Are You Allowing Yourself to Worry?

With the pandemic, many situations arose that affected us or could negatively affect the entire community, in health, in the economy and in many aspects of daily life. Faced with one of those situations, a great friend of mine told me: “I admire that you don’t give a damn about what’s going on”.

In truth, she didn’t mean that I didn’t care what was happening, but rather that I kept the peace in a difficult situation. I took it as a compliment; she couldn’t help but worry and had decided to “allow herself to worry”. Continuing our conversation, we analyze that society tends to interpret this state of peace, this lack of concern as a lack of interest in the situation and whoever is not interested or concerned about the situation is irresponsible for not being concerned.

To put it another way, in the collective unconscious “worrying is a symbol of responsibility” and “whoever does not worry or who does not show concern is irresponsible”. When a difficult situation affects the community it turns out to be almost like a duty to worry, it is a duty to be moved by that situation, even when we develop destructive emotions.

We can then justify ourselves and “allow ourselves to worry” because we feel like we are doing it out of responsibility. It is thought that staying in that destructive emotion and that state of worry means “being responsible”. And it is not. We are simply amplifying a destructive emotion. This applies both to situations that concern us as a general population and to situations that concern you as an individual. In both cases we culturally justify that it is productive or responsible to worry and we do not understand the negative effects it has on us.

When we have a problem and we think about it, we say that we worry. Thinking about it causes a difficult emotion in our body, most likely worry causes fear. We want to feel prepared to face that situation so we continue to think about it, feeding the destructive emotion. Every time we think about it, we provoke the same emotion that invades our body again. These emotions can sometimes be felt as vividly as hammering a finger. And every time we review this thought we hammer our own body again.

As we continue to mentally review the facts and feed that emotion, it overwhelms us, we cannot handle it or assume it easily and it takes over us, we are led by emotion. When we allow ourselves to worry, we give control to emotion.

Just for today do not worry

One of the principles of Reiki tells us not to worry. What’s the problem with worrying? As a phrase from Corrie ten Boom says, “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, IT EMPTIES TODAY OF ITS STRENGTH”. Worry is repeating a feeling of fear, repeating a difficult emotion that can overwhelm you physically and generate a depletion of energy.

Stop worrying from one moment to the next is really something very difficult to do. What is possible is to contemplate the situations that cause concern with mindfulness, in a way that allows us to untie the knot that the situation causes, but without giving in to the automatic thought that feeds the worry.

Being aware of a situation, however difficult it may be, and being responsible for that situation should not be emotionally self-flagellating. Perceiving the emotional state that a situation causes you with mindfulness, with awareness and letting the knot untie to take action is much healthier than allowing the unconscious but constant scourge of a destructive emotion.

• Recognize that worrying is not being responsible, that we can be responsible by perceiving the situation in a state of harmony. We will resolve any situation better in a state of harmony than in a state of stress.
• Recognize when we are feeding worry by repeating thoughts over and over again. Sometimes we have repeated these thoughts so many times that they are already automatically installed in our brain. So every time you find yourself repeating a worrying thought, simply acknowledge that you are taking that path that leads to a difficult emotion and exert some will to automatically and unconsciously stop doing it. Just acknowledge the thought and try to move on to another thought. Do not judge yourself or criticize yourself for this, our brain has a tendency to worry as a method of survival.
• Breathing. Place a hand on your heart (if you want you can activate Reiki before doing so) and take a deep breath as if you were sighing and releasing all stress on the exhale. Repeat this breath at least 3 times and until you feel calm return to your body.

These exercises are mainly the awareness exercise of identifying that you are worried and acting with Mindfulness. By maintaining awareness of the times you are overwhelmed by worry on a daily basis, soon these exercises will begin to happen effortlessly and you will be able to move past worry much more quickly to come to assess the situation from a point of greater calm.

Article by Magalí Giménez

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I am Magalí, I am a Molecular Biologist, I have a PhD in Biological Sciences, I specialize in plant genetics and epigenetics.
I am a Master in Usui Reiki and level two Karuna Reiki®. I am a reader and healer of Akashic Registers.
You can visit my meditation channel in Spanish @ElMayorBien, and you can contact me at [email protected]