Insomnia Questions

Insomnia brought on the practical reason that my little lady is recovering from a sinus infection and I am hearing every cough over the baby monitor and envisioning the worst (or rather grossest). That, in turn, leaves the door open for me to start worrying about things I can't control. This list is IMMENSE. I'm not kidding. Global warming is on there. The polarized political climate-check. Not knowing the potential markers for disease in my genetic code-yup that's on there too. Now I would like to think I am not crazy (famous last words). I don't cycle on all these thoughts. But it's fascinating that I took a second away from the keyboard to essentially call up those insane worries. It took zero effort. They were just-there, ready for me pull them out of the haze of my brain and flesh them out with some more focused worry. How kind of me-right?? Do I worry about the huge things because I feel powerless with my everyday worries OR do micromanage my daily worries because I see the chaos of the big picture and it scares the crap out of me? World's worst 'which came first?' question, isn't it?

Those worries are like water. They take the shape of the container or rather they take the likeness of the container. Feeling tired, overworked, lethargic? MAGICALLY I begin to worry about my weight (fitting the container). When I become overwhelmed about my daughter's future I can't help but sometimes see floating islands of trash, dead polar bears, little ice chunk remnants of glaciers big enough to fit in your hands. Not kidding. Am I a little nuts? Maybe.

The really sad thing is happiness doesn't seem to work the same way. When I am filled with joy-I am just that filled. My happy moment doesn't seem to set off a chain reactions of other happy thoughts. Peter Pan would have a really hard time getting me to fly-or really any of us. How often are you having an amazing day and your mind begins to race with images of amazing things you have no control over? Are our happy moments so dense that our brain is in a sense preoccupied for a moment? A rest from the worry? Maybe that's it. Or maybe it comes back to that primitive fight or flight response when it comes to worry. The mind races when it is scared. Could it be that? Why does the anxious brain not have uncontrollable positive thoughts running rampant?

We need to work on that.