Anxieties and toothpaste

An upcoming MRI has shed a giant magnetized light on my major anxiety disorder.  I have nightmares and crazy thoughts about this upcoming claustrophobia producing procedure.  For instance, what if the mechanism gets stuck and they need the jaws of life to extract me? What if the hole is too small and fitting me in it is something akin to trying to put toothpaste back into its tube? What if they don’t let me keep my underwear? What if I panic and they can’t get the procedure actually done? So. Many. Worries.

Anxiety, at its basest level is nothing more than worry on borrowed time.  Anxiety is worrying about a future that hasn’t arrived and over confidently predicting what will happen there.  It is to make emotional decisions on mirages.

Depression is very often about the past but anxiety is based in the future.  Neither are hospitable places for us to spend our emotional currency or to hang our decisions on. The present, while always a changing landscape, is the only thing that is remotely tangible and therefore partially in our control. Only there can we control our interactions with what is happening, thus positively affecting our future.

I’m not against planning and rejecting.  In fact I have a journal for both but while both are seful and have their place in our lives but they are like unruly toddlers who should not be allowed to run our world.

Put anxiety in its place Be present. Enjoy with gratitude what life offers you in this moment.