If I Can't Control It, I'll Worry About It!

I was diagnosed with anxiety when I was eight years old. And when I say I’ve been a worrier my entire life, I mean my ENTIRE life!

Even as a little girl, my mind never stopped questioning things. I remember worrying about how my body worked. Why didn’t my eyeballs just fall out of my head? How did my fingernails grow without falling off? Seriously, what eight-year-old sits around worrying about these things?

Apparently, me!

If I couldn’t logically explain something, I worried about it. I needed answers. I needed things to make sense, and when they didn’t, my imagination was more than happy to fill in the blanks with something catastrophic!

And change? Oh, I absolutely hated change!

I remember when my sister got married. Instead of just being excited about her wedding, I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t coming home anymore. In my mind, she belonged at home. That’s where she’d always been, and suddenly everything was different.

I think uncertainty has always been one of my biggest struggles. Not knowing what was going to happen, why something happened, or how something worked made me anxious. And when I couldn’t find an answer, my mind would come up with a hundred possibilities, usually starting with the worst one!

As I got older, I didn’t stop worrying. I just found more grown-up things to worry about. Imagine that!

And I think this explains something else about me. I’m a perfectionist.

I’ve always been organized, responsible, particular, and someone who likes things done correctly. I notice little details other people overlook. I like my house clean, things in their proper places, and plans made ahead of time. I have high expectations of myself, and when something isn’t right, I have a hard time leaving it alone.

People probably think I’m just picky or that I like things a certain way. And yes, I do! But I think there’s more to it than that.

There’s actually a psychological concept called intolerance of uncertainty. Basically, some people have a harder time dealing with the unknown. Not having answers or knowing what comes next can create anxiety.

And that’s where I think my perfectionism comes in.

When you’ve spent your entire life worrying about things you can’t control, you start finding comfort in the things you CAN control.

I can’t control what tomorrow brings, but I can control how organized my house is. I can’t prevent every problem, but I can plan ahead and prepare for the possibilities. I can’t make life predictable, but I can make sure the things I’m responsible for are done right.

Maybe perfectionism isn’t always about wanting everything perfect. Sometimes it’s about trying to feel safe.

The problem is that perfectionism can actually feed anxiety. There’s always something that needs fixing, something that could be better, or something that isn’t quite right. And when your mind is already wired to worry, you can wear yourself out trying to prevent problems that haven’t even happened!

I don’t believe every perfectionist has anxiety, or that anxiety automatically makes someone a perfectionist. But I certainly believe the two can go hand in hand.

I’ve spent most of my life thinking this was simply my personality. I’m particular. I’m organized. I like things done my way.

But there’s a difference between liking things a certain way and feeling anxious when they aren’t that way.

And I think that’s something people don’t always understand about anxiety. It isn’t necessarily someone sitting around visibly panicking or being afraid. Sometimes it’s the person who plans everything, notices everything, prepares for everything, and can’t seem to shut their mind off.

I may not be able to control everything that worries me, but I can control the things around me. And for someone who has lived with anxiety since childhood, that little bit of control can feel like peace.

The irony is that trying to control everything can also be the very thing that keeps the anxiety going.

Maybe that’s the hardest part of being a perfectionist. Learning that everything doesn’t have to be perfect for everything to be okay.

And after 61 years, I’m still working on that one!

Adulthood Doesn’t Come With a Mute Button

Were we all this much of a pansy growing up?

I keep reading about kids going virtual because they’re being bullied, switching to online school because the hallways feel too crowded, or avoiding situations because they make them uncomfortable. And I find myself wondering: when did the answer to everything uncomfortable become removing the uncomfortable thing?

Now before somebody loses their mind, I KNOW bullying can be serious. I’m not talking about a child being threatened, assaulted or genuinely unsafe. That absolutely needs to be dealt with. I’m talking about normal life being uncomfortable.

We got picked on. We had kids who didn’t like us. We walked into cafeterias wondering where we were going to sit. We had teachers we couldn’t stand, crowded hallways, embarrassing moments, broken hearts, mean girls and kids who could be complete assholes. And somehow we survived it. More importantly, we learned how to deal with people.

That’s part of growing up. You learn that not everybody is going to like you. You learn how to stand up for yourself. You learn how to walk into a room where you don’t feel completely comfortable. You learn that anxiety and discomfort don’t automatically mean you’re in danger.

I worry that sometimes, in our attempt to protect kids from every bad feeling, we’re accidentally teaching them that they can’t handle bad feelings. What happens when they’re adults?

Jobs are crowded. Bosses can be difficult. Coworkers can be jerks. Relationships hurt. People criticize you. Somebody will eventually hurt your feelings, leave you out, disagree with you or make you uncomfortable. There isn’t always going to be a virtual option where you can shut the laptop and make everybody disappear.

Obviously every child and every situation is different. Some kids genuinely thrive with virtual school, and sometimes leaving a bad environment is absolutely the right decision. But removing every obstacle isn’t the same thing as helping a child overcome one.

Maybe our job isn’t to make sure our kids never feel uncomfortable. Maybe our job is to teach them, “Yep, this sucks. Now let me show you that you can handle it.” Because childhood is supposed to prepare you for adulthood. And adulthood doesn’t come with a mute button.

There Isn’t Enough Bubble Wrap in the World

We cannot protect our kids from every mean comment, hurt feeling, or crappy person they’re going to encounter. Instead of expecting everyone else to teach their kids how to act, teach yours how to respond. Give them the confidence to stand up for themselves, the strength to walk away when they need to, and the understanding that not everyone is going to be nice. There isn’t enough bubble wrap in the world to get our kids through life completely unscathed. Our job isn’t to make sure nothing ever hurts them—it’s to teach them how to handle it when something does.

Don't Forget The Victims

Sometimes it is really hard for me to keep what I consider reality in my thinking when there are so many people out there who seem to feel sorry for the person who committed the crime.

I read a post today about Christa Pike. It talked about her childhood, her trauma, mental illness, relationships, brain development and what her life has been like in prison. And I get it. All of those things may help explain how she became the person she became. But explaining something doesn't make it okay. It doesn't erase what happened.

Because somewhere in all of that was Colleen Slemmer. Colleen was 19 years old. She had a whole life ahead of her too. She should have had the chance to grow up, make mistakes, fall in love, have a family, change her mind, become a different person and live out the rest of her life. Instead, she was beaten, tortured and murdered.

And this isn't just about Christa Pike. I see this kind of thinking all the time now. People who spend so much time talking about what happened to Lindsay Clancy and wearing pink like idiots that the three children she killed seem to become secondary. People who believed Karmelo Anthony deserved another trial. He admitted to doing it! People who don't seem to have a problem with someone being here illegally even when they kill someone. And I find myself sitting here thinking...when did we become so forgiving of the person who did the terrible thing? You cannot just forget the victims and the families who had to suffer because of it.

I don't even have compassion for them. I don't care if it's mental illness, childhood trauma or someone's life circumstances. After the crime, it simply doesn't matter to me. The victims matter.

Whatever happened to Christa growing up may help explain how she became who she was. But it does not erase what happened to Colleen. Plenty of people survive horrible childhoods, abuse, trauma and circumstances that I can't even imagine without going on to torture and murder another human being.

And maybe that's the part I struggle with. I don't need to understand every detail of the person who committed the crime to know what matters. The bottom line is that someone was hurt or killed, and their life should not become nothing more than a footnote while we spend years trying to understand the person who took it from them.

If we're going to tell someone's whole life story, tell the victim's story too. Remember who they were. Remember their family. Remember the life they should have had.

Don't make the victim the footnote.

Listen LINDA! Hard Didn’t Just Get Invented

You ever notice when you tell somebody something that might actually help them—advice from your own life, something you struggled with, figured out, and did to better yourself—the first response is, “Well, it was easier back then.”

That’s bullshit.

It wasn’t easier. It was different.

If it had been easy for me, I wouldn’t have had to figure out how to overcome it in the first place. I didn’t magically get handed a life with no obstacles just because it happened 10, 20, or 30 years ago. I had bills. I had responsibilities. I had kids. I had setbacks. I had times when I didn’t know how in the hell I was going to make something work. And somehow, I figured it out.

Were things cheaper? Some things were. You know what else was cheaper? My paycheck.

Did we have different opportunities? Sure. We also didn’t have half the resources people have today. There wasn’t an app for everything. You couldn’t Google how to do something, apply for 20 jobs from your couch, work remotely, have groceries delivered, start a side business online, or find a YouTube video showing you step-by-step how to do practically anything.

Every generation has advantages the generation before it didn’t have, and every generation gets handed a brand-new pile of problems to go with them.

That’s life.

So when somebody who has already climbed over an obstacle tells you what worked for them, maybe instead of immediately explaining why you can’t possibly do it because they had it easier, listen to what they’re actually saying. Their exact solution may not fit your life perfectly. Adjust it. Change it. Find the modern-day version of it.

But don’t dismiss the lesson just because it came from a different time.

Sometimes “it was easier back then” really means, “I don’t want to hear that fixing this might require me to do something hard.”

Times change. Circumstances change. The details change.

But hard has always been hard. And excuses have always been easier.