorated castle of concern.
“Gosh!” I think to myself. “I wasted a lot of time worrying about that. I must remember not to do that next time.”
About a year ago I realised that perhaps I could benefit from some help in this area and sought counselling. This has helped. In the main, I now recognise when I am spiraling into irrational and unhelpful worry. In being aware that this is “a thing I do” I’m more often able to step away from it and not go down the castle-building path.
I don’t think I will ever stop worrying. It’s embedded in my personality. But I do feel like I've stepped out of the shadow of anxiety and into the sun.