Thursday, January 31, 2008

Worry

I had some family health issues to deal with recently, and I was reminded of a book I read recently by a business acquaintance. There was a particular section that I found very helpful this past weel; I will include some of it below:

The wise words of FDR, “The only thing wqe have to fear is fear itself,” might be amended by nature to “There is nothing to fear unless and until you feel fear.” Worry, wariness, anxiety and concern all have a purpose, but they are not fear. So any time your dreaded outcome cannot be reasonably linnked to pain or death and it isn’t a signal in the presence of danger, then it really shouldn’t be confused with fear. It may well be something worth trying to understand and manage, but worry will not bring solutions. It willl more likely distract you from finding solutions.

In the original form of the word, to worry someone else was to harass, strangle, or choke them. Liekwise, to worry oneself is a form of self-harassment. To give it less of a role in our lives, we must understand what it really is.

Worry is the fear we manufacture — it is not authentic. If you choose to worry about something, have at it, but do so knowing it is a choice. Most often, we worry because it provides some secondary reward. There are many variations, but a few of the most popular follow.

*Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don’t do anything about the matter.

*Worry is a way to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we’re doing something. (Prayer also makes us feel like we’re doing something, and even the most committed agnostic will admit that prayer is more productive than worry.)

*Worry is a cloying way to have connection with others, the idea being that to worry about someone shows love. The other side of this is the belief that not worrying about someone means you don’t care about them. As many worried-about people will tell you, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action.

*Worry is a protection against future disappointment. After taking an important test, for example, a student might worry about whether he failed. If he can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it, so to speak, by worrying about it, then failing won’t feel as bad when it happens. But there’s an interesting trade-off: Since he can’t do anything about it at this point anyway, would he rather spend those same two days not worrying, and then learn he failed? Perhaps most importantly, would he want to learn he had passed the test and spent two days of anxiety for nothing?"

The Gift of Fear
by Gavin DeBecker
p.347

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