Shut the Front Door.

"I've suffered many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened." - Mark Twain
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 I developed a 

For most of my life, I've been quite the worry-wart. As I grew up (again, as the second child out of seven, I developed a mothering trait, which contributed to my worry. When I was a teenager, the worry turned into something quite different, which I didn't understand: I was scared all the time, both or rational and irrational things. I spent a couple of years thinking that I was going crazy, and then discovered the existence of anxiety disorders. 

As anxiety is something that 18.1% of the US population struggles with, I wanted to address it a little bit in this post. Even for those that don't struggle with anxiety as a mental illness, it's still a feeling that every person with a sympathetic nervous system (i.e., everyone alive) experiences. Crises are a part of life; everybody experiences them, whether they're resultant from actions or from things completely out of our control, like natural disasters or illnesses, and everyone experiences adverse emotions as a result, whether it's anxiety or anger or a multitude of other things.

Something I've learned over the last year, and had put into words for me in the past few weeks has helped me, and I wanted to share the thought: I don't get to choose my circumstances, but I do get to choose my thoughts.

Feelings do not result from events; they result from thoughts about events. I've realized from personal experience and a lot of practice that if I can change the way I think about something, I can change the way I feel and respond when things happen, especially crises.

Although my anxiety problem is a personal matter, this idea applies very well to family systems, too. There's something called the ABCX model that is used for analyzing stress and coping in relation to families that has a lot to do with this. It looks like this:

Actual Events

Both Resources and Responses

Cognitions (definition of event)

(Total) EXperience

Many people that I've talked to about hard things they've had to go through seem to often only focus on the A part of the model, and think that it equates to an entire experience. But we have to remember that we (individually or as families) have resources that can help us to cope effectively with hard things, like friends, faith, values, professionals, etc., and it is possible for us to change our cognitions, or the way we think, about the things that happen to us. Remembering that these things, not just the crises that happen to us, are a part of the total experience here, help us to have more control over how we react to adverse circumstances and what we do.

I've come to the point in terms of anxiety that when I'm presented with a situation, person, or thing that makes me anxious, I envision a pit in my mind; it's dark, and it looks kind of like a whirlpool. I'm standing on the edge, somewhat precariously, but I have complete control over whether I fall in or not. I don't know why, but the idea of falling in is tempting; it's hard to keep standing up there on the ledge. But I have control! I know not everyone sees that little visual in their mind when facing a crisis, large or small, but it's something that helps me to recognize that I'm not subject to my emotions or my circumstances alone. We have the option to take a deep breath and shut the front door, and choose how we react. It takes practice, but practice makes a habit, and this habit makes stability.