Working on Maybe
A short-term goal in defeating anxiety.
Anxiety is persuasive. It can convince me that the most awful and extreme scenarios my neurons fire off and piece together are sure things. Horrible disfigurement, destitution, abject loneliness, mass hatred from everyone around me.
It’s not the negative thoughts or the “what ifs” on their own that wear me down, it’s how my mind grabs on and goes for a ride to the worst possible conclusions. It’s positive that whatever thing I viscerally fear in this moment is definitely going to happen. And so, instead of being fleeting, these thoughts linger and burrow.
One of the ways I’m trying to strengthen, one of the things I’m working toward, is being able to just say “maybe” when some of these thoughts come up. Ultimately, the goal is to be able to watch these thoughts arise, realize they’re the product of anxiety — and no more predictive or astute than any of the hundreds of other thoughts I’m aware of in a given day—not attach to them, and simply let them go along on their way. But, until then, I’m trying to say “maybe” more often.
When anxiety and self-doubt spin a yarn about how I’m going to fail at the 90 Day Novel because I am not doing it as diligently as I should be, or because the story is just not strong enough, or I’m just a shitty writer, I try to respond with “maybe”. Maybe I will write the novel, maybe it will even be good.
When anxiety works overtime to convince me that everyone I love will be ripped from me in a variety of both epic and mundane ways, I acknowledge that it’s a possibility. It could happen, but maybe it won’t.
And so on…
One of the best things a former therapist ever said to me is (paraphrased), “Just because something is uncertain, doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to turn out badly.”
Our brains crave certainty, and anxiety likes to frame uncertainty as assured catastrophe. At least for me. So, it’s powerful to be able to hear it out and sometimes say, Maybe.
