How To Stop Worrying About Your Loved Ones’ Safety & Well-being
It is natural to have a sense of concern for the well-being of our loved ones. What we read or see on TV, newspapers, magazines, or via our portable digital devices accentuate the fact that we live in increasingly violent and dangerous societies. As such, thinking about the possibilities of our family members or closed friends being on the receiving end of some of the horrific incidents we have been exposed to in the media can be totally inconceivable and unbearable.
Surely, healthy concerns for the wellness of our loved ones are good. But it becomes unhealthy when the thought of something bad happening to our loved ones begins to generate excessive fears and anxieties to the extent of affecting our health and quality of life.
If you happen to be in the category of people who worry obsessively about the safety of someone important to them (it may be your parents, child, partner, husband, friends, boss, just to mention a few), you might want to consider some of the potential causes of this type of obsessive fears and anxieties and some possible solutions;
Possible Causes:
- You are likely to develop this kind of obsessive worrying if your identity or sense of self-worth is largely derived from the person you are most worried about. As a result, you feel that your reason for living will be taking away if anything happens to the person you most care for. Because the joy, respect, affection, companionship, meaning and a sense of satisfaction that keeps you going in life is directly linked to this person, you find hard to bear the thought of any harm befalling them. There is a strong emotional attachment between your sense of identity in life and this individual – leading to your brain sending stress signal to your nervous systems each time your loved one is away from you.
- Secondly, it could be that you have something very personal to prove to the person you are worried about – so the only way you can achieve this is if they stay alive. For example, a child that has been deprived of unconditional love or constantly told off for being useless and good for nothing might grow wishing that his parents or the individual who hurt him will live long enough to witness his success. This is a sense of revenge. But if this is all he is living for, the thought of his parents or the responsible individual being killed could generate uneasiness and anxiety – as his entire life depends on making sure they stay alive to be proven wrong.
Possible Solutions:
- Switch from ownership mentality to management mentality: See yourself as a manager of their relationship that matters to you, instead of thinking you own the relationship. A manager manages the resources he is been given to the best of his ability. He does not own the resources but enjoy them. So there is a sense of freedom towards the things and people with which he interacts. Ownership mentality is the cause of the excessive worrying about losing what belongs to you. But as a manager, nothing belongs to you – you have been privileges to be in a position where you are and all you can do is to enjoy it and manage it well.
- Choose dialogue. Give your parent a call. Write a letter to your boss or somebody you resent for making you feel you have to spend the rest of your life proving them wrong. Release your negative emotions by sharing with them how much their actions hurt you. Tell them you forgive them. Tell them you love them.
- Develop your sense of worth and self-confidence. Your identity in life should not be attached to things or people – otherwise your joy will continue to be decided by the mood or status of that person or that thing. In my opinion, the greatest way to for a healthy identity is to develop a PURPOSE for your life – Ask yourself this questions:
- What would I do with my life if I could have everything I want?
- What do I like doing?
- What is my dominant talent, gift, or passion?
- How can I serve and help others get more out of life?
- What do I need to change, learn, do or become to move me towards these goals?
- What daily activities that I can do every day that will link me to using my dominant talents to help humanity?
The healthiest self-worth is that which is derived from knowing that you are a gift to your world and that you are fully equipped with all that you need to help as many people live a good life and achieve their potential. Your true identity is not in things or people; but in what you are and in what you’ve been endowed with to influence your world. You might believe this statement at the moment. That is fine. The best thing you can do for yourself right now is to continue to ask questions and to study.
Learn from those who have moved from rags to riches – those who have overcome their insecurities and poor self-worth to achieve great things. Read motivational books and Biographies of great achievers with humble beginning. You want to be busy discovering who you are and developing yourself that you have no time to worry obsessively about another person.
4. Activate the law of faith. This is a universal law of creativity. Many great thinkers and achievers have explored, taught and used this law to take control of their circumstances. You are a creative being. We create though two powerful tools; thoughts and words. If you can impress the right thoughts long enough on the platform of your imagination and believe, you can bring into physical manifestation that which you have imagined.
Whatever negative thoughts bring fears and anxieties to your mind – change them to the positive you desire and write them down (the desired positive ones) – then read them loud and with boldness to yourself daily – until they are filtered into your subconscious mind.
“Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, your mind can achieve” said Napoleon Hill.
Reject every bad thought and hold confidently with those positive images you have painted on your imagination. The changes that will begin to take place in you will stun you.
Regards
Wale
P.S: For anxiety attacks, panic attacks, depression, chronic stress, OCD, GAD and other anxiety disorders, download my FREE ebook: The Essential Guide To Anxiety Panic Recovery here.
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