I’m so scared about [being able to retire, pay for college, buy a car, etc.] that I’m having trouble breathing.
What should I do?
First of all, breathe.
I hear you and I’ve been there. Breathing is the most basic thing you can do and when you find yourself spinning up into a panic, stop and breathe. You might feel like you need to go faster, do more. Panic can make us feel absolutely crazy, almost like the world is ending.
Chances are good that the world isn’t ending. Even if it feels like it is.
Yes, worry can serve a good purpose – I’m not saying that it’s pointless. A little worry can lead us to be a little more cautious or try a little harder. A little worry can motivate us.
However, the irony of an overabundance of worry is that it can stop us dead in our tracks. And that isn’t helpful.
It’s so much easier said than done – don’t worry. Songs like the Bobby McFerrin song, Don’t Worry, Be Happy have always irritated me. Easy for you to say, I might think. You have nothing to worry about.
But is that true? Everybody has something to worry about.
And the good news and the bad news is that there is always more to worry about. I know that doesn’t sound like good news, but it really is.
One of my favorite authors, Dani Shapiro, wrote in one of her many wonderful books that she was a worrier – worrying about everything. One night while her husband and son were driving home from a friend’s house, a bottle of salad dressing thrown by some teenagers nearly hit their windshield, missing them by a fraction of an inch.
Now what might you do with this information? I mean, you could absolutely decide to take out your list of worries and add “being hit by salad dressing on the way home from an event.” You might even take that further and add “being hit by a jar of salsa on the way home from an event.” You might add “being hit by any condiment on the way home from an event.”
Or…or you could recognize that you are quite literally unable to worry about everything. It simply is not possible.
You might spend years worrying like crazy about how you were going to be able to afford to help your kids get cars when they became of driving age – you may have lain awake night after night fretting about this, and yet, when the time came, you found a way.
You found a way.
In the meantime, other (arguably more important) stressors were popping up left and right – things that it hadn’t occurred to you to worry about. And yet, as they happened, you dealt with them as well. A child getting into drugs and needing rehab, car accidents, your family restricting access to your niece, friendship losses, marriage losses, stock market crashes, and the list goes on.
While you are busy worrying about specific incidents (i.e., paying for college or your children finding happiness in life), other things are brewing. And I’m suggesting that this lead you to stop your worrying. Rather than amplifying your worries, take this as reason to relax a little. Take this as evidence that it’s okay to stop worrying.
What is worry after all? To worry is defined by the Oxford Languages dictionary as to “feel anxious or troubled about actual or potential problems.”
Yet, somehow when we look back on our lives, haven’t we already moved through all of those events that used to be “actual or potential problems?” They are behind us. One way or another, we survived.
I could have been a professional worrier from a very young age. I worried about everything from turning into an inanimate object after my death to worrying about what I would do if I were unable to have children. I worried about wolves tunneling into the house and I worried about our house getting broken into for a third time. I worried about my health (with my constant stomachaches and headaches). And yet, somehow here I am. Wolves did not tunnel into my home, but I had a scary incident with a stranger on a solo hike. My house was not (yet) broken into for a third time, but cars have been crashed. My health actually improved and my daughters now face their own health challenges.
The worrying itself didn’t help anything.
After all, worrying is you assuming that you know the right way for things to work out and then realizing that you don’t know the path to get to that “right way.” Let’s challenge the assumption that you know the right way.
But you can’t possibly account for all that might happen in your life that is OUTSIDE OF YOUR CONTROL. Let’s take as an example, worrying about how you are going to pay for college for your three children. Then let’s fast forward: one of your children isn’t interested in going to college; another gets a full scholarship to help offset the cost; and the third is offered tuition assistance through her employer. All of those years of worry for absolutely nothing. However, in the meantime, maybe you’ve had career changes, a divorce and remarriage or even the illness of a child.
One way or another, we do tend to get through the problems in our lives. So when you find yourself unable to breathe.
Stop. As impossible as that might feel. Stop, close your eyes and take a deep breath (or 10). Feel your feet on the floor, and imagine that your feet are connected through invisible lines of energy all the way down to the solid earth. Remind yourself that the ground is there. You are grounded.
You do have the answers inside you. Trust that. You will find yourself on the other side of this problem and the next problem and the one after that.
And let go of a certain outcome. Let go of needing certainty in this journey. The only certainty you have is this exact moment. You exist right now and for as long as you continue to have problems, you can always come back to the knowledge that right now, you exist. Breathe that in. No matter the problem, be it big or small, it is unlikely to take you out. So, just feel your feet into the ground and know that in 5 or 10 or 20 years whatever it is that you are worrying about will be well behind you on the path.
You have permission to quit worrying today.
Breathe and know that things will sort themselves out and you will be okay.
This too shall pass.
