Mark Mathews explains how to deal with worry.
Worry
Out of care and sympathy, for any compassionate sensitive imaginative person, it is quite normal to experience feelings of worry and concern about the difficulties and misfortunes that are experienced by others. It is also quite normal to worry about matters that could have a damaging or disruptive effect on your own health and wellbeing.
The nature of the emotions you feel may be greatly influenced by the way in which you relate to the situation. This will in turn be influenced by your values and beliefs. These in themselves will have been partly conditioned by how you identify with what the situation is. This may have been partly shaped by your past experiences, including such factors as your family, friends, political, religious, cultural influences.
You may have noticed that different people may respond to the same kind of challenge in very different ways. Some people may laugh, some may cry, others may respond with anger, frustration or a shrug of the shoulders.
It is not what you see hear, taste or smell that determines how you feel, it the way in which you respond. In how many other ways could you respond? one way? Ten ways? A hundred ways? Your imagination is the limit.
Worry is the way in which the unconscious is telling you that something could be wrong or might be going wrong. It is in itself a disempowering state. Once you have received the warning message from your unconscious, you need to do something with it. Holding onto worrying feeling will just make a potentially bad situation worse. Good management involves taking control over those things that you are able to influence; that mostly means yourself.
First you need to find a way of putting things into perspective. You need to step out of it and let it go for a while. You need to connect more fully with all the knowledge skills experience and abilities which you do have and which will enable you to deal with the situation more constructively and or be of a better support and encouragement for the others who you care about.
I have written previously about the power of a directed mind. ( Ref…)The good thing about the fact that we are not able to focus on more than a very few things at any one time is that when you are focussed on one thing you are not focussing on other things.
Remember the calming sequence: 1. Uninterrupted breathing, 2. Positive face, 3. Balanced posture, 4. Release muscle tension, 5. Take back mental control. (ref…)
One good way to detach from the situation is to get it all out of your head by writing it all down.
- Leave it for a while if you can.
- Interrupt the pattern
- Get your head out of the way for a while by for example going for a good walk, a swim or bicycle ride.
- Come back later and read what you had written.
- Read it in a detached kind of way as if you were reading something that someone else had written.
As a really good caring friend:
- What questions would you ask?
- What thoughts would you have?
- What advice would you give?
If you really care and want to act in a creative responsible way, you are much more able to be of value and help if you are in a positive frame of mind.
You are not on your own. Sometimes we all need a little bit of a hand from those who can use natural, respectful, safe ways to facilitate the body’s own natural tendency to heal and be in harmony with itself in a physical physiological mental and emotional way.
For more information please email markomathews@aol.com
