do you ever lie awake worrying about things that are both completely beyond your control but also completely impossible?
i set 3 alarms for tomorrow morning.
and i am convinced that all 3 of them will be defective, or i will sleep through them.
i am convinced that i am going to get lost going to an appointment that i have in the morning. and i am convinced that i am going to spontaneously lose the ability to speak or write in English which means i won't be able to communicate with anyone to ask them for directions. clearly, i will get lost just trying to find the elevator. and then if i do manage to find enough English words to ask for directions, i won't remember the directions that i am given mere moments after i am given them. so i will wander around aimlessly which means i will be late.
that is assuming that my car starts in the morning. and that i have enough gas. that is assuming that one of my three alarms that i set is effective.
and once i do arrive at the hospital where my appointment is ... where will i park? there is a parking lot, but i don't want to pay for parking. hospital parking costs way too much. so i need to drive around and find a side street that has parking for more than one hour at a time.
and all that is assuming that when i DO get out of bed if my alarms go off and i don't run into heavy traffic, that i am not struck by a meteor and that i arrive at the hospital and don't find that it has been destroyed by a tsunami that somehow made it's way from the ocean across several provinces.
of course, as AG said, we could be completely wiped out by aliens, which means i wouldn't be alive to have to worry about any of these whatifs anyway.
but back to my original question ... do you ever spiral out of control with your whatifs?
i get so stuck on what could happen that i can't focus on what is happening NOW. it can be debilitating.
i am trying to work on looking at the FACTS.
FACT: my car probably needs gas so i should leave 10 minutes earlier than i had planned and fill up the tank.
FACT: one of my 3 alarms is going to wake me up, and SC gets up hours before the time that i set the alarm for and i will likely get out of bed with her anyway.
FACT: it is highly improbable that i will forget both the speaking and writing of English at exactly the same time, so i can probably ask for directions.
FACT: if i ask for directions and then either get lost, or forget what the directions were, i can ask someone else.
there are probably signs.
FACT: meteors and aliens are also quite unlikely to impede my day.
FACT: we are too far from the ocean for a tsunami to affect us ... and the hospital is too far from the lake for a flood to affect it ...
FACT: if i do end up parking on a street for free and it turns out to only be one hour parking and i am there for two hours, the worst thing that will happen is that i get a parking ticket, which will piss me off because it would have been cheaper to park at the hospital, but it won't actually be the end of the world and i can just pay the ticket and move on.
making a list of facts when your anxieties are crowding out your rational thoughts is quite useful. Nosy Nora suggests counting backwards by 3s from 100. and if the list of facts isn't enough, and if counting backwards doesn't activate your rational brain, then activating your parasympathetic nervous system while listing your facts can help to take away any physical symptoms of anxiety.
i like to rub the fleshy bit of my thumb muscle under my thumb. i poke around until i find a tender spot and then i push and rub hard on that tender spot. i call it the come-back-to-me spot because it brings me back to reality instead of letting me float away in a tsunami of what ifs ...
xoxo
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