Anxious Living

Goals Become Burdens

November 9th, 2006 by Aaron

I have a problem wherein I often turn positive goals into burdens that I wind up resenting.  And so the things I most want to do become the things I have the most trouble with.

It’s because I get hooked into worrying about what I should be doing.  If I want to have a normal life, if I want to get myself on track, if I want to make myself over into something acceptable, I should be doing this, that and the other (my goals, in other words).  Each moment I am not I am slipping farther behind.

It’s just the pattern I’m used to, the way I have always thought about myself.

I’ve found through the years that as I latch onto one idea or another to improve myself I have to watch out for this tendency.  It can turn a worthwhile idea into something that I use primarily to put pressure on myself. And as the resentment builds, this new endeavor is robbed of its ability to help with the positive change I am looking for.

Eventually I get to a point when I have to take a break from my goal.  I have to consciously drop it and allow myself to not care one way or the other.

I can see myself going in this direction as I try to deal with social anxiety, getting to a point where I resent all the pressure I am putting on myself to change my behavior.

So, at that point, I’ll stop reading about social anxiety, I’ll stop thinking about what might improve it, I’ll stop trying to catch my anxious thoughts and replace them with more constructive thoughts.  I’ll just throw in the towel for awhile.

Normally, once I have relaxed a little, a time will come when I find myself wishing I could get back to whatever it is I have dropped.  I then work to slowly reincorporate it, usually with more reasonable expectations.   The tricky part is making sure I don’t just let it drop for good and lose whatever progress I had made.

Perhaps, this time, if I stay conscious of the pattern, I’ll find a way of avoiding the trap.

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