And right when I think I’ve overcome it
Anxiety starts kicking in to teach that shit a lesson
Oh, I try my best just to be social
I make all these plans with friends and hope they call and cancel
Then I overthink about the things I’m missingJulia Michaels (Song: Anxiety)
Did you know that sometimes we fear things because God wants us to be aware of what’s ahead of us. After I read about this fact, a lot of things made sense. From the 70,000 thoughts that cross our mind and the 1000 we have the ability to register, a lot of them are just warnings. People who waste a majority of time overthinking (it’s glad to be a part of the same gang) are preparing for things that won’t even become real.
And if this wasn’t enough, 80% of these are negative. So now you can relax and stop thinking that you are crazy for being negative all the time. If you wonder how you remember the color of the women’s shirt who passed by you 5 years ago, it’s because 95% of these thoughts are repetitive.
Clearly Part 1 wasn’t enough for the things I fear, so here we are again (kiss emojis). When you are running down the stairs, have you ever felt all of a sudden that you are gonna fall down so you slow down? No? I have felt this a lot of times maybe because of an experience I had when I was young.
Me fearing falling down like it’s nobody’s business (laughing emojis)
My mom was 7 months pregnant with my brother. My cousin and I were playing on the terrace with a basketball and my mom was coming back from the terrace. Somehow we missed catching the ball and it hit mom from the back and mom slipped from the stairs. We were running to catch the ball so I have this snippet of my mom slipping in my head. Since then I don’t ever run down the stairs, coz I’m scared I might slip (laughing emojis).
I also have this recurring dream where I am falling from somewhere and I always wake up with a jerk. As any normal person would do, I googled the meaning of this. Google told me that having a dream of falling signifies a loss of control over an important situation. “It also indicates fear, terror, and anxiety that comes out of losing grip over significant things.” At least it isn’t weirder than the other dreams I have written about (Read Weird dreams series here- Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5).
That’s deep but feels so real!
Have you ever experienced the excruciating pain from a paper cut? Yup, that’s another one of my fears. When I was in class 11 a few students including me were called to the principal’s office. We were called because she wanted to appreciate our efforts for an event we had conducted (I was a good kid after all).
On my way to her office I slid my finger on a potted plant and the leaf sliced through. It started bleeding immediately, but all I could remember was the citrusy fragrance from that cut. Later on I got to know that I had cut my finger from lemon grass. I avoid touching any plants now and I am also careful while snatching papers or turning pages of a book.
This hasn’t happened before and I really hope it doesn’t. I fear leaving the keys of my scooty inside the scooty trunk (laughing emojis). I have no idea how I will manage to get out of this situation, so I’m in my alert mode when carrying the keys. Most of these fears are generated in my dreams.
I shouldn’t have laughed at this. If you get it you get it, if you don’t you don’t!
I don’t understand why our mind keeps a record of this stupid and useless information. Because of recurring dreams about leaving my backpack behind in college or school, being late to an important event or missing my exam and being stuck in one place (even on trying to escape I return back to the same place), I now fear these situations.
A fear that every child in a middle class family has, came true for me. MY MOM GOT TO KNOW THAT I HAD A DRINK (beer to be precise). Seems normal but when a class 12th girl whose mother is a teacher gets caught, things aren’t funny anymore (laughing emojis). She wouldn’t have known if my cousin would not have been a snitch (Read the full story here).
Everything is a fear for a person who overthinks (what’s up my fellow overthinkers). I don’t know what it is with us. Is it just the fact that I wanna be prepared for anything and I hate the lack of control? I always think about why this fear is able to consume us so easily.
It’s creepy but it comes true every year!
And the answer that justifies it is that we lack self confidence. We get consumed by fear because we don’t trust ourselves. We don’t believe that we have the power and the capabilities to deal with life as it happens. Whether it is the fear of the past haunting us or the fear of the future ahead of us, there is nothing that faith in oneself can’t solve.
This list still doesn’t include the day to day fears that all of us have. The most important one being our inability to make our parents proud or losing ourselves to please someone else or whether or not we will be able to achieve our dreams or not, will we be financially stable, will we ever be confident enough to become our best selves? The list goes on. But I am not sure if you are ready to go this deep (no pun intended, laughing emojis). I will write part 3 on this, for sure. And I will make it hard to digest because some pills are hard to swallow!
The one definition we have to learn by heart (red heart emojis)
Journal Time: If you haven’t had the courage to face your fears, today is the day. Take out your journal and write about your fears. Finally it is time to confront your fears. They have been winning till now, but now it’s your time. Don’t ignore it. Rather come face to face with the obstacle and get over it. One question you should ask while you document is “What happens if this fear comes true?” Then work on resolving the deeper issues which are actually the base of these fears.
Until next time, Adios Amigos.
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