Worry Me, Worry Me Not
I worry so much lately. I meditate, chant, pray, love myself, receive love, and still worry. It is much better than it used to be. I have explored many therapeutic modalities that have softened its arrival and presence, but she still visits me regularly. Through Family Constellations and my daughter, I recognized that it was ancestral. My grandmother carried the world on her shoulders- just like Atlas- always worried, anxious, bracing for disaster. I understand her origin and the path forward and still struggle to let her go once and for all.
The word worry carries the meaning of twisting and tearing, and of choking and strangling, and that’s exactly how I feel in her grip.
A couple of days ago, I kept telling a friend how calm I feel regardless of all the transitions and uncertainties I am moving through. I believed it and felt it in the moment, but I was tested by my son and another friend. They were all coming from a loving place, but they were inviting anxiety into my reality. I didn’t “bite” in the moment, but after several of these invitations, I broke down. She entered my body with a force. All my hope, determination, and perseverance evaporated. I felt delusional to trust so much in the unknown. The practicality of life was summoning me. It was asking me to bow and submit to the tangible reality. “I need money. I need a home. I need a regular paycheck. I need stability. These lofty dreams are realized only by the chosen. Slow and steady takes time and doesn’t pay the bills.” I was bombarded with these messages and called a friend to seek validation. Everything I knew about these states and how to deal with them, I no longer knew.
As the word carries in its definition, I woke up with a pinched nerve in my neck, acute pain in my recently strained arm muscle after an ice fall, and nerve tension traveling throughout my whole body. It was a bodily freeze. Negative states such as worry, fear, anxiety, or depression represent themselves in the muscles by contraction, weakness, and rigidity. I was a ball of nerves literally and metaphorically, and in that state I could only look for ways to relax and care for my body. Everything else was useless.
Paradoxically, negative states are less able to visit when we are in a state of relaxation. That’s why it is advised to practice relaxing daily by noticing the body and giving it the loving attention and care it needs.
Worry is a state of identification. It is thought mixed with negative imagination. The mind is driven by the emotional centre and is obscured. Worry drains us of our life force. There is no centre of gravity. Everything is in disorder. The emotional centre takes over the intellectual one which affects the moving centre, and our whole being is in disarray. Worrying is a mechanical reaction, and it only makes sense that it will affect the machine— it stops functioning properly.
Once there, how do we fix the machine? Simply, by being less of a machine day in and day out. Life will test us, and we can’t change it, but we can change our reaction to life. When a negative emotion arrives (for it will), we are invited not to identify with it and take it as true, and not to try to work on it only after it has fully formed. Freedom is not that worry disappears forever, but that it can arise without becoming the ruler of the house. The mind, heart, and body can breathe freely. That’s expansion!
Admittedly, it is easier said than done. I ask myself why regularly. The reason is that by letting go of worry, we let go of a whole system of “I”s that are organized around it.
We are a multitude of “I”s. Some collaborate with each other, and others have never met. Certain “I”s have built their entire identity around a particular form of suffering. The worrying “I” has organized itself completely around worry. It knows how to worry. It is competent at worrying. Worry is its home territory, its area of expertise, its reason for existing. When you are not worrying, that particular “I” has no function. It ceases to exist.
And “I”s, like all structures, resist their own dissolution.
The “I” that suffers from fear of failure has been with me for a long time. It knows the fear intimately. It knows exactly which thoughts to generate, which scenarios to construct, which memories to surface to keep the fear alive and vivid. It is extraordinarily skilled at its particular form of suffering.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: that “I” gets something from the suffering. Not pleasure in any ordinary sense but existence, identity, continuity. As long as we are worrying, the worrying “I” is real, present, powerful. The moment the worry dissolves, so does the “I” that is built around it.
The fear of not succeeding “I” calls up the self-doubt “I”, which activates the not-worthy “I”, which summons the what-will-people-think “I”, which reinforces the I-should-have-done-more “I”. They form a constellation, a self-sustaining ecosystem of suffering. Each one feeds the others. Pull on one thread and the whole web vibrates.
This is why willpower alone cannot dissolve these patterns. You cannot simply decide to stop worrying. The system is too coherent, too self-reinforcing, too skilled at regenerating itself.
The work is not suppression by pushing the suffering “I” down by force. That simply drives it underground where it operates invisibly.
The work is awareness. Seeing the “I” clearly, in the moment it arises. Recognizing: this is the worrying “I”. This is not me. This “I” has arrived and is currently running the show. I can observe it without being it. Without identifying with it.
And here is the grace in it: the observing “I” does not suffer in the same way. It can hold the worrying “I” with something closer to compassion than identification. It sees the worrying “I” as a frightened, competent, well-intentioned part of the system that genuinely believes it is protecting me because it is. The fear of not succeeding “I” arose originally as protection for me. It was trying to keep me safe from disappointment, from humiliation, from being seen and found wanting. It was doing its job.
The work is not to destroy it with contempt but to see it clearly enough that it loses its grip. To say to it gently, without drama, “I see you. I know what you are doing. And I am not going to let you run the whole house today.”
The paradox
If the suffering were purely unwanted, I would simply stop. The fact that something in me clings to it, returns to it, finds it strangely familiar and almost comfortable that is the “I” speaking. That is the system protecting itself.
My body this week — the tension, the nerves, the ball of suffering traveling through my limbs — is those “I”s made physical. The worrying “I” does not stay in the mind. It descends into the moving center. The constriction, the flexion, the weakness — this is what a system of “I”s built around fear looks like when it takes up residence in the body.
I woke up feeling I needed to write this post, partially to synthesize my learning but also to share. Upon reflection, I recognized that worry and trust cannot coexist. During my recent visit to Benburb Priory in Northern Ireland, I picked a prayer card with the image of Jesus emitting light from his heart. The words underneath his image say, “Jesus, I trust in you.” I keep it as a reminder visible on the living room table. While still in bed and pondering, the image returned to me. Shortly after, I got up, sat on the couch, and opened a book of prayers. I do this daily and randomly.
Today’s message was, “I am all around you, like a cocoon of Light. My presence with you is a promise, independent of your awareness of Me. Many things can block this awareness, but the major culprit is worry. My children tend to accept worry as an inescapable fact of life. However, worry is a form of unbelief; it is anathema to Me. Who is in charge of your life? If it is you, then you have good reason to worry. But if it is Me, then worry is both unnecessary and counterproductive. When you start to feel anxious about something, relinquish the situation to Me. Back off a bit, redirecting your focus to Me. I will either take care of the problem Myself or show you how to handle it. In this world you will have problems, but you need not lose sight of Me.” (Luke 12:22-31; John 16:33)
Today, I am learning not to fight worry, but to see it, soften, and trust beyond it.
