Anxiety sucks.

“Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

Anxiety sucks. It just does. 

Anxiety is a worry, nervousness, or fear about an event with an uncertain outcome. An uncertain outcome?  If you have ever been a worrier, wouldn’t that pertain to just about everything in life? Couldn’t one obsess about the responsibilities of today, tomorrow, and even the past? All those things we did we wish we hadn’t. All those things that happened to us or by us that we either regret, feel hurt by, shamed about, or worse, have never mentioned because to mention them would bring them to life. And if we brought them to our consciousness and spoke or wrote our truths, someone might disagree, dislike us, and think we are stupid, dumb, incompetent, imperfect, or worse, human.

So, we worry. Being a therapist, I know that we worry about what others think of us if we expose our anxieties. We know that no one is perfect, but we don’t always like to reveal our humanity.

My own anxiety has been the pest that won’t die despite lots of various and sundry pest control efforts. I have tried to exterminate it for years.  

I have decided that annihilation is too extreme. Besides, I always had the fear that if I was able to totally rid myself of any anxiety, it might come back with a vengeance—like a plague that had to be exorcised by a priest who might not be skilled in anxiety exorcisms. Of course that brought up more worry, and that worry led me to the theoretical discovery, which I named Sue Legacy’s Principle of Anxiety, which is: anxiety sucks! 

This well-known principle of anxiety can be true whether you are in the first stage of life, the years of birth to forty-nine, or in the second half of life, age fifty and above. It can be the unwelcome crasher at parties, special events, and celebrations. It arrives early and stays late. Anxiety can find us alone or in a crowd.

Once it discovers us, it isn’t long before feeling unworthy and inadequate becomes more common than feeling worthwhile. Before we know it, negative thoughts can rule our minds. We can doubt any decision we make, if we can make one at all. 

Anxiety has moved in, like an unwanted roommate.  

For some people, however, anxiety is quiet and not as noticeable. It can knock and politely ask if you have room. You may even welcome it, believing that it has your best interests at heart. Like when your concern of becoming ill from germs found on doorknobs or through shaking hands tells you that it is okay to wash your hands over and over—it is only about being clean and staying healthy. Or when your need to keep your drawers neat and organized a certain way. Or else. And the “or else” is that anxiety and negative thoughts about yourself will creep into your space and create the havoc you are trying so diligently to prevent. Keeping things around you organized, ensuring that the house is clean and spotless before you can get anything else accomplished, and making sure, or working very hard at making sure everything is perfect, is the goal. And as long as you can do that, any anxiety or worry about your own imperfections can be kept at bay.

Whether your anxiety is quiet or loud, there is a difference between anxieties in the first part of our lives versus the second half. In the first half, there are so many life issues to ponder over which we have so much doubt, worry, and angst. 

As youngsters, we are afraid of the first day of school, even if we are excited about it at the same time. As teenagers, we worry about being accepted by our peers. We might have anxiety about spending the night at a friend’s house for the first time or learning to play a musical instrument or a new sport. Fear could creep in when a teacher calls your name for an answer to a question for which you have no clue. We worry about getting into college and how to pay for it, what to study for future financial stability, and how will we get our first job. We wonder who will be our first love and whether it will be everlasting. We may want children and wonder what to do if we are unable to bear them. We worry about how to support them, and how to support ourselves.  

Whew! The first half of life is hard. 

How do our life anxieties differ now? The second stage of life is still filled with fears about the future. You may hate what you do for a living and fear that you will never be able to quit because you want your money to outlive you, not the other way around. You may love what you do for a living, yet worry that some impairment may keep you from having the option to do what you love. You may have a mental bucket list that includes travel to all seven continents by the time you are seventy, but fear good health may not comply. Or you fulfilled your list and you think, now what? Maybe you have accomplished all but one of the items on your bucket list and are afraid to complete that last one because if you have no more bucket list, would that mean it’s time to kick the bucket?  

During this stage of our lives, we worry about how long we have to live. Will we outlive our spouse; we pray not our kids, but what about our pets? When we go who will take care of them? We watch our parents age, become ill, and need twenty-four-hour-a-day care. What if Mom goes before Dad? How will he survive without our help? Do we have the means to help him? Our parents are aging and dying; we are aging and dying. Who will take care of us when we no longer can? 

We used to be told that retirement was an event that would just happen. Now we realize that for some of us it is more of a dream and an ideal that we may not experience. We hear Suze Orman tell us that if we continue to pay or save for our children’s college, and unless we deposit a certain amount of money into a savings account, we may never be able to retire. We worry that we may never have enough income to stop worrying about it. 

My good friend Mary’s parents are now in their early nineties and in good health. Her father retired from his accounting business at the age of fifty-nine. He was certain he would not live beyond ten or twenty more years. Now, at ninety-one, he says he would never have retired if he had known he would live this long. His concern is living beyond his financial means.

However, I want to challenge your beliefs about aging and any time you have left on earth and show you how you can transform your worries into wonder, even joy. Despite all that we have to lose sleep over, much graver things than in the first half, we can learn to dismiss more of the first half of life insecurities and reduce the worries of the now. 

My next blog will show you how to approach your worries and fears in a way that helps you access healing.