how to cope | Old Mum

Thanks Andrea from Co Antrim! You asked how we can break the eternal worry/stress/more worried cycle, hope this helps.

It will end….

Being locked into a deep worry is a horror. Too many times Old Mum has wasted entire weekends worrying about something that might happen on a Monday or got herself into such a cotter over impending doom that she suffers far more by worrying than she ever would just tackling it head on, sword aloft.

So now, I face it. I face it when it is just a hint that it might happen and hasn’t developed into a full blown deep crisis of agonising. I face it as soon as it pops its ugly head into my life and even if I can’t solve it there and then, do something to make me feel I am on top of it. Even if it’s just making a list of the best way to tackle it or googling for other opinions, it is an attack not an acquiesence. Oh, and allow yourself 20 minutes fretting time and then call a halt to it. Set a timer if you can’t trust yourself.

Worrying is our way of trying to prepare for every possible outcome. We’ll imagine every twist and turn, take false leads and crooked paths, go bounding over rocky terrain of our own making and still end up face down in a bog. For trying to work out all the awful things that might come about doesn’t actually solve the problem in the slightest. Just leaves us exhausted – and lost. And boggy.

This can go on forever frankly. The worst bit is that we know all the worrying is pointless and harmful and it only makes us worry even more – about the effects of all the worrying. It’s bonkers..

I still worry far far too much BUT age and experience means I have watched the journey from original worry through to its natural end so many many times over that I have learned a bit about cutting off and minimising the damage.

I love comforting phrases, life messages – the things you see written over scenes of tropical islands on posters in corporate offices. They are best when delivered in person from someone you believe in though. Those people are the true sages in life. People for whom life seems to run on an even keel. Logic tells us they face no fewer problems than the rest of us so it’s obviously how they cope with them that sets them apart.

This is why I love CBT and Dr Jim White (!) (See ‘Emergency’). A key mantra can pull us up by our socks, long enough for a quick re-boot and fresh perspective. One of the most helpful phrases I ever heard was when I was holed up in a bar in torrential rain at the Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki, New Zealand. So torrential even us, a giddy pack of overexcited backpackers, realised we would simply have to sit it out. Hours passed and there wasn’t much to do except talk.

Ah Dave. Tall, blonde, tanned, sweet and a childrens’ social worker from somewhere in the Home Counties. This was, at it happens, one of my last adventures on a two year trip of such magnificence I still ache to be back most days.

Anyway. I had a deep worry. I’d fallen out with a friend, exhausted a final attempt at renewing my visa and was very low on funds. Which way to turn next…. every choice I could make seemed wrapped up in doom.

Wise Dave. This is what he said: “Even the biggest problem you can ever have will, come to an end. It will be solved, somehow.”

What you must NOT do, while waiting for that end (and for goodness sake, if you can hasten it, then please do so. Call that person, face that bully, phone that bank, report that horrible noisy neighbour) is let the act of worrying weaken your resilience and strength for next time. The longer the fretting goes on the bigger the chunk it takes out of your self worth and belief that you are a good, fine person who just happens to have some things you need to deal with.

Please. Be a Warrior, not a Worrier.

Thanks to Lars_Nissen for main image

There are times when you just do not know where to turn or what on earth to do next. Women, in particular, who seem happiest planning each second of the day to make it as productive as possible, can fall especially hard when something goes wrong and then before it has been sorted out in usual efficient fashion, another thing topples, bringing down a load of other stuff with it on the way.

By this point you will no longer have enough energy left to be able to look at things realistically or rationally. Nor will you be able to hear your inner voice, which has stored away memories of how you coped last time things fell apart and actually has some useful advice for you, which you are in no state to listen to. You will have the blinkers on and can only see disaster ahead.

In my extensive experience of coping with calamity (and calamity can refer to quite small problems if they happen at times of stress or if we are already low) over the years, I have looked for solutions/answers/advice from everywhere I could think of. I have had counselling, quizzed friends for hours, read self help books for ever, and now that we have fingertip answers, found myself demanding answers to impossible questions from the internet at any time of day or night:

“Panicking about tomorrow”, “Why does he hate me?” “Am I an awful person?” “How long before I feel better?”

(“NOOOOOO” was a particularly ill-thought out classic, but actually got some pretty interesting results….)

Anyway. It’s all horrible and if you are going to get any sleep, there are a couple of pointers I can give you which might just stop the screeching doom-laden ghastliness of the current horrible moment, at least long enough for you to regain some perspective and turn an ear to that poor inner voice politely trying to have a quick consolling word with you.

1: Stop, Look, Listen.

CBT is without doubt, the best solution for amost everyone but it is hard work, a long term investment and hard to get hold of. I suggest training yourself. This bloke is perfect: Dr Jim White. Try and get onto one of his six week online courses, they’re free, local mental health places might refer you. Buy his book maybe, I don’t know. But he has brilliant emergency strategies. With massive apologies to Dr Jim, using every ounce of Old Mum’s limited powers of recall, here is what I do with: Stop, Look, Listen.

Stop. Just stop that turmoil in your head for one minute.

Look at something nearby. Your hand, a robin on a tree, that wonky picture.

Listen. Really listen. Try to hear something far away then something near.

Nope. Not going to sort anything out in the long term. But it’s a way to stop the racing train and that can be enough time to regain control and look at things just a little more sensibly for right now.

101 Poems That Could Save Your Life: An Anthology of Emotional First Aid - Kindle edition by Goodwin, Daisy. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. 2: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dipped into this book. It has something on every crisis situation you can imagine and while most carry some message of hope, some are just downright sad which actually I find useful when in the throes of my own misery. It’s a bit like when you are dripping wet in a rainstorm and a pillock flying past in a car sends an arc of mud over your ankles. At that point you can almost find it funny.