Awake and anxious yet again?
The funny thing about generalized anxiety is how unspecific it can be. Espesh at the day’s end. Sure, were you to sit down with a scalpel and slice apart each concern one by one, you’d know what they were. But by nighttime, it’s just depressing, compressed, packaged up panic. The kind that raises your heart rate and has you throwing elbows at your partner in your sleep. And by the time you lay down, it’s not even about your kid’s tuition fees or what bills you have to pay when anymore. See, your brain knows it can’t fix those things right now. And that’s smart. But it still doesn’t keep you from feeling that nervous lack of resolution. Why? Because you’re trying to tell yourself not to worry about it – and that feels like a denial of reality in the bit of your brain that “knows better”. The mind chronically desires resolution when issues arise. The same way you can’t stand seeing half a flick or Tosh clip without knowing who dies, falls in love, or faceplants from a roof jumping stunt, you also can’t stand knowing there’s a problem and not knowing how it’s gonna get resolved. Thus, you can’t sleep. ’cause half of you’s still working on a resolution while the other half’s trying it’s hardest to counter that part with don’t-care-liness.
But deep down you really do want all those ducks in a row.
Enter: The Worry List.
A list of everything you need to worry about… later.
It may seem counter-intuitive, especially since creativity before bed can potentially wake you right back up. But this isn’t so much about morphing into Rembrandt or Emerson before bed. It’s about closure. You see, all of the individual things you’ve been worrying about (and subsequently telling yourself not to worry about so that you can focus on what you need to – which right now’s sleep) can’t be put off forever. Sure, you can’t fix them now. But they need to be addressed eventually. And your noggin knows that. By denying and ignoring those feelings, it causes a kinda dissonance. The issues sit under the surface, causing ripples in your tranquility (and thus sleep). It’s like serenity cellulite. You can’t see what’s happening under there until you stop and look really closely, but you know that it’s hideous and insidious and insomnia inducing. By creating a worry list, you can acknowledge all those little things. And what you intend to do about them. And when. And that all serves as mental assurance ’cause your actions are saying, “I accept that this is a thing to be handled. And I will address it at the appropriate time. I’m not putting it off. Or ignoring it. I have every intention of handling it on X-turday and Y O’clock in the morning.”
1.) See specialist about finger biting habit on Thursday at lunch.
2.) Especially since I’ve apparently already broken the middle and ring fingers of my right hand doing it.
Protip: you may wanna put it in your phone – where you’re sure to actually see it.
By penning it into your mental agenda, you don’t have it calling up and disturbing your calm every night, asking when the meeting’s gonna be. You’ve set a date and time – so it doesn’t hafta be right now. And that means you can go to sleep knowing a fix for all these issues is forthcoming. You’ve committed to giving it its rightful place in reality by putting it on paper. (Or in your iphone, if you’re like me.) And that way, you can also know your subconscious isn’t going to sabotage you by ignoring it for another extensive stretch of time. Thus, the next time worry’s keeping you awake, you don’t have to ignore it. You can give into it. Take five minutes to give your panic a place in the future – and note how that melodramatic panic turns into a fun puzzle you’re confident you can master in a timely fashion.
If you put your ducks in a row, your crazed brain won’t hafta duck Z’s.