I get heavy anxiety when I’ll be spending time with my kids.
What I understand about fear versus anxiety is that fear is a response to a present threat or danger. Anxiety is the anticipation of a preconceived or potential threat or danger.
It’s not likely I’ll encounter a situation with my children where I’m not in control. But I wonder:
- what if my three-year-old doesn’t want to go this time because he knows he’ll have to say bye again?
- what if my 11-month-old doesn’t want to go to sleep for a nap or at nighttime?
- what if I’m so sad that I can’t enjoy my time with them or the rest of the family?
- what if I am still exhausted from the trip, become irritable, and lose my cool?
To Be in the Moment
I want to be focused. I want to feel like I will be fine. I want to be settled and in control. I want to be in the moments there with them. Children know when something is up. They know when your emotions are out of whack. They feel it, and they take from it sometimes like how it’s impossible to calm an infant if you are frustrated, nervous, or angry. I feel like I project sadness onto them.
It’s thinking of the goodbye that cuts me the deepest. I think that I would be okay if I never thought of the goodbye until I was dropping off the babies at their mother’s. Today it’s just too hard to shut it off.
Time and Distance
I worry about the distance. My children live three states away, a 10 hours drive, from where I’m stationed – from where we were all stationed. I don’t get a choice to be reassigned closer to them. Things don’t work like that.
I worry that Maddalyn won’t know me, because I’m not around enough. I worry that Aiden will grow distant from me because I’m not around enough. I worry that they will blame me when they start to understand things. I worry that they will hate me. If they hate, they can’t learn from me. They would reject my family and the goodness of being exposed to my family.
I don’t have any proof that shows me these things won’t happen. All I have is faith. All I can do is hope. I hope that in the days, hours, and minutes that I have with them I can project the joy they give me. None of the other emotions that I feel in this situation would benefit them at their ages.
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Comments
2 responses to “The Anxiety I Shouldn’t Have”
You captured fear and anxiety here. There are so many folks out there feeling exactly this. I’d be interest to read about you take on a cheat sheet for these feels. How do you level up playin this game that’s hard af?
Man, I’m a dedicated, card carrying Overthinker. One thing I’ve been practicing is weighing the things I can control against what I can’t to help reel in my thoughts. We’re heard cool quotes about it. The things outside of our control shouldn’t be heavy enough to trap us into losing hair over. In fact, they should be quite light, they should get the shoulder shrugs and “oh wells”. What we can control should get the majority of our attention. This is where you’ll actually see returns in the mental energy expended.
It’s funny that I heard this advice decades ago from my dad, and I remember trying to apply it in a general way like I could just overall my life (job, relationships, money, etc.) I inevitably when back to my worrying-in-all directions nature. Hearing it again now, I decided to try smaller bites. This situation with the kids is no kidding what I’ve been using as practice.
After knowing what you can control or change, – what matters – the game the game turns into prioritizing those thoughts. I’m still heavy in practice. I only need 10,000 to be a pro HA!