when fear becomes your default

For a really really long time, I thought I was just being careful. I thought that preparing for the worst meant I was protecting myself. I thought that if I was just prepared I could stop the painful situation from happening. If I thought of every single possibly outcome, I couldn't possibly still get hurt.

If I could analyze this person's change in behavior enough, maybe I'd know when something was wrong.

If I replayed conversations enough times, maybe I'd figure out what I did wrong.

If I predict every possible ending, maybe the actual ending won't be as bad.

I didn't realize until it was too late that I wasn't protecting myself anymore.

I was living in fear.

the fear of something going wrong

I don't think anyone is born with this kind of fear. I don't think anyone was born with the ability to try to predict every kind of ending. This kind of thinking is learned. It's learned from all the times you got hurt when you weren't prepared. It's learned when something goes wrong and you think to yourself, maybe if I had predicted this I could have prevented it.

But that's not how it works.

Sometimes nothing is actually happening, but your mind is already preparing for the worst.

You're waiting for the person to leave.

Waiting for someone's mood to change.

Waiting for someone to stop loving you.

And even though everything is actually okay, you can't fully enjoy it for what it is because your mind is already living this scary situation that might not ever happen.

Unfortunately when you're already living in the scary situation you tend to act accordingly. For me that meant clinging on to someone who hadn't left yet and constantly checking on them. For me that meant never being able to be away from them because what if I left and suddenly everything changed. For me it meant that I would have to always be around for him to care about me.

the fear of making mistakes

I started treating every decision like it was between life and death. Every decision felt like it would result in permanent consequences.

I was left asking myself questions like these all the time.

What I I choose wrong? What if I say the wrong thing? What if choosing this leaves me unhappy? What if I regret this? What if it hurts even more?

Eventually, every single decision, even ordinary ones that barely carry any weight start to feel dangerous.

Something as simple as "what do you want to eat today?" became something where I wondered if choosing the wrong meal would make the other person disappointed because they didn't want it. Nothing was simply just a choice anymore. Every choice felt like there would be a consequence.

the fear of losing people

I struggled with the one the most and truthfully I'm pretty sure I still do (I've just learned to push it down. Don't do that. It's not healthy).

I had been left so many times before, and often without any warning or explanation. So I learned to analyze every little word, every little behavior in order to always know before someone leaves. There is a problem with that though.

You overthink. You seek constant reassurance. You become hyperaware of every little change and every little thing that they do.

Ironically, it's usually this behavior that the other person ends up leaving.

so what did i realize

I use to think that the solution to the possible hurt was to elimate every possible reason to be afraid. If I could just predict the outcome, maybe I can prevent it.

It's not possible to do that.

Life is uncertain. People will change. Plans change. Relationships change. And sometimes it'll hurt. Sometimes it'll come without warning. Sometime's something will just change regardless of if you do anything.

I can't control things changing. But I can control is how to stop living every moment as though something terrible is about to happen. You don't know what's going to happen so why are you living this painful experience when it might not ever happen?

And that's the best part about all of this.

Feeling safe isn't about knowing what's going to happen so you can prevent it from happening. It's knowing that if something does happen, you can figure it out. You don't need to solve the problem before it even becomes a problem. You can solve it if and when it happens.

Live in the present, not the future that you think might happen.

ending

I'm still learning all of this. This is all new information for me. I didn't know that I had made all my decisions from fear until a month ago. That's a really long time of being scared. And sometimes that fear still gets loud.

Do you know what I do when that happens?

I remind myself that my thoughts are not fact. A possibility isn't a prediction.

And even now I am still learning more.

Something recently happened to me and the end result wasn't one I could even predict. It was one that was so bad that I didn't even know could happen. But it did happen. And I'm still standing here. And even though it was bad, I know myself enough to know what part I played and what parts I didn't.

I think that's the most important part. As long as you understand what your part was, you will know how to get through it.

I'm not through it yet. I think I have just hit the darkest part of it. And I'm terrified. I actually have no idea how this will end up. But however it does, I trust myself to deal with it when it happens. Not before.

Life will never turned out exactly the way you plan and that's exactly how life should be.

I will no longer spend my life grieving things that haven't happened yet.

I want to experience the life I'm actually in the middle of, not just prepare for the one I'm scared of.