I’m sure we’ve all done it.
Actually, it’s quite easy to do.
So what is it you may be wondering???
It’s the fact that many of us often take something that initially happens to us and blow it up way out of proportion, only to find out later it really wasn’t all that bad.
I had a good chuckle the other day with myself when I sat down with a friend over dinner. He had asked me a week prior to meet with him, as he had something to discuss with me. Right away his request had raised a little fear within me and on some level, it probably occupied active headspace the entire number of days that led up to our meal together. Most of my thoughts surrounding it were along the lines of what I had done wrong or was I going to be scolded. Much of that stems back to how things were with my mother and how I felt I was always walking on eggshells around her. Ironically, my friend only wanted to take a few minutes to clarify some feelings about a comment I had made to him in weeks prior. When the meal was over, I saw how I had wasted a lot of my energy giving into those irrational fears prior to he and I ever meeting.
A few weeks ago I had another one of these experiences where I blew something up way out of proportion once again. It actually dealt with this blog when I was notified by e-mail that the tool I use for it was going away on June 25th. My first reaction involved a day of temper tantrums that my partner witnessed and it wasn’t pretty. I allowed myself for almost 24 hours to go into an incredible amount of anxiety about the work that was going to be involved in finding a new blog tool and starting again. When I finally sat down and made a few phone calls to my current blog company, I saw how it really wasn’t going to be that bad. But the stress I put myself through prior to actually doing that was something I’ve done to myself throughout my life.
I used to be one of those people who said that I had chronic anxiety and it dealt with a chemical imbalance. The reality was that a large part of that anxiety was not a chemical imbalance at all. It truly was of my own creation. Every time something happened in my life that I didn’t know how much it was going to affect me, I’d worry about it incessantly until it was done and over with. Often I’d create a self-fulfilling prophecy making the worst-case scenario happen because of all that worry and the stress and damage it did to my system was incredible.
I’ve read that all anxiety and fear is based around one of two things. We are either afraid we’re never going to get something we think we need or we are afraid we’re going to lose something we already have that we think we can’t lose. In the case of the dinner meeting with my friend, I can see how the source of my anxiety was a deep-seated fear of being abandoned and losing him as a friend. In the case of my blog site, I can see how the source of that anxiety was based around my fear of losing all my work and the people who have been reading it on here. Last year when I was turned down for social security disability for the final time, I thought it was going to be the end of my world. I’m actually grateful today though that I never got it. That’s only because I find myself being more motivated in life to pursue new ventures since I don’t have a regular stipend coming in to keep me comfortable. Looking back at any other anxieties and fears from my past, I can see how every one of them fell into one of these two categories as well.
The only solution I’ve found so far to dealing with this, when I still blow up things out of proportion, is to pray for clarity and meditate through the irrational fears. I’m not always so good with it but I am definitely getting better. I’m able to see now how my self-will leads me into doing this and so I do my best to turn my fears and worries over to my Higher Power each and every day. In doing so, I’m not living with chronic anxiety these days nor do I rely upon any medication to achieve this. I have a lot more acceptance that any of these situations are opportunities for positive change and spiritual growth in my life.
So if you are someone who regularly is blowing things up out of proportion, I encourage you to start taking a lot more moments to breathe by spending time in prayer and mediation with your Higher Power. In doing so, you will strengthen that connection and most likely find your life becoming a lot less anxious over any of the things that happen to you. And in the long run, you too will probably see that none of them were really all that bad…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson