Friday open thread: disappearing worries

[dolorosa_12]

Today's Friday open thread prompt is from likeadeuce: what is one thing in life you've learned to let go of or not worry about?



This is a hard question for me, because I am a champion worrier. Almost every scary thing in life prompts me to leap immediately to the worst conclusion, and then have many sleepless nights.

The one thing that I really worked hard on, though, and which is probably a rare success story in terms of me and worrying, is something that I managed to overcome by my late twenties.

As a child and teenager (and in my early twenties as well), I was hyperaware of how I was viewed by other people, and hyperfocused on perceived negative reactions to me by others. In hindsight, I was probably projecting my own perceptions onto other people: I was hyperaware of how I perceived and reacted to other people (and to be honest was probably really judgemental), I was constantly anxious that every little thing about me was being placed under the microscope and judged by other people. I just assumed that everyone else was walking around intensely scrutinising each other (and me specifically), and that every little flaw in me was obviously going to be extremely obvious and important to other people.

By the time my thirties rolled around, I truly no longer cared. I don't mean that I suddenly started being a rude or cruel person, it's just that all the things I used to freak out about (people thinking I dressed badly or looked ugly or talked too much or talked too little or was too emotional or that I seemed out of place in a particular setting) just suddenly seemed really unimportant.

I think this is a fairly common thing to happen to people, though, especially women. We reach our thirties, and suddenly all that anxious hyperawareness and worry about our own likeability falls away. It's incredibly liberating.

What about you?

Comments

[lirazel]

I love hearing about women growing up and just not caring anymore. I'm still working on it, but I'm definitely much better about it than I was when I was younger. A lot of it is just maturity, but also I have slowly come to realize that other people just don't notice and analyze stuff as much as I do. (This is a weird example, but how can you watch an entire movie, get to the end, and not know any of the characters' names? And yet many people don't!)

[dolorosa_12]

I have slowly come to realize that other people just don't notice and analyze stuff as much as I do.

Yes, exactly this! I came to exactly the same realisation: when it comes to both personal interactions, and engaging with books and other storytelling media, I'm the weird one. Most other people aren't paying that much attention, although I guess in fannish spaces you're going to get a concentration of people like us.

[bruttimabuoni]

I definitely empathise with your experience - realising that people aren't necessarily paying you as much attention as you think (and, frankly, getting past an age where a certain kind of many automatically does pay attention to young women). It's definitely freeing.

I used to be desperately physically self-conscious, and I have let go of that quite a bit. Thanks to yoga, and changing in cramped quarters, and seeing all kinds of bodies and learning to appreciate some bits of mine (I am super open in the hips hooray!).

I am also an anxious soul, so in some ways my experience has not been about letting go of something specific, but recognising that I'm generically worrying and need to breathe it away a little. There are things which would paralyse me in the past, such as chatting to someone in a shop, which I now can not only do, but enjoy a friendly exchange without investing it with meaning other than (perhaps) being cheered by it.

That said, I cannot let go of things I can't affect, and indeed am not allowed to talk about, but that upset me (Brexit, politics...). So this is very much a WIP.

[dolorosa_12]

It's incredibly liberating, isn't it? And I agree that it comes in part with age — particularly getting to the age where you're invisible to the kind of obnoxious men who when you were younger made everything so fraught.

I used to be similarly anxious with interacting with people in shops, especially clothes shops, but like you I've come to enjoy it. And, like you, I find it really difficult to switch off from worrying about things like Brexit (around March-April last year I was so anxious about it that I made myself physically ill), and just about the only way I've been able to cope with that is to render myself almost completely ignorant about the situation (i.e. completely disengaging with the news and refusing to visit news websites). It's a pretty blunt instrument, but it's the only thing that works.

[falena]

I think this is a fairly common thing to happen to people, though, especially women. We reach our thirties, and suddenly all that anxious hyperawareness and worry about our own likeability falls away. It's incredibly liberating.

You're probably right, or at least that matches my own experience completely.

[falena]

I thought of something else. I'm a person who tends to worry quite a fair bit, being slightly worried and or anxious about something is kinda my default state -incidentwlly, it took me years to even notice this, like, I often unconsciously plan for 'worst case scenarios' about things going awry in my daily life, like a bus being late and having to change my commute slightly to compensate, that sort of thing... It was a shock to realise, when I started dating my now husband, that other people most definitely don't worry that much and certainly don't have contingency plans at the ready all the time, lol.
But I digress... What I wanted to say is that I've always found extremely hard to talk to people in shops or on the phone and for many years I would do my best to avoid such situations. When I hit my late twenties/early thirties I finally got better at this. I still don't like either activity, but I don't get paralysed by anxiety as I used to in the past.

Quite frankly, I don't get why society makes getting older out to be such a negative thing, it seems to me that it comes with a lot of pros too. I certainly wouldn't trade my older, more confident, less conscious and anxious self for my younger one!

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, I am completely the same: immediately planning for worst-case scenarios. Back in dim dark past when it was still possible to leave the house for social activities, I used to always factor in time for getting lost, trains being cancelled, and other disasters — which usually meant I arrived to things way too early and had to kill time.

I had exactly the same problem as you with both shops (particularly clothes shops) and the phone. When I was in my early twenties I worked for a newspaper — and my job meant I had to phone people a lot. This used to send me into a frenzy of anxiety, and the only way I could deal with it was to actually write myself a script for each phone conversation, with different questions depending on how my interlocutors answered each preceding question. I'm very glad to have moved beyond that!


Quite frankly, I don't get why society makes getting older out to be such a negative thing, it seems to me that it comes with a lot of pros too. I certainly wouldn't trade my older, more confident, less conscious and anxious self for my younger one!

Same here!

[dhampyresa]

what is one thing in life you've learned to let go of or not worry about?

Whether the art I make is Good. I do still want to improve, but I used to have meltdowns of "i suck i will never be any good at art ;_;" roughly half/two-thirds of the way into every artwork I made. Seven years ago, I started trying to draw something every day regardless of quality -- at point I was calling them my "daily disaster drawings" in my head -- and while I can't say I've managed to draw every day since, I'm managing about 80% of the time and while I did have an art meltdown about weeks ago, I hadn't had one in over a year by then. Progress! Also I have demonstrably no talent at art -- only lots of practice and stubbornness -- but sometimes these days I am legitimately happy with the work I produce (as in the finished product, not just the act itself) so I guess it worked? idk maybe i am too much of a worrywart to answer this question properly

Also my taste in music. I aggressively Do Not Care about what other people think, unless they want to rec me things.

[dolorosa_12]

That sounds incredibly healthy — well done you! I can't imagine how awful it must have felt to have so much stress and sadness caused by what was intended as a happy activity.

Also my taste in music. I aggressively Do Not Care about what other people think, unless they want to rec me things.

I totally agree with this, although thankfully I got over feeling awkward about my musical tastes back when I was eighteen or nineteen. When I was a younger teen I was always so embarrassed about being judged for my taste in music (it didn't help that both my parents' first 'real' job was being a music radio DJ on the youth radio station in the 1970s, so I grew up surrounded with very judgemental attitudes about music), but thankfully I realised that this was holding me back from enjoying a lot of really fun stuff. If I want to enjoy cheesy music, I'm not going to let people's opinions stop me!

[dhampyresa]

Honestly, once the pattern was pointed out to me, I kinda learned to ride it like a wave, if that makes. Like "oh yeah, we're doing this again, *shrug* might as well". It probably helps that I am very stubborn when it comes to art and don't know how to quit.

It was really hard to find things that I had stopped caring about! Either I still care or I never did, hahaha