Preoccupied with My Health
by Elouise
For the last several weeks I’ve been preoccupied with my health. Especially with the results of several blood tests. I’ve been anxious and fearful about various diseases, dreading a kind of darkness that hovers just off-stage, waiting to make its inappropriate entrance.
I’ve felt this way for years, even though I’ve been blessed with relatively good health—IBS, eyeglasses and hay fever excepted. But no big diseases or disabilities have shut me down or kept me socially isolated.
So why this high anxiety? I seem to believe it’s time for me to run out of ‘good luck.’ I’m not a hypochondriac. Yet the older I get, the more I seem to expect that any moment now, disaster will strike.
As indeed it can. It’s a myth to think that back then I wasn’t susceptible to this kind of thing. Actually, youth and middle age provided me with a cover, a convenient way of being in denial.
Yet what’s true now has always been true. No one is exempt from having bad things happen. The only thing different today would be the odds of that happening.
Though I don’t want to be preoccupied with end-of-life anxiety, I seem to be leaning in that direction. This steals my joy. It makes me lethargic. Increasingly, it makes me aware that D won’t live forever.
So where does this streak of foreboding come from? In some ways it feels like an old friend. It also feels sick. Not sick unto death. Just sick with anxiety about a thousand small and large things that might happen to me or my family members.
I can’t think of one good reason to dwell on unanswerable questions such as these. They alienate me from the present. Drain energy from other things I might enjoy doing.
Right now I want to take a little rest. So I will. I don’t know what will happen after that. Or whether I’ll have anything to post tomorrow.
……….Smudge taking a little rest
I wrote the words above two weeks ago, on July 24, not intending to post them. However, in the meantime I’ve read more about highly sensitive persons, of which I am one.
Instead of calling myself a worrywart, I might more accurately describe myself as keenly aware of the way things work together. This includes the way things might play out in the future, based on intuition and my experience of the present and the past.
I don’t choose to think like this. It just happens. Scenarios pop into my mind.
Perhaps in my childhood this was a survival tool that sometimes helped me stay out of trouble. As an adult it has often kept me from making false or unrealistic assumptions about the future. Not a bad thing.
Yet the truth is simple: I don’t know what the future holds. All I can do is focus on where I need to be right now, and what I need to be doing or not doing right now. Which is why taking that little rest and admitting I didn’t know whether I’d have anything to post the next day was a good sign.
How do you deal with anxiety about your future?
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 7 August 2015
Cartoon image from gramaonhealth.com
Photo of Smudge: DAFraser, Jan 2015
I loved that cartoon. I get blood tests every month or two weeks because I take a blood thinner, and they always find some! I’ve had my share of medical problems (who doesn’t at my age). But you asked: “How do you deal with anxiety about your future?” I can honestly say I’m not anxious. I leave that to my doctors. And they have taken good care of me. My future is in the hands of God, and I thank him for giving me a good life.
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I’m glad you liked the cartoon! So did I. Everything about it was wonderful. I’m glad you’re not anxious, and I understand and appreciate that your future (and mine) is in God’s hands. I used to think any hint of fear or anxiety was wrong. For me, they help bring a sharp focus to reality, inviting me to live in the present–instead of the future I don’t yet inhabit. I don’t always find living in the present easy. Sometimes I take things for granted when they’re going well. And then there are times when my discipline has to be ramped up and focused on intently. I’m in one of those times right now. Thanks for your response. Also, I’m relieved that your doctors always find some blood!
Elouise
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Waldo, thank you! 🙂 How do I deal with anxieties about the future? I try to ignore them, or if I can’t do that, I reframe them, as in, what is Life trying to show me here? What good is there, in this outcome?
Bless you, Elouise!
XXXXXXX 🙂
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Thanks, Fran. I should have added “and for good doctors” to the end of my comments.
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Hi, Fran. Thanks for this response. I like the reframing approach. It often helps me understand not what’s coming down the road, but what hooked me at this time in my life that didn’t used to hook me? What can I learn from this? And how can I reframe it so I have a more adequate and even truthful understanding of myself and my fear. Not that it solves everything–my biggest goal is to live in the present, since that’s all I have at any moment–and want to enjoy as much as possible! 🙂
Here’s to enjoying each moment and each person in that moment as fully as possible!
Blessings right back to you!
Elouise
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I always believed the worse case scenarios that pop into my head were part of my too good of an imagination! I try not to dwell on the negative, focus on the good and lovely, stay upright and move on. But I’m young yet!
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This sounds like a good plan to me! Thanks for sharing your experience, David. And yes, feel affirmed in your wonderful imagination!
Elouise
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I just try and get through the next 24 hours. I acknowledge fearful thoughts when they pop into my head and thank them for sharing and then they tend to dissipate. xx
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Thanks for this great comment. I like the idea of acknowledging and then thanking fearful thoughts for “sharing!” I’ve never thought about it that way. I also like your 24 hour timeframe. Not too much and not too little. Just right!
Elouise
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