What happens when you are imaginative, conscientious and have high anxiety levels?
Well, it's likely that you start to catastrophise - to imagine the worst, to ruminate on all the negative possibilities of the future, to build elaborate scenarios of failure and unhappiness.
This in turn leads to excessive risk management which spoils spontaneity, or to trying to take responsibility for everything and everyone which isn't possible, or even to checking a partner's phone which is obviously not great either.
As anxiety levels increase, the desire to control situations increases. Most situations are beyond our control, so that in turn increases anxiety. You may well paint vivid pictures of all the things that can go wrong if you don't micro-manage.
These patterns of thought become embedded habits and hard to let go of - I mean what would happen if you stopped being hyper-vigilant? The world would surely end, so you keep on managing risk, you keep on imagining all the possible problems, you keep on trying to stay safe.
This sort of behaviour is exhausting, it depletes us of the energy we should be putting into enjoying our existence. It can make us feel depressed.
It is a problem I am seeing more and more. It's a difficult cycle to break, but if you can, life is so much more enjoyable and it's a lot quieter in your head. You are free to enjoy peace again and consider all the positive possibilities life has to offer.
There are many schools of thought that believe we make our own future through our thought patterns be they positive or negative. I'll leave that one with you.
