Stop Being a Worry Wart — a Tutorial
By: Megan Boley
Tags: Mindfulness, Self, Mental Health, Psychology, Life

Stop Being a Worry Wart — a Tutorial

Life is too short to spend it in a tizzy

Photo by niklas_hamann on Unsplash

I come by my worry gene honestly. My mother and my father both are worriers in their own special ways. I’m fortunate enough to be a hybrid crossbreed between the two of them.

My mom primarily worries about the future and things she can’t change. My dad worries about his family.

Me? I worry about everything.

Worry is an exhausting emotion. It’s draining. It’s your mind chasing itself around in circles, spiralling ever downward into a dark and uncertain pit called “the future.”

But through my own experience as a worry wart and with the help of some advice from my family, I’ve found a few ways to manage my anxieties and move forward with hope — instead of fear.

Find your mute button

Whenever I feel my worries start to kick into overdrive, I press the mute button. Everyone has a mute button, you just have to find out what yours is.

For me, my mute button is jiu jitsu. It’s a physical activity that helps me channel my nervous energy into something productive. It’s so effective as a mute button because it’s an all-consuming activity. It’s the hardest physical and mental thing I’ve ever done, to the point where my brain shifts into survival mode. I can’t worry about anything because my brain and body are too involved in trying to keep my reflexes sharp.

Your mute button is something that you can get entirely lost in, no matter what else is going on in your mind or in your life. Some people can get lost in a good book, a writing project, or some other artistic outlet like painting or drawing. For others, it might be a different physical activity like jogging, hiking, swimming, whatever.

Find whatever thing it is that you enjoy so much, the rest of the world melts away. Hold onto that — it’ll be your lifeline when the worries feel overwhelming.

Find your reset button

Right beside your mute button is your reset button. It’s a more extreme version of the mute button. It’s a fail-safe for when your mute button starts to lose its effect.

For me, my reset button is a place — my hometown. Whenever I’m feeling lost in life, or too caught up in the stress of a demanding routine and living in a big city, I always return home. I’m from a small rural town, so the stark contrast of my hometown versus my city life is enough to push me off of whatever anxious mental treadmill I’m on.

More than that, though, it’s returning to a place where I grew up and spent my formative years that helps me to recenter myself and remember who I am. It shows me how much I’ve evolved.

It’s a reminder that worrying about the future when I was a teenager didn’t make me into a better adult. Worrying wasn’t going to change who I became or what happened to me. It just made me feel more stressed about it than I should have. My reset button reminds me that worry and stress won’t make me more able to predict the future — it’ll just make me feel unnecessarily anxious.

Solo travel, or doing any activity alone, is also a reset button for me. The freedom of doing what I want to do, without being beholden to anyone else’s time schedule, allows me to absorb all the enjoyment I can. Doing something alone helps me to live in the moment and focus on the present rather than worrying about whatever else is going on in my life.

Let go of the outcome

“I can’t control what you do, I can only control what I do.”

Funnily enough, this quote is from Andy Bernard in the show The Office. But it’s a little nugget I think of whenever the worry starts creeping up on me.

It’s a reminder that I can’t control what other people decide to do. I can’t control what the universe decides to throw at me. But I can control the choices I make, my reactions to what happens to me, and how I move forward.

I may not be able to control the future, but I can control my own actions — and sometimes, that little reminder that I do have some control is enough to keep me from spiralling into endless worry.

Connect to your future self

My favorite method for abandoning my worries is trusting in my future self.

I first came across this concept in some sort of woo-woo meditation article. But as I dug into it a little more, I found the idea really interesting and less weird.

You can connect to your future self through meditation, visualization, or writing letters to yourself. For me, I do it through meditation and conversation — whether in my head or out loud. Do whatever feels natural for you. Maybe try starting out with a short meditation, and then try picturing yourself in the future and what your life looks like.

Thinking of my future self out there kicking ass and taking names — that gives me comfort. It makes me feel good to think that my future self is looking out for me.

I always think of her in times of high stress and when I’m extraordinarily worried about the future and all of its uncertainties. She’s always telling me, “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.” It’s nice to think of her out there in the future, established, successful, and happy. Because my future self is me, I can be her whenever I want to be. I will be her.

So knowing that my future self is out there and doing well makes me feel better about current me, and it makes my worries dissolve into the background where they should be.

Remember: You can’t plan for perfect timing

My cousin and I talk pretty regularly — in epic five hour phone calls or paragraph-long text messages. She has a lot of great tidbits of wisdom, and recently she said something that resonated with me.

She said that I’m trying too hard to plan everything and force things into happening. That I’m stressing too much and “it isn’t necessary.” That was the part that got me — that it’s not necessary to stress. That’s a completely foreign feeling to me.

I’m a high strung, high stress person. There’s always something to stress about. So to think that I don’t have to be stressed? That it’s not necessary? That just never occurred to me, because that’s not me. That’s never been a part of my existence.

But maybe it should be.

My cousin said to me, yes, you can stress and plan out every little thing and make your decisions that way — but you don’t have to. Try going with the flow, be open to whatever opportunities come up, and see what happens.

I plan so much, because I want everything to go perfectly. But you can’t plan for perfect timing. Some things have to happen in their own time, on their own schedule. Some things come from going with the flow. And worrying about it won’t make them happen any faster, better, or differently than they otherwise would.

Sometimes, things happen when and how they’re supposed to — without any input from you.