It’s a moment many of my patients describe with a bit of a jolt. You go in for a routine check-up, maybe some blood tests for something else entirely, and then you get a call. #bonemarrowbiopsy #Mprotein #multiplemyelomaprecursor #plasmacells #SMM #SmolderingMultipleMyeloma #watchfulwaiting

https://priya.health/smoldering-multiple-myeloma/

Waiting is one of the most difficult things to do especially if waiting for a decision or an expected outcome, and sometimes for a good reason. But as humans, we have the tendency to go overboard with anxiety that can put us in hyper-excitable states and become distracting.

When waiting turns into worrying, then there’s a need to actively work on your mind to relieve the anxiety and maintain an optimistic outlook on life. This is because life is not going to stop happening just because you’ve slipped into a pervasive and distracting state of worry over things that are completely out of your control.

As someone who is fresh off my exams and awaiting results while having to address other important aspects of daily life, I’m frequently haunted by thoughts of “what ifs” and can’t seem to forget those questions I probably didn’t get right. I am actively working on my mind everyday because it is very important for my future self to maintain the ability to make sound decisions even when there are grey areas or uncertainties.

This article is inspired by my journey of mastering the process of waiting and navigating uncertainties while keeping positive. It is going to be something old, something new, and something borrowed.

I’ll start by outlining the things that I have noticed to happen when waiting with worry or anxious thoughts:

•Slowed thought processing

•Forgetfulness

•Poor decision making

•High distractability

•Edginess

•Poor problem solving ability

•Disorganization

•Over Sharing

These are just a few of the things that can happen when we allow anxiety and fear to dominate any waiting period in our lives. Of course there are quite some popular quotes on worrying, and an all time popular one sung as “…que sera sera”. Indeed, what will be is going to be. My personal favorite is the one that asks, “if something can be done about it, why worry? If nothing can be done about it, why worry?”!

But waiting with the right attitude and gutting anxious and fearful thoughts is not as easy as we sometimes imagine it to be. While I’m deeply aware of how difficult it can be to manage worrying thoughts sometimes, I still sometimes find myself expecting people to be able to immediately shed their worrisome thoughts just because I said so as I have also experienced people often expecting me to shed my worrisome thoughts just because they said so. Worry never goes away just because we want it to go away.

Here are a few things that I have learned to implement in the course of managing the waiting process effectively:

• THOUGHT DISCIPLINE: It is easy to believe that we are subject to our thoughts and are somehow helpless about when they pop up and how we handle them, but I have found that this is often not the case. That feeling of helplessness that accompanies worrying thoughts is a form of thought indiscipline, though a subconscious habit. It is in fact true that when you recognize yourself holding distressing thoughts, you can just stop thinking about it. No, this is not thought-blocking, rather it is acknowledging the presence of a particular quality to your thoughts and not lending it the emotional component that gives it the power to bloom into full anxiety and put you in overdrive.

•EMOTIONAL DISCIPLINE: And talking of putting reins on our emotions, it can be very tasking to achieve this. The reason is because emotion exists on a spectrum and anxiety can often find other ways to interfere with your life. Anxiety can quickly become anger, extreme joy, talkativeness(cue over sharing), overeating, and all sorts of lability. Being unable to identify the source emotion that is sliding up and down the spectrum can be hard to curb. For me, I often take away every single reason that I think I have to act out using cognitive strengths. There’s absolutely a time and place for everything even though modern life touts endless possibilities and no boundaries. When your emotional strength is challenged, it is absolutely okay to switch into full on logic till your emotional strength is restored. And talking of logic…

•METACOGNITIVE STRENGTH: I first became aware of this word about 8yrs ago, and I have not stopped researching it. In simple terms, metacognition just refers to your ability to recognize how you think. The ability to look at yourself from different angles and understand your tendencies under different circumstances is a top tier skill. Other terms for metacognition are self-mastery and the likes of it, the components of which includes self-awareness, situational awareness, insightfulness, well trained instinct, and mindfulness. The one foolproof thing that sparks consciousness has always been meditation amongst many others. When anxious thoughts arise, employ literal stillness. Stillness takes away the haziness and the brain fog that comes with anxious thoughts.

Before I bring this article to conclusion, I want to add that worry on its own is an essential signal that is designed to help us tread carefully or pay closer attention to an element that we may be taking for granted. It’s important to mention this because we live in the age of happiness addiction, and we’re bombarded with information that implies that worry is something that should completely be done away with. In reality, worry is protective when it occurs in the right amount. Unchecked, it becomes a problem in many ways.

I hope that you find these tips helpful. There’s no one size fits all solution for these things, and nobody knows how best to handle it better than anyone else because we’re all unique in personality and circumstances, but we can always tap into the collective knowledge of others and borrow something.

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https://sanetimental.net/2024/08/21/thought-and-emotional-discipline-keys-to-managing-waiting-anxiety/

#calm #EmotionalStability #meta #metacognition #personalGrowth #resilience #stability #Stillness #ThoughtDiscipline #watchfulwaiting