Tired of worrying so much
Weekend Worriers! Graham here.
There’s a line in a guided meditation I’ve done a few times recently.
“Don’t worry about the future.”
There aren’t many people who could say this in a way that feels anything but patronising.
Just stop worrying? Sure buddy, I’ll get right on that.
But this isn’t any old guided meditation. It’s Alan Watts - he of the irascible humour and the twinkle in his voice that makes you think, ‘this guy knows something I don’t.’
So when Alan Watts says “don’t worry about the future” - like it’s the easiest thing in the world - it somehow seems within reach. For a moment at least.
In this guided meditation, that line sparks a curious feeling in me every time. A little shiver of possibility.
What might that be like? To not worry about the future?
I have spent most of my life worrying about the future
When I was a kid, I worried that my parents wouldn’t come home after a night out. I worried that our apartment would be broken into. I worried that, when I closed my eyes to go to sleep, I might suddenly go blind, so I’d keep opening them to check that I could still see.
(Not the most restful sleep strategy.)
As I got older, the worries became more sophisticated, but no less fanciful.
I’d worry about my relationships. I’d worry about my health.
And at age eighteen (a sign I’d reached full big feels maturity) I began to worry about worrying.
Kicking things up a notch
At eighteen, I had my first serious girlfriend. (To be fair, we were both pretty serious. It was kind of our thing.)
I was living alone, doing a pretty good impression of an independent adult. And that’s when the thoughts began.
They started as worries about my girlfriend - her wellbeing, the future of our relationship - but soon twisted into something I found much more disturbing. Intrusive thoughts and images of bad things happening to her. Then the same thing again, but with other people I loved, like my Dad.
I was deeply confused and overwhelmed. So I worried some more. I worried a lot about what this all meant.
Was I evil? Possessed? Or just finally cracking up?
Asking for help
This prompted my first foray into the world of mental health care.
It was something of a rocky start. My trusted family GP said very casually, ‘well they’re definitely psychotic symptoms...’
I didn’t hear much of what she said after that.
Looking back, I think she just meant, ‘this is a mental health thing’, but her choice of words was... alarming.
(Years later I would go on to experience things you might actually label ‘psychotic’ experiences. Years after that, I'd find ways to integrate those experiences into my wider view of reality. But as a teenager, the ‘P’ word was a terrifying one.)
Still, she did put me onto a psychiatrist who turned out to be just what I needed at that point on my big feels path.
A chemical explanation
The psychiatrist was an older man, and he calmly stepped me through a few different theories on what was happening to me. The different schools of thought he’d seen over his long career.
In our half-hour together, we ended up settling on the brain science explanation. These intrusive thoughts were just chemicals misfiring in my brain. Nothing more.
As I’ve written about many times in this newsletter, I’d soon find that frame to be a limiting one. But at the time it was a useful placeholder.
You mean I’m not evil?? Great!!
The thoughts return
I went on SSRIs for about a year, which stopped the intrusive thoughts, but came with a host of other effects I wasn’t so keen on.
So a year later, I stopped the drugs, and the thoughts came back.
At first, they looked the same as the first time around. Unwanted thoughts and images, always about someone I loved.
But more and more, the whole experience took on a more abstract quality.
I called them obsession-clouds. When they’d hit, they wouldn’t just be thoughts bouncing around my brain, but a feeling in my whole body, like there was something fundamentally-yet-unexplainably flawed about my whole existence. A kind of full-bodied bruise of unknown origin.
These obsession-clouds could last for weeks or months at a time, usually sparked by some innocuous event or comment that set off one of my go-to worries.
Worry x Worry = ???
The formula was simple but devastating. I'd worry about something. Then I'd worry about how much I was worrying about it. (Will this be another month-long spiral?)
It was worry multiplied.
Over the years that followed, these obsession-clouds remained a feature of my internal landscape. I learned to navigate these periods with a little more grace. A little less struggle (‘well, I guess this is what’s happening, let’s strap in’).
But I think I’m still learning.
Eighteen years later, life provides regular reminders of just how uptight and worried I can be over all kinds of things.
The way the wind is blowing
It’s been windy here in Melbourne recently.
In the midst of a pandemic lockdown, here is how that simple, meteorological fact registered in my brain, as described by my girlfriend Honor to her sister, Amy.
When Honor told me about this exchange, my initial reaction was, ‘what?? You told Amy??!’
But then she showed me the text. And I was really very touched.
Here were two people I'm close with, talking about one of my little worry-spirals - not as a problem that needed fixing, or a character flaw. Simply as a quirky but loveable thing that happened. One of the many updates of the day between sisters in lockdown.
At age eighteen, I’d be terrified to think anyone was talking about my worries, even people I know and love. The inner workings of my brain were something to be hidden and managed, not shared.
To be honest, I’d probably have felt the same way at twenty-eight, or more recently than that even.
But I am realising I am blessed to have people in my life who see me in all my neurotic glory.
In truth, I think I’ve always had at least someone in my life who could offer this to me, but it’s taken me many years to begin to truly trust them with the full picture of what goes on in my brain. (And of course there’s still only one or two who get the full full picture).
But I’m getting there.
What if...
The sheets-on-the-line dilemma. In moments like this, when the full-body grip is in full effect, those words of Alan Watts feel very far away.
“Don’t worry about the future.”
In those moments, I am very much worried about the future. What if the neighbour has the virus? What if the wind is blowing at just the right angle? What if Honor gets it and it majorly complicates her recent health issues?
But then later that day I sit down to meditate again. I let Alan Watts’ voice bubble away in my ears, and I get curious again.
What would that be like? To not worry?
So here’s where I’m at. . .
I know this much. I’m tired of worrying about the future. I was tired of worrying about the future before 2020. So, you know, it’s getting a bit much.
And it’s more than that. That thought we’ve probably all had before. ‘I’m tired of being myself.’
But I have a glimpse of something, seen in those quiet, spacious moments with Alan Watts or Ram Dass or Tara Brach. Seen in the moments I can let the people close to me see what’s really going on, without feeling I need to manage their impression of me.
Here’s the best I can articulate at it just now.
I am not my worries.
Maybe it’s not that I’m tired of being myself. It’s that I’m tired of who I think I have to be to live safely in this world.
Someone constantly on the lookout. Someone only half-listening to whoever I’m talking to, busy scanning for more potential threats - whether they’re physical threats (the wind blowing this way or that) or social threats (does this person realise what a neurotic mess I am?).
I’m tired of being tight when others seem relaxed.
I’m tired of being so damn in control.
So what?
I don’t have an answer to all this, but I do have an intriguing question.
What would it be like to not worry so much?
And for now maybe that’s enough to go on. In the spirit of not being in control, maybe I don’t need to have the exact next step?
As Tara Brach says, “loosen loosely”, otherwise the whole process of relaxing becomes just another thing to control.
So... I wonder what happens next?
Tell me what you think?
As always, I'd love to know if this issue brought up things you want to share. Your thoughts may help inspire (or feature in) future newsletters.
