Schedule Your Worries

I read some article a few months ago about scheduling your worrying. That is, if you’re a compulsive worrier, try this: schedule a time slot like 6-7pm that is allotted to worrying, and get it all done then. If you find yourself worrying outside of that time period in a way that does not need to be addressed now, you say, “Hey, it’s not time for that yet. I’ll do it later.” It’s like the worry equivalent of no snacking between meals.

I thought I might try this today, specifically with worrying about my health. Until my allotted hour this evening – with the exception of remembering necessary steps like calling the pharmacy or messaging a doctor – I will not research my health issues, I will not research treatments, I will not read online support groups or post in them, I will not express worries to my parents about my health, I will not plot my next medication or lifestyle changes.

My instinct is to say that writing blog posts outside of “worry time” is ok, since this is a positive connection to friends and the outside world, whereas worrying about health is typically isolating, obsessive, and rarely as fruitful as one likes. I also think that activism and reading about issues facing patients and doctors more broadly is likely ok.

I’ve been doing this experiment for roughly an hour and I’m humbled by how difficult it is.

I realized there was a bit of a non sequitur in my last post. It may not have been immediately clear to the reader – or myself – if/why it was connected to the rest of the piece. I wrote:

“The superego harps on us to personally cultivate a calmness and adaptability that has already been stamped out of us by a polluted, sick society. Don’t take a medication, just take on a Sisyphean regime of meditation, gratitude, yoga, unlearning negative thoughts, elimination diets, essential oils, and all manner of things that counterbalance the level of neuroticism and self-curating bullshit you will need in order to actually survive. And that you probably need in order to feel better, as anyone who has tried to get anything done within the medical system can attest.”

I believe when I wrote this I was trying to yell back at the part of me that still (wrongly) blames myself or my attitude for my current situation. This is the part of me that turns to woo, magical thinking, and hopes of spontaneous remission when things are going very poorly, and then typically ignores those things once things are going well for reasons that usually don’t seem tied to any of the woo. Rather than approaching care for the holistic body-mind as a good in itself that can bring benefits for health, but not Solve Everything, I tend to get drawn in by marketing language that suggests cure or remission. It’s a little odd, because if a medication or procedure doesn’t work for me, I don’t blame myself for that. No drama there; it just wasn’t for me. Yet if a special diet or “brain-retraining program” doesn’t work for me, I must not have been trying hard enough – at least, this is often the irrefutable rhetoric of their vendors. (Note that I haven’t actually splurged on one of the brain programs. The funny thing is, my guess based on reviews is that the most beneficial thing they’d do is help me to do is to calmly cope with limitation, not make limitation disappear as they claim.)

So I don’t wish to bash meditation or yoga or anything that keeps you calmly rooted in your body. I wish to bash any time I have told myself everything is in my head and under my conscious or unconscious control. I wish to bash the times I still tell myself, “That healer I saw would have helped me if I just stuck with it for longer.” I wish to bash the times I’ve told myself, “That therapist was the only person who could have helped me.”

That “blaming” or “fixating” part of me does another similar thing. It insists that any time not spent researching treatments or doctors is a wasted opportunity. It’s that constant nag that freelancers know, the “If I am not working on work, something is wrong.” The gaping reality here is that most of that researching happens when I am in too much of a fog or state of worry to garner real help from it. While I am glad to be empowering myself with knowledge, I might as well be doing 1 solid hour per day of this empowerment/worrying and it would probably have a similar positive impact to 6 hours – without the same damage to my personal relationships, sanity, and balance.

Right now, things feel so far out of my hands. I have had so much drama this week that one would think I would worry more. But I have caring and listening doctors, something that has made all the difference in the past years. I’m taking a step today to let them worry a bit. Not me. I’ll be over here with my heating pad.