I Panic, I Obsess, I Flip Out

I try not to panic and I rarely succeed.

I panic. I'll get a little thought in my head and it will start to grow until I'm convinced I'm in the middle of a catastrophe. This is a stressful way to be. It's also an easily resolvable problem, all I need is someone to tell me it's not a catastrophe and I'm blowing everything out of proportion.

Of course, finding reassurance that everything is going to be okay is not always possible. Sometimes my fears are legitimate but I blow them out of proportion. Sometimes, I feel guilty for unloading my worries on other people. Sometimes, my worries are so silly, I can't bear to admit them.

Double-edged Sword

My imagination is a source of this problem. It gives my fears greater strength and creates new fears. My imagination is also the source of my greatest joys (writing, art).

I fixate on the nightmares my brain creates so I spend much of my time thinking up ways to deal with them if they came true. This doesn't make me feel better but at least I know what I'll do if the thing I'm afraid of happens. People sometimes comment on how calmly I take bad news but they seldom realize I had been imagining far worse.

This probably won't make anyone feel better.

I am afraid of making mistakes and suffering for honest mistakes. This is not something that anyone can tell me is not a reasonable fear. It could happen. I never intend to do anything wrong but I can only avoid mistakes as long as I know what the right thing to do is.

I could do something with every positive intention and still have it go wrong or be working from the wrong information and do the wrong thing. This could happen. That's it. My fears could come true.

I have many positive traits. I'm honest, reliable, creative, faithful. I'm also paranoid, anxious, self-defeating. I am better than I used to be. This panic used to lock me up inside. Instead, it sets into obsessive action.

Part of the problem for everyone, I think, is people try so hard to seem together, normal, and relaxed. So then I feel like I'm the only person in the world with this problem. It's not true. If you have this problem, know you're not alone. I'm dealing it every day.