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You worry. I worry. We all worry about all kinds of things. But why do we allow ourselves to worry so much? Does our worrying accomplish anything? And are we concerning ourselves with the right things?
by Bonnie Greider
dith,"? Walter scowled, "you have got to stop worrying so much. You worry all the time! You worried about Tom failing high school. You worried that the girls would marry deadbeat husbands who wouldn't provide for them. You worried about the car breaking down during our vacation. You even worried about dying of pneumonia when you had the flu last spring. You worried about all of these things, and none of them happened!"
"See!" Edith exclaimed. "It worked!"
How many of us are like Edith?
Sometimes we lose sleep and jeopardize our health over events that may or may not ever occur, and often we find ourselves distraught over situations we cannot control. Worrying takes up a great deal of our time and energy. But, when we stop to consider the subject, why do we spend so much time and energy worrying? Do we gain anything by worrying?
Winston Churchill once stated: "When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened."
Why do we allow ourselves to worry so much?
I have discovered three main reasons we worry.
Blaming ourselves
For many of us who are wives and mothers, worrying takes on a life of its own. I call this the "could have, should have, and wish I would have" syndrome. We fear that the way we handled our lives in the past, particularly when it came to our children, was the cause of the problems and sorrows our families face today. In short, we lack confidence in ourselves and our roles as women. We tend to blame ourselves for problems our loved ones are facing, and we believe that, had we been better mothers, they would not be facing them.
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