ahka | Worries.... NO MORE!!!

I used to be such a worrier. I worried about everything and everyone (real and fantasy) around me all the time. Worries caused a lot of anxieties and stress. My palms were always sweaty from being nervous (they are sometimes sweaty nowadays but for real reasons). I would let my worry thoughts take over my life. Life was pretty dark, sad and dangerous in my eyes.

For example, I would wait for a friend to pick me up from home to go to a party and I would worry about what to wear, how to get ready, will I be ready on time, would I look good? (Reasonable worrying, things I have control over). And then after the logistics were taken care of the other wave of totally unreasonable thoughts would come to my mind such as “oh, what if this friend wouldn’t pick me up? This friend will just forget about me, who needs me anyway? All my friends will get together and have great time without me. Or wait (3^rd wave), friend can get in a terrible car accident on the way and it is all my fault that I asked to pick me up, I probably lost my friend already, what a tragedyL!!! My friends’ parents will be devastated and they will hate me forever and all our friends will blame me for asking this friend to pick me up, (4^th wave) I killed my friend!!! How am I going to live now? I can’t!!" etc….

After having these thoughts I would even start crying and have a very heavy rock on my chest. At this time I would not feel like going anywhere anymore, I was in very sad grieving mood that would take me hours to get out of my mind at the parties.

Can you see that with each wave, the situation was just getting darker and darker making me feel worse and worse literally taking me to the suicidal ideas out of nothing. All it was just my thoughts. I let my head go in that direction.

At one time, THANKS G-D, I had to take an elective course at the U of MN towards my Family Social Science degree. My advisor suggested taking Introduction to counseling class. The course fit well into my schedule and to say the truth, I didn’t know what was “counseling” so I thought that I will find out in this introductory course.

So, in this course we have been learning a lot of counseling theories and instructor divided us into small groups. Each group was assigned to present on one theory. My group was assigned to present on Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) by Ellis.

During that semester, my parents went to Israel for 2 weeks and I was constantly worried about them getting in the place where suicide bommer would explode or that their bus or car or airplane would crash , plus all of the home and school responsibilities. This REBT homework assignment literally helped me stay sane during that stressful time. Ever since I learned about REBT my life became so much brighter and lighter. My memory improved and my brain started functioning so much better! So, what is REBT and how did it help me?

Well, REBT helped me to become aware of my irrational chains of thoughts 1^st.

2^nd, once I’ve become aware, I started disputing these irrational thoughts or sorting out through them (do I need to worry about it now or should I do it later? Do I need to worry about it at all or not? Is it a real worry or just my fantasy? Etc…).

3^rd I have learned to stop these thoughts before they started to impact my emotional and nervous system. You would ask how? It is very simple! As soon as I realize that I begin to let these irrational scenarios into my head I would make a very strong attempt to distract myself with something positive and immediately abandon these thoughts. I would even tell myself: “Stop it, look at the flower!” (or sun or whatever that is pleasant at the moment).

It wasn’t easy, it took a lot of practice. Now, I can stop the irrational scenarios before they get to make any harm to myself and go deeper and wider. Once they are in, getting comfy in your head, it is a lot more difficult to get rid of them. I often have an image that I opened a door a little bit but then immediately realized that there is “a storm of birds or insects” outside, so I need to immediately close the door not to let any of them in and look realistically at the peace in my warm and cozy home with the clear air.

Every day, many times through the day such worries want to get in but I would NOT LET THEM SPIN OUT OF CONTROL!!! I would STOP IT the MOMENT they APPEAR.

Spinning worries in our heads is also a waste of time for our brains that clog our memory and good functioning of the brain (that is my personal observation and conclusion, should look at the research findings).