‘Your psychological suffering is simply a function of mistaking your own thought content for truth.’
DR DICKEN BETTINGER
What if I get a migraine? What if I have a panic attack and can’t get out of the room? What if I get there and then I can’t get back? What if someone invites me for a drink? What if they suggest we go somewhere after dinner? What if I forget all my words? What if they grow up to be criminals? What if they have an accident while driving my car? What if this is really cancer this time?
When we get caught up in anxious thinking, one of the tendencies is to create catastrophic and scary imaginings of the future, and then try to deal with them in our heads in advance. Sound familiar?
We imagine every single thing that could possibly go wrong, we create an idea of ourselves failing to cope and then we attempt to mitigate it in some way with forward planning inside our heads. We often have no idea that this is even anxiety; instead, we might call ourselves ‘very well organized’ or perhaps admit with a wry smile that we’re ‘a bit of a worrier’.
Here follows what’s going on:
First, we don’t appreciate that the future is an unknown equation.
(In fact, we don’t appreciate that the idea of the future is, itself, simply another thought. When I said, ‘It’s ALL thought,’ I wasn’t kidding.)
We can’t possibly predict our future thinking – and therefore our future experience. Indeed, at that precise moment we have no way to guess how we will be thought up, so we have no way to know how we will feel at some point in the future. We certainly think we can – we know just how awful it would be if we turned up to the cinema to find we had been given tickets in the middle of the row. We think we know how we’re going to feel if there’s turbulence on the plane. We think we know just what we’re going to feel like as we walk through the door of the big supermarket. And we definitely know how we’re going to feel if we were to get a cancer diagnosis. I was completely sure how I was going to feel the next time I sat in an interview room with a candidate, got stuck on a train, had a migraine or if I were ever to go on another ski trip.
If it looks true to us that we can accurately predict the future, then it makes sense to us to arrange the circumstances to make sure that the things that look scary to us right now in this moment never, ever happen, or we have several contingency plans in place to deal with them if they do.
In my case, I would make sure I stayed a certain distance from my home because I thought I knew exactly what was coming if I strayed over that 26-minute boundary. All week I would worry about where my daughter would be playing her netball match. As soon as the team sheets went up, I’d either heave a sigh of relief that it was inside my limit then immediately start worrying about which other parents would be going, in case I had started to feel unwell and needed someone to rescue me. Or I’d start filling up my diary with work so I’d have a good excuse not to go. Or I’d force myself to go, absolutely convinced I was going to start panicking when I made it to 27 minutes away, watching the clock as I drove. And guess what happens if you think you’re going to panic at 27 minutes? Hence, I would prove myself right.
Sometimes my worrying wasn’t about a distant future, but more along the lines of how to cope with the next few moments: What if I have a migraine now? OK, I’ll ask that person to help me; What if I have a migraine now? I can pull off the road into that parking space; What if I have a migraine now? OK, I’ll call that person to help. Even though I only actually experienced a migraine about once or twice a year, my thoughts were filled with the what-iffing experience of worry and stress about migraines 24/7.
I’d also meticulously plan pretty much every hour of every day during my children’s school holidays, as the fear of not having a plan – not knowing what we were going to do – and the fear of them becoming bored was too uncomfortable to contemplate. Uncertainty was completely intolerable. Some might call it being a ‘control freak’. I called it being a ‘good mother’. But it was yet another example of anxious behaviour that I was completely blind to.
By the way, not realizing your behaviour is just another example of anxiety is very common. We often find that we have insights and certain areas of our lives start to shift, but in other areas we still feel stuck.
I remember taking my perennial question: ‘What shall I do next in my career?’ to my mentor Dr George Pransky. I told him of all my options and shared my frustration that no one seemed to be able to help me with this question, and that I’d been stuck for three years trying to find the answer.
George gently said, ‘Nicola, what makes you think this is anything other than simple anxiety?’
‘No way, George,’ I retorted, extremely sure of myself. ‘I know what anxiety is, it’s panic attacks and not being able to leave my house and being scared of migraines, and that has completely and utterly gone for me; that was anxiety. “What should I do?” is a genuine question.’
But George was insistent that I at least consider what he was saying and, as I looked again at the question, I saw it was true. When I was experiencing insecure thinking about what to do next and thinking that I should know, I was feeling that thinking. I had an insight. ‘Oh,’ I said to him. ‘It’s just anxiety in a different guise. And if it’s anxiety, I know what to do about that.’
‘And what’s that?’ asked George.
‘Absolutely nothing,’ I replied.
I’ve bumped into it again and again. Problems that look real to me invariably turn out to be a creation of anxious, insecure thinking. And that’s a good thing, because all the way through this book you’ll be learning more about what needs to be done about insecure thoughts (hint: nothing).
I had three insights pretty early on, which proved to be hugely helpful to me, and I want to share them with you. Not so that you can have the very same insights, but to demonstrate the power a simple insight can have, and in the hope that this sparks something inside of you, for you.
Because thought is transient, and because we don’t have to think anything about anything, it’s always possible to have a completely different experience than you’re expecting. And if that’s true then there’s simply no need to spend time right now, in this moment, what-iffing and trying to figure out what you’ll do with your imaginary future experience. The fact is, right now, you’re not in the experience that you think is going to scare you. You’re just in your thinking in this moment and then projecting it onto the future scenario, fixating on it by trying to ‘deal’ with it. The truth is you’re fine in THIS moment, but for your thinking about the made-up future, and you don’t have to do that. Right now, look at you. Sitting there in that armchair with this book propped up, living in the fearful feeling of driving on a motorway NOW, even though all that’s actually happening is that you’re sitting in an armchair, reading this book. And the truth is that you have no idea what thinking will arise in the future, so there’s no need to take your current thinking seriously.
If and when (insert your favourite thing to scare yourself with at the moment) happens, you can take care of it then. Future you, just like future Nicola, can handle it. You see, all human beings have access to a moment-to-moment common sense and wisdom that’s always available to us at the precise moment we need it and never a moment before.
When I look back at my life I can see the evidence of it in action. I remember walking with my three small children down the main shopping street of our town when we lived in France, when a migraine and the associated panic started. Somehow, without really being able to see, I managed to call the one friend I’d made and explain to her in French that I needed to drop my children to her. I then walked there and did that, then managed to walk home down the winding, cobbled streets, take my medication and get into bed.
I remember having a panic attack in the middle of an airport and managing to get myself into a quiet corner for a while, then still being able to get on my plane. I remember experiencing panicky, totally terrified thinking on a motorway, and knowing to pull off at the next service station until I calmed down.
Somehow I always knew what to do. And you’ll know too, every single time without fail, if you just take a moment to consider, because you have access to that same common sense and wisdom.
You don’t even have to figure it out when it happens, because there seems to be a greater intelligence beyond our personal thinking that will simply hand you a simple knowing when it’s required. The same thing that just knows which arm to reach out and grab your child when they run into the road, takes us to the toilet on time and knows how to digest our food is always available to us. Life gets handled for us, without us having to figure it out.
This was a huge revelation for me. I’d been trying to ‘keep it together’ and ‘stay in control’ and ‘future-proof’ my life, and when I finally realized I didn’t have to, that it wasn’t my job to ‘figure it all out in advance’, 90 per cent of my thinking just fell away. Because pretty much all of my mental time and energy had been spent doing just that – what-iffing and filling in the blanks with thought then trying to control the unknowable. No wonder I was exhausted!
Some alternative what-ifs I’d like to offer up for you to consider and reflect on:
Take a look for yourself.