Payne

My boss was explaining to me a few months ago that I'm someone who very much lives in the future. After overly analyzing that statement as I'm prone to do, I started to see the reality of it. I am constantly planning the next project, the next step, the next goal. This trait has been very helpful in allowing me to accomplish things very young and to progress in my healing. However I noticed that it keeps me constantly anxious and constantly waiting.
I assume this is an off shoot of my childhood where thinking 5 steps ahead and being hyper-vigilant was a survival skill. I had to know the ins-outs and possible trick responses to anything you did to deal with my AMA. Because of that I find I'm still living my life that way. I meet my boyfriend, I'm already mapping out how to move in together. I'm not ready for it but it's the next step so that's where my head goes to, planning, preparing, making a fail safe, and my ever present favorite creating rules, rules for when its okay, rules for when it's not, rules for if this or if that.
I can acknowledge the benefits and the negatives of the learned survival skill. However, I can also acknowledge that it needs to become a tool and stop acting as need. Does anyone else have this issue? How have you been able to focus on utilizing it for the good while shutting it off and learning to live in the now?

Kialua

Interesting. While I do try to love the present I too am a planner, and my husband is not. I am forever asking him to put a date and time on it and he rarely does. I really don't like the wait and see, we will do this or that next week deal. I need a day, time and place. I know I should lighten up and go with the flow and I do try to, but it is a need that is deep down inside. I know this comes from always waiting on my Dad to fulfill his promises that he never did. Like "going shopping for new school clothes tomorrow night when I get home from work" and then never show up till bar close and it never happens.

happybeingme

I tend to be like this as well. I like the general structure of my days to be rather routine. I hate surprises and doing things on a whim. It stresses me out and I feel a loss of control.

When it comes to the future tripping part of it, someone once asked me " why are you paying interest on borrowed worry?" See, my future tripping always had a negative slant and I always blamed myself for something that may or may not happen. I realized.when that person made that statement to me that I was the cause of all my stress and unhappiness.

Now I make myself focus on my inner voice. I question it constantly. I ask myself things like is this something I should worry about?
Will playing out possible scenarios really help?
If I just practice patience and allow things to happen naturally will the outcome be ok?
While I am not always perfect with this I am a much calmer person. Things usually work out and when they dont it is because.they werent supposed to.
I have found when I look to far ahead I make myself miserable and miss out on any happiness that is occuring right now

PurpleKnight

Yeap my mind was very active in my early 20s due to my childhood being chaos, always planning ahead, thinking things through to the nth degree!!

The problem though was it became a hinderance and when I discovered alcohol, it was like a fire to the flame, which created my own addiction, alcohol became the escape from the chaos in my own mind!!

After achieving Sobriety myself, I then had to learn to slow life down to the present, this phrase I found a great help:

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" - John Lennon

MikeH

I was very much like this, and still am to some degree. As a child, I became very vigilant in life because I never knew when my mother would explode, although I didn't realize that I was this way until I entered therapy 9 years ago in my mid 50's. I suspect many children from abusive households learn this to protect themselves.

The 1st step is the "hugest" which you've already done: you understand that you are this way, and that this trait is both good and bad. There's a book called "Perfect Daughters" about daughters of alcoholic parents that talks about this. Some traits we learned in our dysfunctional families are a real asset used in the proper places. For me, (and I'm self-employed and working part-time, so this is probably much easier for me) - I've come far enough that I can sense when I'm "overly planning" and I will stop, get up from my desk (I'm an accountant) and walk-and-think about whether I need to do it. In my line of work, a *proper* :-) amount of planning is a good thing, so I sort it out. My "walks," which were maybe 20 minutes or so 8 years ago, are now down to 2-5 minutes. And... some of you may laugh at this [and if you do, you're probably further along in your therapy than you think] :-) but I have a "macro" in a spreadsheet where I track my "therapy" time...

Soberpotamus

I tend to live in the future (in my head) too. How have I managed to live in the present? I got two dogs and started meditating! Lol. Not kidding... it is the best way I've ever found to force myself to live mindfully. I recommend both

Payne

Thanks everyone, it's as always wonderful to know that I'm not alone on this front. SoberJennie I do have the dogs covered I have 3 it certainly helps, they're quite the goofballs. I have been trying to sit down and mindfully sort out why I feel the need to plan ahead so much and understanding in situations why I do it is helping to make the picture a bit clearer. I think I will have to keep this rolling on my working list of learning about me. Please by all means keep the advice coming it's helping a lot.

Soberpotamus

I suggest reading some Thich Nhat Hanh.

Payne

Thanks SoberJennie I will look it up. MikeH thats funny, I have my budget down to a T and even shows tracking on how I have changed my bills.

Mracoa

I have a friend who introduced me to a concept of visualizing these thoughts as rabbits that run around in your mind. Each rabbit works on a thought, or at simulating different potential outcomes. Sometimes you can direct the rabbits and get them to work on positive things. Sometimes the rabbits take over and the thoughts they produce are intrusive and dysfunctional. As you practice paying attention you start to recognize which rabbits are producing which and you can start to ignore the bad ones or cook em up for supper.

I don't visualize these nearly as vividly as he does, but the concept of compartmentalizing and trying to herd these multiple competing thoughts has been useful.

I've combined that with regonizing that I can only control myself. So, when one of my thoughts relies on someone else taking a specific action, I don't take that train of thought much past that point. You can't control what someone will do. Perhaps you can predict if you know enough about that person, but even then, you can be wrong.

Being able to see how your actions today affect your future is both a blessing and a curse. If you worry so much about tomorrow that you don't enjoy today, you are missing out. We can't predict the future. Being smart and hyper viligent means we are really good guessers. We are often wrong, and prone to try and control people to make our 'guess' right. If we can accept that what we visualize may not come to pass, but are willing to enjoy the path as far as it takes us, then if that path ends or a difficult choice presents itself, we will not be upset that things are not going as we planned.

Payne

Mracoa that's really helpful and I'm definitely a visual person. I will have to give that a try.

Kialua

Great bunny exercise. I just pictured it but all my bunnies are running all over the place, it's like herding cats! While I do have a penchant for planning ahead I also try to not obsess and worry about. I try to apply this verse: "So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Just get through today is my goal, focussing on today.

Payne

I decided to be responsible (after a visit to the ER last Friday) and have a little run in with my doctor concerning my increasing anxiety and running bunnies. I was informed that being in the intense pain I have been in because of my knee for the last three years has placed me in a constant fight or flight situation that I can neither fight or flight from. That has helped increase my anxiety and I am now traveling down the bunny hole with it.

I did something crazy yesterday in my distress and called my AM. I know better but I was scared and overwhelmed and I felt bad asking for help one more time from my usual support system (it was silly they were happy to be there for me) so I called my mom, hoping from apparently some primal urge that hearing her daughter spent the night in a hospital with an anxiety attack so bad we had to check my heart that she may be able to muster a little parental concern. Nope, I was told "that happens" and then invited to a party.

My roommates mother passed a month ago, we were talking around my best friend and I told my roommate I was so sorry I couldn't imagine dealing with that grief. After he left the room my friend nudged me and told me "Not imagine, you have been dealing with the grief of not having a mother your whole life. He will hurt but at least he will have memories, you will probably grieve forever, in a different way." She's right I will probably never truly grieve for my AM in the traditional sense, but in all the moments when I could use a "mother" I will grieve for the one I will never have.

Kialua

You might be surprised. I was relieved when my parents passed. I felt a bit guilty about not being sad and unhappy. Sure I wish I had good parents but now that they are gone it's very freeing to not wish and worry and wait all the time.

Payne

I can totally understand that sentiment, I have definitely thought before how much easier my life would be if I didn't have that still hovering. To be able to grieve and move on once and for all.

MikeH

When my father died 2 years ago, I was angry that he never tried to apologize for all the abuse. He was a salesman, and several times he tried to reach out, as salesmen will do, to "sell" me on his ideas, but I could tell he had no intention of apologizing. Instead, he wanted to "sweep it under the rug," and then he could sooth his conscience and tell people everything was ok between us. I wanted no part of it. When he died, I did feel a little "guilty" over my total lack of sadness or sorrow, but I've realized that I was reacting to my childhood "training" that everything was always my fault.

My mother was worse than my father: she's in the final stages of 20 years of Alzheimer's, and I already know that when she dies I will feel a release and no remorse.