This is the other question I get asked a lot, obviously. As with the physical side of anxiety, I’m sure we all experience it differently.

My anxiety is usually the literal non-stop worrying about events that, after 51 years, still haven’t happened. It can be a single issue or a dozen issues. They just loop over and over and over.

“just stop thinking about it”

Just stop being a dick before I punch you in the face.

I know it sounds stupid. Why can’t I just stop thinking about it? Why does it keep looping? I have no idea. But it sucks.

Here’s a wild one.

I mentioned in another post how my father passed away from colon cancer when he was 55 and I was 25.

Side note, if you’re 45 or older, male or female, please get a colonoscopy. Your primary care physician can set it up for you. If my dad would have just done that he’d still be alive today. A simple procedure you sleep through. I get so pissed when I hear people still getting colon cancer when it is so easy to catch and fix. Yes, there are exceptions, I get it.

Okay back to me again.

For a good five years after he passed there was zero doubt in my mind that I had colon cancer. I would press around on my abdomen incessantly trying to feel it. Pushing on my stomach. Too feel it. To feel cancer. It sounds stupid to even type that, but I knew I had it. It got to the point that various spots would start to feel a little tender.

“From all the pushing on it?”

No dummy, from the cancer.

The soreness was a clear sign I had colon cancer. I was right! I told my primary care doctor that even though I was only nearing my thirties I needed to have a colonoscopy to prove I was right.

Notice how my mental anxiety actually caused my physical anxiety this time. Unreal what it can do to me or cause me to do to myself.

Twenty five years and numerous colonoscopies later I still don’t have colon cancer. What a waste of years of worrying.

Anxiety sucks. It really does.

A lot of people want to go back in time to buy a lottery ticket to win millions. I want to go back in time, walk up to my old self and whisper in my ear, “it never happened. none of it.”

Hindsight and all.