Anxiety - The law of the conservation of energy

John Cusack, holding all my worst fears, he does this sometimes. Rascal.

Worry is actually horrific, It creeps in, takes up vast space. No, worse, it actually gaslights the shit out of us. What? Like it’s doing me a favour by playing out every possible disaster before anything’s even gone wrong. I know, I know,, it’s just noise. It’s just me rehearsing a version of life that hasn’t happened—and probably never will. But I’m still choosing to do that to myself.

Still, try telling your brain that at 3am.

When the anxiety subsides and the fog of war recedes, I find it easy to see that worry isn’t serving me the way I thought it was. It’s not preparing me. It’s not making me sharper or more ready. It’s just draining the energy I need to deal with whatever’s in front of me. It’s like paying interest on a debt I haven’t even borrowed yet. And if I’m being really honest with myself, most of the things I’ve spent hours worrying about never actually came to pass. Or if they did, they looked nothing like the many and various visions in my head.

And yet, there it is. That familiar tension in the chest. That buzzing undercurrent in the back of my skull. That restlessness, like I need to do something, fix something, prepare for something. It’s only human, I know that. We’re wired for it. Brains are prediction machines, always scanning the horizon for threats. Worry was probably a brilliant survival tool once upon a time. But now?  We live in a world of vast comfort, a world of shallow worries and hollow threats. There are no tigers in the bushes, there are no enemies at the gate. The sad fact is that the enemy at the gats is often ourselves, stood like John Cusack outside our windows, holding placards depicting the most bizarre and obscure outcomes and fates that will most probably never come to pass.

I know, from introspection and great therapy that my problem is that worry feels like control. Like if I’m anxious enough, I’ll somehow prevent the bad thing from happening. But that’s not control. That’s just self-harm in a swanky new disguise. And control, real control, comes from clarity, clarity and knowing whats true, and whats anxiety dressed as a knight in shining armour.

*Beat*

To play devils advocate, maybe worry isn’t compleatly useless. Maybe I just haven’t been handling it right. I’ve been letting it run wild, hijack my thoughts, set up camp in my fucking gut—but what if I could actually use it? Not silence it completely (because let’s be honest, that’s not realistically going to happen anyway), but redirect it. Take the edge of it and grind it into something useful.

Because buried under the noise, worry usually has a message. It signs of something that matters. Something I care about enough to stress over, to loose sleep over. That’s not weakness - that’s proof of investment. I worry because I give a shit. About people. About outcomes. About not being a cunt, about doing the right thing - even in the face of lies and deceit.

So maybe the answer isn’t to kill the worry, but to filter it. Sift through the panic and find the part that’s trying to help. The bit that’s saying, “Check that one last time,” or “This could go tits-up” That part has value. That part’s protective. And if I can get to that without spiralling, without letting it eat the whole day, night or worse? Then worry become a useful tool.

I guess worry is just energy with nowhere to go. It’s the law of the conservation of energy, you can’t just make energy, or anxiety, just go away, it must be redirected. I know you can create anxiety so it’s not scientifically sound, but the metaphor works. I have to learn to put it somewhere. Write it down. Talk it though. Turn it into a list or a conversation or a contingency plan. It might not fix anything, but if I see it as energy I can redirect it in to something, take it from the left and pass it to the right, anything, just don’t let it burn in my centre.

I’m here, this is happening, I’m here now and I’ll be here again. That’s life. Things explode, people disappoint, plans unravel. But I’m still dancing, I’m still writing. Worry and anxiety never saved me - action did. Knowledge did. Love and rest did.

So no, I’m not trying to banish worry. I’m just learning to redirect it. To give it a job working for me, not the keys to the whole fucking throne room. I’m going to learn to say, “Thanks for your input, now sit the fuck down, and shut the fuck up”.

Because I’ve got an empire to build, good people to show up for, kindness to pay forwards and a brilliant, fulfilling life to live. I dont have time for this shit.