Anticipatory Anxiety

I don’t know if any of you do or ever did it but I used to waste my time and spoil my health doing it, it was my habit and guess what? …. I didn’t know that.

Thanks to Dr. Gupta…a biochemist who was recommended to me by my cousin brother who made me realize it. I used to think a lot….about what happened throughout the day…about what may happen tomorrow…about what could have been better…about how can tomorrow be a better day for me and for my frenz. Why did I think that way…may be because of lack of satisfaction or contentment…may be because I wanted to be something more than what I was…somebody more happening…somebody more lively…but where was the life…partly in yesterday and rest in tomorrow…today being pissed off.

It was the time when I used to prepare for competitions and healthy and regular studies was more than crucial to me. Yet I was unable to avoid wasting time. Whenever I used to sit taking a target of 2 hours continuous studies…oh I am so much afraid of even remembering that time…I would get so lost in my own virtual life that I would even forget blinking my eye lids. The book is open, my eyes right on top of it, my hands around it…my concentration at its peak…but my brain is playing a jig-saw puzzle with the neurons making pictures of all possible circumstances, proceedings, situations, occurrences, developments, changes, junctures, actions and conclusions…all far from real life. And thus I wasted two most decisive years of my life.

When I first met Dr. Gupta I was really irritated coz I had to wait too much long…and all the time I was obviously …thinking…and I had completely exhausted my brains out…there was nothing else left to be sorry about…but when he opened his mouth I found another thing to be sorry about…why…”why the hell did I come here?” Wasted three complete hours to hear that shit…first thing the doc said after examining my tongue was…”Dude you are absolutely normal…the only problem with you is anticipatory anxiety…”

“What?”…I said.

“Yeah…i.e. you have a habit of living in the future, trying all permutations and combinations of the way events can happen in near future or trying to re-live the past.”

I said—“I do not understand what you are saying.”

He continued…”Look son…answer me honestly…don’t you think a lot? Don’t you keep on asking yourself that I should have not done this, I should have not done that, should not have said a particular thing and should have said something else instead…maybe I hurt person X, maybe I would have entertained person Y more and stuff like that?”

I was completely puzzled to what he said and could not accept it as truth…it was loathsome…it was annoying…yet another reason for being sad and worried. It was easy to decide…I am not going to that place again to waste a single minute to listen to a moron like him…but a far corner of my mind believed in it…what if it was all true? I gave it a chance…a thought…and guess what? A miracle did happen…he was right…word by word. I was losing my health because my thoughts were too unhealthy…which created anxiety and troubles for my stomach machinery to work properly. That was the diagnosis not the treatment.

Very slowly and very gradually I could get rid of this disease…I had to tame my brain otherwise…I had to first make myself realize and accept this whole thing and then get out of this habit…it was like quitting smoking.

Now I am out of it…I don’t anticipate…my brain is much domesticated now and moreover I don’t regret about my past…neither do I plan about my future…I live in present.