Anxiety saps joy from ‘perfect’ life
Hi, Carolyn: I am 49 and live with my husband and 5-year-old son. We just bought our first house, and we’re doing well. I have battled addiction and depression in the past. I still do, but I feel I have it under control. My husband is semi-retired at 50, and I’ll be working in the local schools soon. We are not hurting financially. Our son is adopted after many years of trying to have our own. He is everything to us.
So why do I feel like the other shoe is about to drop? I have everything I’ve always thought I wanted, and yet I worry daily that something horrible will happen to my husband or son. I’ve imagined every possible way they could die. I know this is the happiest I’ve ever been and yet feel like it’s only a matter of time before it all goes away. Why can’t I just enjoy my life and not be so damn fretful?
— Nervous Nelly
The tough part about such dread is that some of it is rational. Healthy, even … in fact, it’s the engine driving the whole concept of living in the moment, the very one you’re trying so hard to embrace.
Life is cyclical. Your ups will be followed by downs. The whole reason we’re supposed to be mindful of now is the unreliability of later.
This can feel less bearable the more we have to lose.
It takes some mental conditioning, but we can use our understanding of change to train our minds to appreciate where we are and what we control.
Yet when an awareness of impermanence swells into preoccupying deathvisions of the people you love most, it goes beyond mental retraining or selfflagellation. It’s time to treat it as no less a health issue than addiction or depression.
If you still have access to a care network from those battles, then that’s where you start.
If you’re starting over, then tell your primary care physician about the dark thoughts you’re having and how they affect daily life. Enlist his or her help in a diagnosis and treatment plan.
That you’ve found your way to happiness through depression, addiction and infertility says you have the health savvy and emotional stamina to take this on (with some to spare for the rest of us!). Think of this next phase as training to maintain the beautiful things you’ve built.
Dear Carolyn:
My sister thinks if I confide in her, then my confidences are no secret to her husband. He is a nice guy, but I don’t particularly WANT my innermost secrets known to my brother-inlaw. I’ve told her this to no effect. I have nobody else I can talk to about things that bother me. Do I have to stop talking to my sister about my deepest feelings? — Lonely Sister
Regrettably, yes. Or you have to accept that her husband will know everything.
So which do you want more: a confidant, or confidentiality?
Of course you want both, but your sister’s stubbornness rules that out — which is her call but, again, regrettable.
And please consider, long term, cultivating more relationships you can count on.
Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com.