When we think too far into the future, the less certainty we have about what our lives are going to look like. The more uncertainty I have, the more my anxiety kicks in. If I try to bring back the focus of my attention to the present day, things become a lot more predictable.
If you're an anxious person, you probably spend quite a lot of time thinking about the future. The difficulty is when we think too far into the future, the less certainty we have about what our lives are going to look like. And anxiety really thrives in all of those blank spaces. If I look at my day tomorrow, it's probably going to look pretty similar to my day today. A week from now, probably pretty similar. A year from now, things will be different. Five years from now, even more so. I don't know what my job will look like.
I don't know what I'll be doing in terms of my patients. I don't know where I'll be living even. The more uncertainty I have, the more my anxiety kicks in. Because as an anxious person, I want to fill in the blanks with the worst case scenario. That way I'm protected. I can never be blindsided by anything too terrifying because I've always thought ahead of it. But that can be paralyzing. And I'm spending too much time thinking about stuff that actually probably is not going to happen at all. If I try to bring back the focus of my attention to the present day, to just the next 24 hours, things become a lot more predictable.
And for an anxious person, predictability is super, super helpful.
