
“Worried Sick…?”
Worry, fear, anxiety, can make you sick. Really ill.
Sometimes, worry, or fear, is justified. We can have a crisis. It needs to be addressed. We can fail to address it, and have it hanging over us like an omen.
Or we can decide to face it, deal with it. The very act of doing something about it gets us seeking a solution. That’s what gets the creativity in us moving. We search and explore and dig for the nugget that’ll get us by, help us survive, solve the problem. Our mind is in a different place. We may be still fearful, but not overwhelmed, still worried, but not petrified.
We begin to function and adapt to the situation, still concerned, but not deeply worried. We’re dealing with it, coping.
But the kind of worry that makes us sick isn’t so much the crisis, which can be faced, or parked.
What sickens us is the chronic anxiety, the vague worry at the back of our minds, the apprehension of something being not quite right, which is frequently the product of an overactive imagination.
But the effect is real.
We need to remind ourselves about the emergence of real or imaginary problems., and learn to recognize them.
The former need to be seen, confronted and dealt with.
The latter don’t exist, but we can let them into our lives, unseen, unbidden.
And they can kill you.