Worry...

Are you a worrier?

I read an interview with Stephen King when The Langoliers came out where he said that he believed there needed to be a certain number of people who were afraid of flying on each plane. That it was their worry that actually kept the plane aloft.

Are you one of those people that thinks that you keep bad things away by imagining what might happen? When a loved one leaves you think they might get in a horrific accident and you think that by worrying about it you keep it from happening? That it's when you relax that the bad things happen?

Don't get too comfortable.

Keep your guard up.

Ever vigilant!

Or are you chill? Calm, cool and collected? Don't worry about tomorrow, each day has worries enough of its own. Worrying about a problem does no good. If it happens it still happened and worrying about it did nothing to prevent it. And if it doesn't happen then you wasted all of that time being worried for nothing.

Take it easy.

Calm down.

Relax.

I've done and been both. The calm one and the worrier. Sometimes about the same problem. Sometimes in the same day.

I think, though, that I tend to worry the most about a problem when I should be doing something about it, or at least feel like I should. I don't tend to worry about things that are totally out of my control. I can't affect those. So they might get a passing bit of concern (will the weather hold for a flight that needs taken, that sort of thing) but I don't really obsess about them. When I find myself doing the worry circle it's usually something that I have some sort of control over and am just not doing anything about. It becomes like guilt, an actionable emotion. Am I worried about money while at the same time spending a little extra on nonsense? Am I worried about my weight while at the same time reaching for the cake? Am I worried about a health issue while not calling the doctor? Those times seem to be for me when the worry starts to build.

It's a trigger to do something. Don't worry, act.

As a parent of an adult I've had to shift my worry cycle. I can be concerned about C's life, but I can't really worry over it because I have no control. I can make suggestions for him, point out things he should be paying attention to, but then I have to just let things go. He will live his life and make his choices and at this point I'm not included in the decision making as anything more than a possible opinion. But when he was younger I worried a lot more. Am I doing the right things? Am I making the right choices for him? Because I had control. Or at least some.

So I tend to worry when I have control and not worry when I don't. Which seems really backwards now that I think about it. Why worry if I can change things? And shouldn't I worry more if things are completely out of my hands?

Maybe I should be worried that I worry about the wrong things....