Are you anxious?
Have you ever wondered if you are a thinker or a doer?
Did you ever feel bad for being a thinker or a doer?
A thinker thinks and a doer does. It’s that simple.
However, it gets complicated when someone aspires to be a thinker or to be a doer because they dislike being who they are or they choose to be someone they are not, just because they believe one is better than the other.
I was talking to Melissa (name changed) last week and she was explaining how busy she always is.
She confided that, she hates being busy but she always ends up being that way, even when she makes a concerted effort to ‘do nothing’ something always happens to fill her time which is leading to feel anxious all the time because she’s worrying constantly and catastrophising about the worst possible outcome to any given situation.
Both the problem and the solution lies in the above paragraph.
Did you get it?
Melissa gave a couple of huge clues that if missed would leave a therapist going round in circles for weeks trying to find the problem and it would have been staring at them all along.
Let me break it down for you..
She hates being busy and yet she is so busy – Why?
Reasons : Melissa cannot say ‘No’ and she is afraid that if she say’s no, she will be/feel rejected. Also if she says no, she is being inefficient with her time. She doesn’t want people to see her as inefficient & lazy.
So what’s causing her anxiety?
Reason: Melissa’s natural state is to be quiet, which creates an internal conflict and has been acting against her natural state since she was a child.
Even though Melissa has acted against herself for many years now, why hasn’t she ‘just gotten used to it’.
Here is the challenge. It’s not the repetition of work, it’s the repetition of conflict that was keeping her stuck.
And, why is she anxious?
Melissa is a quiet achiever, she get stuff done without making a fuss. Except she was socially conditioned to be an achiever, not her natural state. Hence the anxiety.
And a mind that wants to prove efficiency will attract opportunities to prove so, either by creating more work to be seen busy/successful or by creating inefficient people around her so she can feel efficient.
But how long can she do that?
Anxiety is the problem of a thinker and not the doer or when the two are in conflict.
As much as you can adapt, you must also learn to respect your true nature.
Of course this is just one of the many reasons behind anxiety.
And the real solution is not in mindfulness or stillness to overcome anxiety. It is in understanding your true nature and living aligned to it.