What worries you masters you.
― John Locke
At the end of the movie Fight Club, the characters Tyler and Marla are talking on the top floor of a high-rise building. Behind them, floor-to-ceiling windows provide a panoramic view of a surreal cityscape. As the scene unfolds, Tyler, played by Ed Norton, says to Marla (Helen Bonham Cater), “Trust me, everything is going to be fine.” And with that the skyline erupts in explosion and flame. Unfazed, Tyler adds: “You met me at a very strange time in my life.” The film concludes with the two tenderly holding hands, gazing out at the carnage to The Pixies classic song, “Where is My Mind?”
Lately, I’ve been pondering the same question. I’m not in breakdown mode – nothing in my life is catastrophic or even chaotic. But I’ve moments, more than a few, where I feel as if the world is crashing down around me. And unlike Tyler’s oddly placed optimism, I don’t think everything is going to be fine.
My problem, as I see it, or more aptly, as I feel it, is worry. And before I share with you my most recent worry, the presenting and persistent worry that is causing these emotional implosions, I will tell you that I am quite familiar with worry. In fact, I’m an apex worrier. I’m good at it. You might say I’m a natural. That it comes easy to me. In other words: feeling uneasy is easy.
So what am I so worried about? I’ll let you fill in the blank from a quote by Sigmund Freud: “Time spent with _______ is never wasted?”
While you might assume the missing word is “analysts” or “patients”, the correct answer is “cats”. And it is two of these magnificent creatures, feral and friendly, who are causing me consternation. The duo have been living for some time in our neighborhood, but it’s been only the past half-year that my wife and I have taken up the mantle of feeding them and helping them as best we can to survive and thrive. To this end, we have named the cats, females previously spayed (revealed by clipped ears), Peach and Cream. They are sweet, tough, hungry, wary, and wise. I adore them.
And not surprisingly, I worry about them. Perhaps, for good reason. The way I perceive it, danger abounds and envelopes their daily existence. Speeding cars and trucks make crossing nearby streets akin to traversing a mine field. Hawks the size of spy balloons sit atop trees, their sharp eyes intent on finding something scurrying below for their sharp talons to snatch. Weather extremes, like the recent Arctic blast that swept through the northeast, seem to make life inhabitable without four walls, a blanket, and a space heater. So many potential threats to the kitties invade and occupy my mind, particularly when they don’t show up at their usual feeding time. That is when my worry moves from manageable to manic. I roam the surrounding environs, the nooks and crannies, searching for them. I scour the streets. Look under decks and sheds. I pout and stew, fret and sweat. Until, as if by magic, they appear and meow their way to a meal. And then, and only then, I relax and return to my more-or-less happy self.
Which is not normal. And not good for me. Or the cats. They look healthy and clearly enjoy the freedoms of the wild. To change their life, to trap them and take them indoors and try to domesticate them, would be a cruelty. So I must accept a limited role in their lives, and also accept there is just so much I can do in this role. But before I can accept all this acceptance, I must address the worrying.
But how, pray tell, do I do that? Let’s have go at another fill-in-the-blank for a possible answer, this one from Carl Jung:
“Until you make the unconscious _______, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
While we’d like to say “disappear” or “shut up”, the actual word is “conscious.” Interpreting Jung, if we want to be “in charge” of our lives, we must bring connect to the silent and subtle signal caller in our brain, probing the subconscious to identify the root causes of what we do, how we behave, and how we feel. To this end, Jason Kurtz, who also has written a stunning memoir about self-empowerment titled “Follow The Joy”, opines that unresolved anger is often the well-spring for acute worry. He explains:
“When we have feelings that we don’t want to have, our natural inclination is to suppress them. Unfortunately, unwanted feelings don’t disappear simply because we wish they would. Sometimes, they turn into something that is more acceptable. If you are angry at someone, for example, but can’t express it for one reason or another, this can lead to fear. Why fear? Well, since you are angry at this person, there is probably a wish to express that anger and perhaps yell at them. If you don’t want to do that, or can’t for whatever reason, you start to feel fear – fear that the anger might come out. That fear then looks for things to become attached to – are my pets okay? Is my spouse okay? My children? Did I lock the doors? The fears seem irrational because they are irrational. The deeper truth is, you’re not afraid of those things. You’re afraid that you anger will leak out.”
In my case, once I turned my attention on anger, I discovered that yes, I was angry. Not the seething variety, but the simmering kind, like soup before the bubble boil. It was not just one thing, but a palette of situations and people piquing my ire, from political to personal. The one thing all these issues had in common was my non-response: I was pushing the anger down, I was not voicing my displeasure, and I was not owning my feelings. I was leaving it all to my subconscious to deal with. And acting like a taxi-dispatcher sending out rides, my subconscious found a welcome outlet for this anger, this build up of unwanted energy – worry.
Of course, insights don’t equate to a cure. But it is a vital step in the right direction. Moving forward, it’s up to me to learn how to effectively deal with anger when it arises, to not let it sit and fester and add teeth to my other emotions. And while I know I will continue to worry now and again about my purring pals, perhaps without the underpinning of anger fueling the feeling, it will lessen in intensity and the energy generated will exit my body sooner and smoother than before. That’s the plan. That’s the hope. And now I see it’s feeding time. I know they’ll be waiting for me. You see, I’m not worried.
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