Obsessive Worrying

Jonsi's post the other day about Spaghetti got me thinking about how that issue translated into my life. (Hey look at me, I linked a post!).  Anyway, food was never a big issue for me as a kid.  Sure, my mother made a big deal out of herself that she cooked.  She praised herself a lot for it.  She still likes to think that serving a meal is a substitute for love.  I know, for her, food was scarce when she was a kid.  I know providing meals for her kids felt like a big victory.  I know I felt loved when my mother made a big meal on Sunday.  But it never was a huge issue for me as an adult.

My mother's biggest substitute for love was worry.   If you love someone, you need to worry about them.  Incessantly.  And constantly.  And obsessively.  My mother was always worried about someone.  Always concerned for their well being.  And she always took it to the extreme.  "But what if they DIE?".    The more you worried about someone, the more you cared, and therefore, the more you loved them.    My mother spends hours worrying about things.  It consumes her.  She was telling me just yesterday that the stress and worrying was causing her health problems.

Although I don't remember it being as much of an issue as a kid, I know worrying was there.  I know I worried far too much for a kid.  I know that I was pressed upon with issues far beyond my years.  I know that I shouldn't have had to carry the burden of a lot of those "adult" worries.  My mother over shared with me.  My mother expressed her anxieties about too many things with little me.

When my parents divorced, was when I really remember worrying coming into my life.  My sister, although always a "difficult" child, became out of control.  And my mother made me her keeper.  I was my mother's partner in worrying about my sister.  She recruited me as co-parent, substituting me in for my father as her partner.  I was expected to worry and stress about the increasingly out of control things my sister was doing. And in addition, my mother unloaded her worry onto me.

This was difficult for so many reasons.  First and foremost, there was nothing I could do about most of my mother's worries.  I had not control over my sister, I had no say in my mother's choices to parent her, and I was forced to watch and worry as a silent witness.  Most of these issues were so far beyond the cope of what a person in their late teens could deal with.  I felt helpless.  I couldn't help my sister and I couldn't help my mother.  And frankly, I don't think my mother wanted to give up her worrying.  She just wanted me to worry along with her.

It has been this way for years.  My mother worries, and stress, and she expects me to keep her company.  The really difficult part is that my mother thinks she needs to decide how much worrying is enough.  Like she carves out a worry pie, and doles me out half.  She decides how much worrying I need to take on (half of what she has, if not more.)  And here's where worrying is my spaghetti and meatballs:  if I refuse that worry, I'm considering uncaring and unloving.  I'm cold.  I don't love my family.  I don't support them enough.  Not worrying enough about my family makes me a horrible person who doesn't love them.  She's serving up an unhealthy habit, and if I refuse, I'm a bad daughter or sister.   And then, on the flip side, if I do worry, if I spend time with the anxiety, then I'm weak.  Or a stress case.  In essence  that's how she needles me for being "fat" for eating her "food".    I'm not strong enough like her, or able to deal with things like her.   She takes it as a moment to cut me down, insult me, and boost herself up at the same time.

I've spent years trying to get out of the worry rut.  I could not shake that if I didn't worry obsessively about my family than I was uncaring.   Somehow, I felt my worrying did some good for them.  It proved I loved them, it proved I cared.  God forbid, I do something good in my life, when someone else was suffering so much.  It's carried on, even today.  NM expressed that NSis made some remark about my "perfect, fairy tale life" and how it was a reflection on NSis.  I really didn't push the comment, as it felt like a path I didn't want to go down.  But I'm sure that NSis feels that by not worrying about her, by not sacrificing what's going on in my life, by continuing to live my "perfect life" that I've somehow slighted her.   That it is a symbol of my "unlove" for her.

Around six years ago, I started having severe panic attacks.  I worried obsessively day and night.  What if DH gets run over by a car today?  What if I get a disease?  What if NSis dies?  They were over dramatic worries.  This is when things started to change.  I went on some medication to stop the attacks.  I got some help.  I started to change my life.  I started to really examine what was going on with me.

It's not perfect, but I've gotten better.  I still worry more about my kids and DH than I probably should.  I am fearful of loosing them.  But I've been able to start to let go.  I've decided that I don't want to waste my life worrying.

When my younger child was born, I realized I wasn't worrying about him as much.  I was much less "cautious", much more easy going.   It scared me for awhile.  I felt like maybe I didn't love him as much as my older child.  I must not care for him as much if I'm not worrying about his safety at every damn second of every damn day.   I've really had to work to retrain my brain to stop these thoughts.   I am convincing myself that hyper vigilance does not equal love.  That I love both my kids.  That I, in fact, love my family.   But I don't have to destroy my mental health to express my love.