Day 161 – The Worry Personality as Defense / Protection

I have been prone to worry ever since I can remember.  I like to blame my mother for this as I remember her always in a state of nervous worry where she would be like in a state of mind of like ‘oh shit we’re fucked’.  But I don’t have any direct memories of this as I remember this more as an energy that she projected to me as a child; so, sometimes I wonder if I just made this up. 

All I know is that worry has consumed me throughout my life to the extent that I am not able to just be here and have a conversation because I would be consumed with worry.  Sometimes I find that I have missed what others are saying because I am lost in my mind in worry.  I am far better now than when I was younger, however this pattern still is part of my experience of myself.  When I am worried, I am tuned out of what’s here, like I miss out on what people are saying as I am in my mind completely mind-possessed as I am incessantly going through every conceivable angle of a projected event over and over again as if trying to convince myself that everything will be ‘ok’. 

So, basically my experience of and as worry is that I go into my mind where I am projecting all kinds of future outcomes where I go into imaginations of what I might say or do, or what someone might say or do, and what the perfect thing to say or do is to make everything ‘better’.  I also worry about things that might go wrong and all the conceivable angles of how something might go wrong, even if they haven’t yet.  The more that I have going on, the more I worry, like when work picks up I tend to worry more, even if there is nothing directly going on to worry about.  There is also an underlying fear that goes with the worry, a fear of what might happen – like I may not be able to stand through it.  So, I guess I could say that I also lack self-trust. 

So, to sum up, my experience of worry is driven by fear of future where I fear I cannot stand through a potential projected outcome of which may or may not even happen.  I have had this chronic worry condition going back to at least me teenage years, and it’s gotten far better over time.  When I go into worry, I completely tune-out of my surroundings as I become completely captured by the images and pictures and imaginings within my own mind where I find that I miss-out on conversations / what people say to me I am in the alternate reality of my projections of the future within and as my mind.  I also fear to not worry.  I fear to stop worrying, like holding onto a rope over a cliff hanging for dear-life.  I fear the projected consequences if I do not worry.  So, the worry I experience is like a mixture of fear and chronic imagining / projecting pictured potential events – it’s a total mind-fuck.  Oh, yes, and there is back-chat that comes with it where I am judging the players in my mind or rehearsing what I might say to them that plays in like loops, over and over again while in the state of worry.  So, perhaps this is a personality system – a subconscious mind pattern / personality.

I have written on this before, and it has helped to an extend as when I see myself go into worry, I remind myself that this is bullshit, and then I stop and I breathe –But, this system still gets the best of me.  So, I am sorting this out even further here.