"What if?"

Call me crazy, but I am the only person that gets absolutely freaked out about thinking of my future?

It's not exactly something people can say "Just don't think about it!", because you HAVE to think about it. It's your future!

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking, like what am I going to do after high school? Can I do that? Where am I going to live? How am I going to pay my bills? Who's going to help me? Am I going to get married? What kind of guy will I get married to? Will I have kids? What if I don't? Who's going to take care of me I am old and can't bathe myself? Will I be in a nursing home? Who's going to visit me? How will I die? WILL I make it in life? Am I going to be okay?

Thinking this has absolutely TERRIFIED me lately. It has put me in this stressed out mood for weeks.

My problem is I keep thinking ''What If''. What if I don't get married? What if I'm miserable? What if I don't finish college? What if I'm not a successful doctor? WHAT IF?!

I cannot just stop the "What If" scenarios, though. It's caused so much stress and anxiety that I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't keep a simple conversation going. It's putting a huge downer on the present and I feel like a 'Debbie Downer'.

BUT, I have been doing a lot of reading lately, and even though I'll probably stress about it non-stop till the day I die, here's some steps to help cope with the anxiety if you're going through something similar.

1. Stay in the NOW, don't let yourself drift off in a negative scenario. Aware yourself right now you ARE okay. It's okay to be a tad stressed out here and there, but letting it over rule your current life is not okay.

2. "You can have thoughts, but you don't have to think them." In other words, it's okay to be aware of what to expect or not to expect, but letting it fulfill your entire mind is going to be stress on you. Be aware of things, just don't let them take over your every thought.

3. Try and concentrate on what you DO want, and work towards those goals. For example, I want to be a psychologist, therefor I'm doing the best in school and keep racking up every scholarship that I can get.

4. 90% of the things we worry about, never happen. The other 10% are things that could have never been changed.

5. Imagine that your 70-80 years old, and you're looking back on your life wishing you wouldn't have spent to much time worrying about the future and wasted so much precious life away. So STOP worrying, because the time you finally stop, you are going to be too old to live a little. Unless of course your idea of living is playing chess with some old guy with snot running out of his nose.


If you've ever experienced this type of anxiety and are/have been stressed out about what your life has in store, leave some comments! Let me know how this helped and/or you plan to overcome this!