Day 9 (of 31 days of free writing)

Worrying is a habit that I try hard to break. Breathe, I tell myself and anyone else who tells me they are worrying. I was trained at a young age by my mother who was a world class worrier. It was a a survival tool to think about the what-ifs in order to avoid catastrophe. Children need to be taught not to crawl through the bars at the zoo to pet the leopard. As an adult who has learned to avoid most potential risks, I not only don’t need to spend my time and energy fretting about things that might could happen. I’m often asked about why I don’t worry more and it’s not that I don’t worry, its that I try to stop worry from turning into an obsession. It seems to me that most of the things I have worried about in the past never happened and if they did worrying didn’t stop them from happening. That logic, however, is not enough for me to call a halt to anxiety, so I breathe deep and seek more positive uses for my imagination.