Psychology
for Living
Written April 21, 2003 Gwen Randall-Young
There
is so much we could worry about: SARS, west Nile virus, the stock market, and
terrorism lead the list. It is hard to have the same sense of security we may
have had a couple of years ago. While we cannot bury our heads in the sand, we
cannot live in fear.
There are strategies we can use to calm ourselves down.
Most worries we have are about some future imagined catastrophe. “What if…?” we
ask ourselves. We imagine something horrible happening, form images in our mind
about it, and then recoil at the ‘movie, we have just produced in our heads. Rarely
do the things we fear ever materialize. When we engage in catastrophic thinking,
it is as though we are running constant negative ‘television commercials’ in our
mind – which certainly disrupt, and may even replace our regular daily ‘programming.’
The way to prevent this is, as much as possible, to keep our thoughts grounded
in the present moment.
If, in this moment, you are safe and healthy, then enjoy
that blessing. If you are safe and healthy tomorrow, enjoy it again. Do it every
single day. It is probably a bigger tragedy to squander our good days worrying
about imagined bad ones, than it is to actually suffer through difficult times.
Gwen Randall-Young is an author and Chartered Psychologist
in private practice. Her new book, Growing Into Soul: The Next Step in Human Evolution
is available through her website, along with her other books and tapes. www.gwen.ca
