Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 43 (How to Stop Worrying All the Time)

Do you worry that something bad is going to happen when things are good?

Do you worry about the future and all the things that could happen?

When you take a step back and see that your need to worry is based around control your whole world view will change. 

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Transcript

Welcome to the Let Go and Be Free podcast, A podcast for those who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family. I'm your host, Ron Vitale, author of The let go and be free 100 daily reflections for adult children of alcoholics series. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to visit, let go and be free.com. And with that, let's get on with the show. Hello, and welcome to this week's show wanted to take a break.

This week, we have gone through the first four steps of adult children of alcoholics 12 steps, we've gone through step one, step two, step three, step four. And I thought this would be a good time to just kind of take a break, kind of focus on a different topic. One, it would help me with my creative juices just to focus on something different. And then to have me kind of walk through some of the challenges that I'm having, in real time, real life, something that I thought could help you as you're listening through your day. So this episode, you know how to stop worrying?

All the time, I wanted to kind of break this apart, kind of get a deep dive discussion on why do we do that? Different techniques and how to deal with worry, how to stop worrying, and what to do when we're in the moment when, you know, especially if you wake up in the middle of night, and your brain is kind of spinning, and you keep thinking of like all the things that you've got on your head. So let's get right into it. This is something that, for me, I do struggle with, on a pretty regular basis about worry, and want to break it down. Typically, there's multiple types of paths with with weary. So for example, if I'm going through a really good time, everything is going great. You know, life is wonderful work is wonderful. Family Life is wonderful. There is no rolling thought, in the back of my head, that basically, you know, whispers: Well, something bad is about to happen. You know, it's got to happen soon.

Be prepared for, you know, when that bad thing happens. I don't know what it is. I just know that it's coming. And, you know, I start worrying about that, like, what could it be? And I start thinking like, what, what haven't I seen? What can I prepare for? And when that happens, and I would think that many of you out there have struggled with similar thoughts of, you know, you're going through a time where things are good in your life, and then you start worrying about what's gonna happen next, like, you know, when the other shoe is gonna drop.

For me, see if you can identify with this is that often I have those thoughts, because I'm thinking back, you know, part of me is thinking back when I was a kid, and there were circumstances that happened within, you know, my family that were beyond my control, that I would be, you know, having a great time with friends would come home, and then boom, I walk into something I didn't even know what the heck was going on. You know, in my world went from, oh, I'm having a pretty good day, too. It's the end of the world. And I can never understand that, you know, as a kid, in that, you know, my life was being pulled in other directions. Without my say, so like, I had no control over there.

Those circumstances I could be having a great day at school, I could come home and then boom, things just exploded. And I just was like, There's fighting in the family. There's stuff going on. There's, you know, bad financial situations coming out that I hear about or, you know, just really bad things, you know, that would happen. And I began to, I guess, prepare for those times. Because I just didn't like feeling that my life was out of control. I've that that's one of the things that's really like a trigger for me. I said I want to be prepared as best I can. Because as a kid, I would go in situation thinking everything is wonderful. And then I turn around and go Just be like sucker punch with, you know, a horrible situation, and then get wrapped up, you know, into things and just not know what to do. I felt lost, I felt continued confused, out of control, worried, stressed out, fearful, you know, are we going to be able to stay where we're living?

Do we have enough money? Don't we have enough money? Is this person leaving are people breaking up? Like it was just chaos. And I think that is the key word chaos. There was, you know, periods of stability. But then often, the chaos would rear its ugly head when I least would be ready for it. And I started detecting those patterns. You know, like, okay, things are going along. Great. That means something bad's gonna happen soon. So what can I do about that? What coping mechanisms, can I, you know, utilize and learn to make certain that when the chaos starts again, I'm not going to be caught off guard. And so I think that's where a lot of my worrying started. Just trying to be prepared for the worst, because you knew the worst was going to be coming in at any particular time. You know, just didn't know when, so you had to be ready and prepared.

And that meant control, control anything I could around me control that, I knew that my circumstances around me that I could control would always be in order, you know, I would go to school and do well at school, I would, you know, I was prompt with, you know, meeting and hanging out with my friends. If I said I was going to do something I kind of followed through with it, I became very conscientious and made certain that, you know, prayed a lot at that time in my life, because I was a young kid, and go into church a lot. And I would pray to Mary, we I pray to God, I pray all over the place, hoping that life would be well, and I would be protected. And unfortunately, you know, that's not the case in life. And that there, there was a lot of bad things that happened, I wouldn't be having this podcast about, you know, addiction and alcoholism and dysfunction. If if, you know, I didn't go through the hard times as a kid.

And I think, you know, when I look back, it wasn't it wasn't just one moment in time. It was, you know, more than a decade over time of different circumstances, different people, different marriages, you know, things that my brother and I in the family unit we had to learn to adapt to. And when chaos erupted, we each had our own mechanisms coping mechanisms to, to get by. And for me, you know, I threw myself into my studies, I threw myself into trying to be, you know, the best person, I can be like a student, that super responsible person, introverted, quiet, because I was just afraid of, you know, everything around me, I just couldn't figure out what the heck was going on.

And with all those thoughts with everything that was happening, you know, I did discover that imagination and creativity weren't outlets for me. I could read a book and escape in that world, like write a book, and can escape in that world. So that's, they were my coping mechanisms of, I've got this ability to write and be creative. What if I use that, and that could help me. It didn't solve the problems. But at least it helped me at that time to get through the difficult periods. But I still worried, you know, a lot worried about, you know, was my mom's marriage gonna stay together? Would we, you know, when person lost her job, would we have enough money to pay the bills?

Did we have to move back in, you know, with my grandparents, all kinds of stress and worry that we're that we're, you know, going all through, you know, through my life, and I look at that now as an adult and realize that I didn't have control in a lot of aspects of my life and there wasn't this stability that I had wanted and I hoped for, and because of that As I started, you know, worrying, and, and thinking that the worry was going to help me mentally prepare for the worst.

But really what it only did was, it got me caught in a cycle of stress, anxiety, panic, fear, and they would just kind of feed off on each other. So, when I look at that, I had a couple options as a kid, option one was control what I can, could, you know, could control. And I did that, you know, I could be good at school, I could say something and be true to my word, you know, I can follow through, you know, I could escape in books, you know, in my writings and hanging out with my friends. But I didn't learn healthy mechanisms of how to deal with worry, I use the worry and control to kind of act as a as a barrier against the chaos, that if chaos erupted, then I'd be like, Okay, let me go into crisis mode. crisis mode meant I need to do these particular things, and I got really good at that, you know, being hyper responsible, making certain that I read the emotions in the room, I became really good at reading people, and understanding like, okay, this person just rolled their eyes or looked a certain way that that meant that our argument was going to go this way or that way, or listening and realizing that, you know, arguing that was taking place in the other room meant, there would be a crest, you know, a crash in the argument soon.

And then my mom would come to us, and we'd, you know, talk to my brother and I, and then, you know, we'd hear what was going on, and then we would be prepared for what was next, like, there was the cycles, that just would happen. And I became really good at riding those waves of chaos. On unfortunately, you know, as an adult, having that stress, and weary all the time, did not necessarily serve me well.

You know, as I got older, because when you worry all the time, you're wasting energy and time, and it's not solving any problems, you know, worrying, you know, just trying to give an example, worrying that I'm going to lose my job because of X, Y, or Z. Well, if you know if that's going to happen, if I'm going to lose a job, because budget cuts or, you know, whatever political situations, whatever it is, I can't control that. But the aspect of not being able to control something would actually increase my worry. And I would, you know, get into that cycle of like when I need to worry more now.

And I would talk about it, you know, per separate on it, talk to a best friend, talk to my spouse, talk to friends, talk to my co workers. Oh my god, what if we lose my job? What if we're all gonna get fired? What if this what if that, you've heard rumblings? Have you heard any rumblings? What have you heard, that does nothing to solve the problem. So what I realized is one I had to find techniques and skills to deal with wary, because if I was worrying all the time, I wasn't going to be able to perform at my best, I was going to be paralyzed.

Because if you worry all the time, you're not getting things done. You're just basically trapped, though, you might be thinking that the worry is going to help you because you're kind of, you know, getting the worry off your mind. But there comes a point where you need to kind of cut that off, and then decide some sort of action. So I'll, I'll share a more personal story. When I was younger, and I was in college, you know, and been in a relationship, and it was a rocky one. And it was one where, you know, we'd be madly in love. And then there'd be a big argument.

And then I'd be stressed out and weary. Oh my god, is this the end? You know, are we gonna break up? And then we would break up because often times I was creating so much stress, like, are you to break up with me this happened and that happened and we argue more and the cycle of dysfunction. And we break up and then we get back together again. And the act of breaking up and then worrying. I you know, I would be thinking constantly like like, 24/7 my God.

You know, are we going get back together, we get back together Oh, no, are we going to break up? When are we going to break up, there was like patterns that I realized of like, okay, I'm now back together with her. But if I keep acting a certain way, we're going to get into another big argument. And then we're gonna break up again. And that per separating that worry constant, what I realized, you know, in talking about this therapy is that I needed to exercise like, basically my muscle brain, you know, and what I mean by that is, when I realized that I get into a period of, you know, incessant worry, one of the ways that I've learned over time to overcome that is to allow myself a set amount of time to worry, or think about whatever the situation is, as much as I want.

And let's say it's, I'll just make up a number five minutes. So at the end of the five minutes, then I'd say enough of the worrying, ending to move on to something else and start doing something else. And then when the worry would come back again, I would say, Okay, this time, I'm only going to worry, three minutes or something like that, and then do that. And then get back to whatever I was doing. And each time that I was struggling with worry, I keep bringing the amount of time, like less and less until I be, I was able to get a handle on it and say, Okay, now, my brain has shifted elsewhere, I'm going to move on, and I'll be perfectly honest with you, this was not easy to do.

And I failed miserably when I first started this. So that was around the time that I started going to the adult children of alcoholic meetings, and started hearing similar stories of people dealing with worry, and fear and panic attacks and anxiety, and all kinds of stress. And, for me, the Serenity Prayer, you know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things, you know, I cannot change courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. That prayer basically saved me. And what I mean by that is, it was a way for me. And again, if you're not religious, you literally just take the word God out of it. The whole premise of the, you know, those sentences, is understanding what you can control and what you can't control, and where he is often centered around control.

And when you're worrying about things you can't control, oh, my God, is she going to break up with me? Oh, my God, I'm gonna lose my job because of XYZ. The economy's bad. They're they're making cuts, they're this or that. There's things that I can control. And there's things that I can't control in life. And when I'd get into that worry mode, I literally just would would recite in my head, the Serenity Prayer again, and again and again.

And I use it as a means of parsing out, what can I control? And what I what I couldn't control, you know? Is she going to break up with me? No, if I hadn't done anything, you know, quote, unquote, wrong, and we're not arguing then if she decided to break up with me, there's nothing I can do about that. She's decided to break up with me. I can talk about it with her. If it didn't work out, then I move on. But I didn't have that foundation of self assurance, self confidence and self esteem when I was like 20 and 21. I was a wreck and a mess. And I felt that I needed to be in a relationship, because that was going to save me and I being I saw myself as like broken was with someone who had her own challenges and that together when we work together, we'd be perfect and whole and love and everything would be wonderful. Well, yeah. You know how that worked out? It didn't. And you know, when I think of that time, and how stressed out I was, I mean, I was just like a worrywart constantly stressed out.

But when I started using the Serenity Prayer, again, you can take the god part out of it. It is really helping you to understand the boundary line between what you can control in your own life and what you cannot control. We cannot control other people we cannot control You know, the future, we can control many things in our lives, what we do have control of it's pretty straightforward. You know, how are we going to take care of ourselves?

How do we treat others? You know, what type of job do we want to do? You know, and what I mean by that is, if you're stressed out, and you're worrying about am I going to get laid off and my this or that, then you could start looking for another job. You know, you could start paving the way for a different future for yourself. It's possible, you know, if you're stressed out about your relationship, you can do something about you can go to therapy, you can go to adult children of alcoholics meeting, you can talk to a friend, you can start journaling, there are positive things, actions that you can do, instead of worrying, like I used to 24/7, weary, weary, weary, weary and never got me anywhere.

But once I started going therapy, once I started going to adult children, alcoholic meetings, I found avenues to one in a healthy way, express what I was feeling and how to process that, and then to learned healthy skills to deal with the problems in my life, instead of just worrying, I was able to say, you know, I can write down in a journal, how I feel every day, all my worries, all my fears, all my hopes, my dreams. And then I can say, I need to let this go, I need to move on. And I'm going to do these things, I'm going to go to work, I'm going to go to school, I'm going to do these active things, to help myself, instead of be sitting somewhere.

And then my brain was separating, you know, on the worry, and the fear, that just didn't do anything to help me when I just stressed all the time, and was worried all the time. So, you know, in my brain, there was the couple techniques to help me one, the give yourself a certain amount of time to worry whatever's on your mind.

And then you cut that off. And then you start doing something else go on with your day. And then when you're you feel that rise of stress, again, you give yourself a little bit more time, but less time and kind of work that down. And I had moments when totally failed with that. I needed other skills, other things to help me and what that was things like deep breathing with meditation, you know, purposefully, taking a moment to clench my fists as hard as I could, and then slowly breathe in through my nose. I would then hold it, and then slowly release my hands, and then exhale, slowly.

And that action, repeating that several times, through different parts of my body, my you know, clenched my feet, clench, you know, my mouth, clenched my eyeballs, really tight, my eyes really tight, going through the entire body. And doing that breathing technique was a physical way. For me to say, I am in control of my body, it is my body, I can feel the stress, I feel the worry, I'm going to accept that I feel that way. But this is a skill that I can use to release that stress, and remind myself that I'm not trapped in that cycle of worry all the time. And that was extremely helpful.

And again, it was a simple thing. Like I was able to do, it wasn't like I had to learn a class or anything or, you know, I started taking these different skills, and then putting them together as a toolkit to help me when things got really complicated and difficult. You know, I was like, oh, you know, if I'm stressed out, I can do the technique of worry for a certain amount of time, and then let it go, and then come back again, instead of five minutes. And I'm gonna do two minutes to two minutes. I'm gonna do one minute. And then sometimes that worked. And then other times, I was like, You know what, I'm going to write down what I feel. I'm just going to sit down at a computer, or get a piece of paper, write whatever I want and that I'm not even going to save it. I'm just going to like, like symbolically excise it, you know, like, get it out of me.

You know, take the paper, tear it up, throw it in the trash, you know, write on the computer, keep my eyes closed, right. Everything was on my brain, freestyle writing. When I'm finished, shut it off. Let it go away. And that act of release helped me realize that hey, this is another good skill to help me when I'm feeling weary and stressed out. And then meditation, breathing techniques. Another skill that I added to my toolkit, I found personally that like physical work, such as cleaning, or gardening, you know, or walking are running also are ways for me to help deal with worry.

So, over time, I was able to take these separate set of skills. And again, put them into, you know, this like mental toolkit. And I would say, okay, when I'm stressed out, these are the things that I can use to help me, these are the things that work to basically, allow me to let go of the worry, and then overlay them on basic things such as sleep, right? Eat, right, you know, take time to have some fun, you know, like laugh, you know, enjoy life instead of worrying all the time and being stressed out. So I was able to see patterns of like, oh, everything's going great. And then let's say there's rumors of layoffs at work. And if that were to happen, I'd start stressing out.

And then I'd be like, Okay, what can I do to help myself here, instead of just wasting, you know, the entire day worrying? Like, I'm going to do the best job that I can. Maybe I can talk to my manager and say, I hear that there's possible layoffs. Is that true? Yes, or No? We don't know. Yes, it is. No, it's not true. Whatever that answer is, that would then give me a path of forward going forward, what can I control, I've got some answers, or it's ambiguous. I can decide, stick it out, and just keep moving forward. Or I can start networking and figure out maybe I want another job, and start looking into that. So that way, if I am, you know, like, if I were to lose that job, then I have a plan and a path for moving forward.

And often with problems in life, they don't typically just happen, yes, there are situations, you know, like, horrible situation, someone passes away, someone is really sick, and might come out of the blue, there's accidents, even in those times where chaos erupts in your life, having the skills, these tools will help you feel calmer, and more at peace, instead of allowing the weary to basically control your life. And what's happening is that for me, I then get back into that I feel like a little kid again, the world around me is out of control, I don't have any control.

So I'm just going to stress about this and gets caught in a in a cycle of dysfunction. Well, to break that dysfunction, I listed out a couple skills that I've learned from my toolkit to help me and that's something that I hope it will be helpful for you as well. So I wanted to take this apart, you know, talk about worry, it's something that I struggle with. And I hope that you can identify and times that you were in your life well, you know, just to think a lot of times where he's about control lack of it, and to think about what we can control and what we can't control, and then quickly realign our brain focusing on the things that we can control, while using either mental exercises, physical, you know, breathing, exercise, meditation, and then journal writing therapy, or adult children, alcoholic meetings, all those skills, all put together is a really powerful set of tools that could help you deal with worry. So again, I hope this has been helpful.

I know you know, I don't think I'd be where I am today. If I hadn't learned these various skills. I think I'd be still stressed out and just just a wreck. So thankfully, you know, I did discover the skills through therapy through ACOA meetings, self help books, talking with friends, and I built this up over time. It does take time. So again, thank you so much for listening and tuning in. I appreciate it. If you want to learn more you can visit let go and be free.com. Feel free to rate the podcast and come back again. Thank you so much, and be well.

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