Time Against Anxiety

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Each of us has a time machine: that which transfers into the past - memories; what takes you to the future is dreams.

Herbert J. Wells

Want to learn how to use time to reduce anxiety and build confidence? How to calmly look at the problems around? And how to accept your future?

First, let's get rid of the word problem! There are additional costs or ongoing issues that need to be addressed. But these are not problems. Good?

How can all these current issues be resolved? In the movie "Spy Bridge", the hero of Tom Hanks asks the captured Soviet spy Abel, "Aren't you worried?" To which, he replies, "Will this help?" To resolve any issues, a person sometimes needs to stop worrying beyond measure. But what if you are not a spy?

Fritz Perls, in The Gestalt Approach and Witness to Therapy, equates thinking and fantasy. Fifteen years ago it was a real discovery for me! From a dreamer, I instantly turned into a thinker. And you're wrong if you think you've forgotten how to dream. To think is to fantasize.

It is fantasy that will come in handy for you now to reduce anxiety. For the first exercise, you still need: a simple time machine (turn on your imagination) and eleven minutes of silence.

Think about your first exam, declaration of love, or being late for the train. Any disturbing event that happened plus or minus eleven years ago will do. Remember how everything was resolved then, pay attention to your feelings then and now. Remember how you now feel about your past worries. Remember?

Return to "now" and think about pressing issues. How tired of everything! Why me? Why now? When will it end? Well, and so on. To your taste.

Now imagine that it is 2031. You look at the sunset or the fire in the fireplace, drink a drink of your choice and laugh. You remember and laugh through the years and through tears already over your current difficulties. Use the same point of view as when traveling into your troubling past. You can stay in this future for as long as you like.

How do you deal with the worries of a future not as distant as 2031? The future in which you want to find a job, see a doctor, meet a girl or boyfriend.

Let's call this exercise History of Things. What do you need? Fantasy and old wooden chair or table. As a last resort, a pencil or banknote will do.

Sit in a chair and take three slow, deep breaths. Stand with your feet on the floor and feel the gravity of the earth. Feel every point where you touch the world.

Think about how old your chair or table is? What wood is it made of? Imagine how and when this tree grew in the forest. Once upon a time your chair rustled with leaves and drank rain. It was as if birds were sitting and singing on it. This went on for a long time, because trees do not grow in one day. What path did he have to go to find himself here and now?

We are surrounded by a lot of things and each has its own story. There is already a chair and a table somewhere in your office at your future dream job. Your first million is being printed, and the people you love are just strangers. There are pencils growing in the forest that you will buy for your children or grandchildren for school. The world is waiting for us. Let the future happen.