Be the Royal Overseer of Your Worries. Use Right Concoctions and Prepare Your Commanding Inner Controlling Presence.

If you have a particular mindset that causes certain thought patterns, if you come from a family of "fretters", if you seem to just have the kind of life that spawns obsessive worries, then just decide to give yourself some relief. Worries sprout from our own minds and our mind's reaction to the events and people in our lives. When the sprouts come, and they seem to be intermittent and based upon the news in our lives, it seems like you just can't weed the sprouts fast enough. And then you have a poisonous crop.

"The More I Hurry The Behinder I Get"

There are patterns that can literally drive you mad. One of them is that when you first address an obsessive worry, the harder it seems to be to stop it. It is as if it grows, gains stature, gets stronger and remains longer. Then, if you want to use another analogy, these "ow's" (obsessive worries) can jump you like a mugger, as you come out of a bar. You have been drinking all night to quell the monster that is in your head, and you quieted it for awhile amidst the noise of rock and roll and the silly voices of mirth. Then the feast is over and you toss and turn all night. The mugger has planted a fist in your face, and you aren't done until you drop into sleep.

Things That Work For Awhile

Sometimes all these things work for a little while: Distraction, Busyness, Booze, Parties, New People, Short Trips. Or lo and behold, the event about which you are concerned, the day of focus comes and goes, and either what you were worried about happened, or it didn't or something totally surprising happened. If you are a real worrier though, that's just a pause. If you were genuinely fearful - like getting laid off on lay off day, and then you discover you still have a job, well then, that would be a genuine cause for happy and joyful release.

The Obsessive Worries (OW's)

You go over and over and over the whole escapade. All those days you worried. All those days you feel you ruined. You recriminate. You kick yourself. You hardly have the time to feel good that the worrying is over ----- for now. The OWs have a way of haunting you. And what makes it worse is you know you are the Haunter. But you are the Star of Stage and Screen, and you are not letting yourself off the stage, and you seemingly can't write new dialogue.Then one evening you decide to be a SLAVE no more. You start to take control. You write down a big thought at first.

1) Some things are really big worries and legitimate and some worries are just creatures of fatigue and exasperation. You make allowances for those 3 or 4 times and allow for the fact that you are not completely insane. Then you wish you could handle them all differently.

2) Let the Minor Monk say: I will create some mantras and prayers that I can roll around in my head and my mind to counter act the "gloomy guses" that fill up my head with silliness, tragedy, angst and boredom. You start to get a smile on your face, as your prayers and mantras cover the silly, the profane and the powerful.

3) Then you address specifically nasty worries. "OK, if this ever happens, I will take care of it in this way." Then it gets RELEGATED. Once you have chosen a place to relegate certain worries, they tend to go there and stand in line. They have been classified and sent to stand there. Obsessions are like that. They are obedient, as long as you don't try to run from them. If you run and deny, they grow fangs and a will. Since you have already acknowledged them and put them in a box, you defang them. Sure, they are still sitting there, but you have taken away their raging presence.

4) In this life full of paradox, you start to realize that your brain is mainly motor, and partly conscious you. You start to think of your brain as having a tendency, and not a terminal illness. You start to realize, as you get more conscious, that much of you is a computer/motor/mouse on a treadmill. When you get more clinical with your head and more spiritual with your mind, sometimes you can wrestle, disable, and do some "mechanicing" as my old Texas high school buddy used to say. Become a "mechanic". Blow your nose if you have a cold. Get some sleep, chew Vitamin C. You can do practical things to deal with obsessions, minor and major. Make it a game, not a tragedy, and definitely give your brain positive prayers and repeating exercises. They truly will crowd out much of the noise.

5) Notice other people who don't have your set of concerns. Notice how they live in the same world you do, and yet somehow they are making it through without being like you. Get into that exercise. You will see that your events spring from your head, not from your life. The script is written by you. The dramatic events seem to foster your story, but in fact, it is your fruitful imagination, embedded deeply with your MINDSET and emotional ethnic or cultured response patterns. You decide:

I remember an aphorism my Father always told me: "People won't know you have a boil on your behind, unless you tell them". Often, we get distressed over our distresses, because we think our boils are hanging out for all too see. It is as simple as that sometimes. Remember, worrying about your worries is like thinking your boil has become the front page news, when in reality, it is hidden underneath your underwear.