Panicking Without My Security

[melina]

I'm just pouring out some worries this morning instead of wandering around the house crying. I feel this panic sensation today that I'm not going to be able to manage on my own. In another post I expressed concerns about my sons. One of them, home for the weekend, told me yesterday that he tried not to think too far ahead because it scared him. I'm actually feeling the same way. Thinking too far ahead really frightens me, when I think about all the situations - both good and bad - now without my closest ally. I'm really terrified. How do you deal with your fear? I'm sure others must get this feeling.

Melina

[niamh]

hi Melina,

I can relate to your fear, I have it and I my Mom has it too. Like your son, I try not to think ahead but of course sometimes it's impossible not to. It's financial worry, worry about little things going wrong in the house and my Dad not being here to fix/help or look after it and then just the worry of an entire lifetime, birthdays, holidays, vacations all without him.......it's all too much and most of the time still doesn't make sense to me that he won't be back to plan a vacation etc.

I do my best to focus on the "now", it was something my Dad always did, he never worried about anything and would always talk about living in the now, the very moment you exist in because that's truly all we have, can't change the past and can't control tomorrow. I could never understand this no matter how much he explained it to me, now I completely understand it and I try very hard to just exist in the now without thinking ahead because when I start thinking of the future, it's too much, it's too long, there's too much he won't be here for. So I try to retreat back to right now and tell myself that right now, this very split second I'm "ok" for want of a better word here.

It is very difficult to do but if you can somehow manage it, it brings a tiny sense of calm when the fear and panic becomes too much.

I know there is a book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, I have it at home, it was my Dad's. I guess this is where he got it all from, I've tried reading it a while back but I find it hard to read much these days, for me this feeling of just being in the now came automatically.......the panic and fear simply became too much one day back in December and I started thinking of what my Dad used to say and it calmed me every so slightly. Sometimes now, it happens automatically for me, sometimes I have to try really really hard. When I start thinking of the future and that can be even weeks from now, you know yourself with holidays coming up etc, I try to get myself back to now and I will just start looking and noticing things that are physically around me wherever I am.

It's so hard to explain to someone else how to "do this", perhaps there is more in the book than I know in terms of being able to do this but I do know that often it is all that gets me through each day, each moment because the fear of the future and all that time without him is simply too much to process and cope with.

Niamh

[MartyT]

(Just so you know, there is a book entitled Now: Overcoming Crushing Grief by Living in the Present, which is aimed specifically at the bereaved and includes the authors' "Ten Steps for Surviving Crushing Grief." Click on the title to read Amazon's description and reviews.)

[kayc]

By staying in the present. I try not to borrow trouble or worry about tomorrow...it is what it is. And most of what we worry about doesn't come to pass so then we've wasted boundless energy if we're worried about what we cannot change anyway.