RESIST THINKING [WORRYING] ABOUT THE FUTURE
Not thinking about the future is very important to our happiness and one of the best ways to keep stress lower. So, how does that work? Well, virtually all the time when we think about the future we are worrying about the future and we tend to do this daily. By worrying every day we know what will happen every day and this seems preferable to the unknown of what might happen. So, our daily worries are stressful but better than other catastrophopic events that could be our daily worry.
Unfortunately, being able to know what each day will bring may be reassuring but is it worth the ongoing stress that this knowing represents as we are focused on anticipating stressful events every day, as we convert our open ended fears into one set of worries that we think about every day. But, why do we fear the future and need to know what will happen? Some of us have past experiences that can make us worry about the future and this can preoccupy us constantly so it can feel less stressful to know what will happen because we have decided what one bad thing or situation is all we need to focus on each day. In fairness to our need to cope with our stress this way, our fears often happen instantly and so to contain our fears we need to focus on something that will occupy our thoughts and keep us from feeling overwhelmed.
So, how can we stop worrying about the future. Well, it can be helpful to reduce the frequency of this reaction or reduce the intensity of it so that we can then it is easier to choose to not let ourselves worry and instead choose be open to possibilities and actually see what happens. The idea of seeing what happens vs worrying or stressing about what is happening can be stressful as our brains may have been trained to fear seeing what happens as we have been convinced that it will be very bad. So, if we decide that we don’t need to fear what will happen but just need to see what happens our brain will require some convincing that we are serious about this. We can help to convince our brains that it is ok to not worry by getting help from a therapist who is trained in how to help people with PTSD. We can also help ourselves to feel ok about not worrying by thinking about our usual worries and then not feel stressed doing this. If we write about our past stresses and not feel stressed doing this, it is even more helpful allowing our brains to actually not worry. There are also some medications that can reduce the intensity and frequency of stressful past memories making it easier to choose to not worry and not predict the future.
What do you think?
