Category: Raspberries

Anxiety can be caused by a lot of things heaped upon our psyches over years and years of traumatic experience.  Just living gives you enough to be psychotic for.  For this Raspberry, I had to go back a few years to its source.  I remember a day when such things did not make me anxious, and now I’m really a wreck.  So what happened in between and what can I do now to convince myself that I am safe and okay?

While traveling, lots of stressful situations can arise.  And often, not all of them are attributable to you and your “baggage”.  You will encounter lots of people and situations out there which  may be stressful–or downright infuriating to you.  So take a deep breath and we will try to unpack some of your personal issues so that you can prepare for the others which will come.

Here are three of my favorite worries: Fear of Forgetting Something Important, Fear of Leaving Home, and Fear of Flying.

Fear of Forgetting Something Important

Here is a detailed excel spreadsheet checklist of things not to forget to pack while traveling (www.edelalon.com search for “packing”).  Sometimes, however, I feel that this type of detailed fanaticism is part of the problem.  With so many things to remember or check off, there is more to forget, and the risk of feeling incomplete hovers over my already overstuffed suitcase.

So instead of thinking about packing in a “what am I forgetting” fashion, let’s reverse it and think about what I really need.

Stress source: Feeling like I don’t have something important which could leave me unprepared to defend myself or survive at a location far from my home (the place I know is stocked with things to keep me safe and satisfied).

Stress relief: Reducing the laundry list of must-have’s to Travel Essentials–in other words, reducing the list to its simplest form.

We all have anxiety at one point or another.  We worry about many things for many reasons.  When we worry, it is tough to sort out what types of things really deserve our anxious attention.  Some things, like an ill relative, for example, are legitimate worries: everyone’s heart skips a beat when they hear of such a calamity.  Other things, however, like stressing out over not being able to find the particular T-shirt you wanted to wear today, should not inspire such worry.

On the whole, worry is not good for you.  It is healthy to be concerned about things which merit concern, but we have to be careful to see the big picture in life and to be able to reduce worries to their Simplest Form.  Like with fractions.  12/36 doesn’t seem so daunting when it’s reduced to 1/3.

So thoughts on such anxieties of all kinds will be discussed as raspberries.

The Cat blows “Raspberries for _________” 

Together we will try to reduce these stressors to their simplest forms and attempt to come up with strategies for their proper care and management.  These Raspberries are in no particular order.  The Cat cares not what order you stress in, she doesn’t stress at all.

-RC