I have a tendency to worry. The times are bad, not just for me, they are bad for everyone. But I make them worse by worrying about things which never happen most of the time. All I end up doing with that is taint the good times that I do have. It’s a snowball with the fears feeding each other. Eventually when I look back I see less and less of good times and more and more of the tension filled ones. And its all my fault. I had realized early on that I was being self-destructive but I am powerless to stop it.
Most of the times its something not at all connected to me or my life. Like I would read a story in the papers about tragedy in some other state in India and I would worry about it happening in my own life. My mind would convincingly create similar situation here in Bhopal and it would occupy my mind in overdrive for hours. It could even be something as innocent as driving and if someone cuts in front of me and I have to slam on my breaks, I go crazy with worrying about what would have happened had my breaks failed.
And being in the press line I’m privy to a lot more stuff that never sees the light of day on a press floor or a news studio. Many injustices happen in the world and India gets a lot more than its fair share. Most of them are impossible to weed out from the mind or allow me go about my daily life as if nothing happened. They just keep piling up one on top of the other. Sometimes it gets to the point where life stops making sense and there appears to be no silver lining anywhere.
I looked around on the net to see if there are others similarly affected. Apparently there are hundreds of thousands. It’s a fairly widespread condition with some much suffers much worse than even me and I thought I was the king of the jungle with this one. And as usual there are as many kinds of advice as there are people. Some actually usable and most totally written by people who have no real clue about it. That is one of the reasons I wrote this entry. I found one which I agreed with because it has always worked for me. It’s a two fold process. First, take a deep breath and slowly count to ten. Focus on each number individually by picturing it as you count. Then go to the happy place in your mind and divert your thoughts to those which are much more to your liking. I’m not talking about day-dreaming, its more of thinking happier thoughts than the ones which increase your blood-pressure.
It is not easy to control the mind, sometimes it goes in directions that I can’t change. The way to con myself is to literally think happy thoughts and then divert the mind slowly. Think flower-power as opposed to jack-hammers. I end up worse than before if I just struggle to redirect my thoughts but it is so much easier if I take a slow detour and change the direction. I have no idea if this will work for everyone but it does for me. It’s a lot better than aspirin for the headaches afterward.
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