Worry about things you can’t control and outcomes that are dependent upon other people responding (or reacting) is at the heart of anxiety.
Our modern struggle with anxiety comes from three areas: Our desire for immediacy of outcome (or resolution); Our lack of internal resilience; Our impatience with process as a method of accomplishing goals.
We narcotize our worry, or anxiety, with food, alcohol, drugs, violence (self-directed and other-directed) and even lately video games, social media, and coloring books.
The thing is, sitting with worry, and then learning to have faith and let that worry go, is the only way to find the peace that we are craving.
The process of getting from worry to letting go of worry can be mediated and adjudicated by meditation, prayer, and journaling (we forget past victories over worry unless they are recorded…memory is a slippery thing) but when we combine the desire for immediacy, control, and impatience, then hurry sneaks in.
And we are too busy to remember past victories. Too busy to engage in a letting go process. Too busy to do anything but worry.
The ways out of this are easy, but they require self-knowledge, self-direction, and self-regulation to work.
Not more distractions.
