Worry and Hope

I have reflected about hope this week because it was the Sunday/week of hope on the Advent calendar.  

I have been mindful of the grief and loss side of the coin.  Today I am mindful of a particular person whom I know who shall remain nameless.  When I worked with that person, she would constantly say “I hope.”  She would also say “I hope you’re right.”   She did accept any answers or reassurances.   She was frustrating to deal with because she would not shut up but would keep babbling on about her worries.

I came to appreciate this person as a chronic worrier and a control freak.  Since the time I stopped working with her I have been reminded of her chronic worrying and her tendency to say “I hope.”  I have came away with a personal challenge to myself: Do you really hope, or are you just worried?

As a mental health professional I tell my clients and patients that worry is a form of anxiety that occurs when we dwell on matters that are out of our hands and that we do not control.  I frequently quote Wayne Dyer’s famous statement that it makes no sense to worry about things you do not control. 

Despite all advice to the contrary people still worry and will continue to worry.  Many worry to have something to do. Many worry because they cannot sit still and be still.  Many people do not accept their limits as human beings and so they worry in the belief that they should be doing something.  Worry as a habit is a reality of human existence.

I am inclined to believe that worry is related to the amount of risk we are taking in a situation.   If we are taking a big risk, we will tend to worry more.

There are a number of worries at the holidays.  Will our relatives behave?  Will that particular relative not get drunk and offend others?  Will we get our holiday shopping done? Will we make our connecting flight in Chicago?  Some of the worries are silly and some are serious.

A consideration here is that worry is that as a form of anxiety stimulates the production of Adrenalin.  The Adrenalin does not let us relax or go to sleep.  It makes our muscles tense and may give us headaches and stomachaches.  We feel all the more stressed.

Worry is typically a present behavior focused on the present or future.  However, many of us worry about the past. We can dwell on abuse, unfortunate events and mistakes. We can become absorbed by those past events and distress ourselves into panic.  We can generate a delusion of hope that the past will be different.   I imagine that Aaron Beck had a heyday with this in his development of Cognitive Theory.

So, we can be worrying and say we hope, but are we truly hoping?  Or are we just covering up the fact we are worrying?   Worry can be a dead end if not just a waste of time.  Worry can make us an annoyance and irritation to those around us.

We cannot stop others from worrying and we cannot keep them from worrying.  Worry is their choice.  However, chances are many of us will hear criticism couched in the statement “I’m worried about you because . . .”    The “because” is typically something that is something the worrier cannot control but wants to use to control you.   Telling the worrier that you are sorry that they are worrying, but not feeling guilty over their worrying is a coping skill.  In the end we can only stop our own worry and do our own hoping.

True hope seems to be a perspective that calls us to compartmentalize and either act in the world or commit inside of ourselves to surrender to our limitations and to focus our minds on what is real and what is necessary.    There will always be conditions and events outside of our control, whether they be someone else’s responsibility or an event that was in the past or present. 

Christmas does invite us to look at our spiritual hope.  The layers of tradition have a way of covering up the invitation by decking the halls and ringing bells and talking about Santa.    The tradition and the nostalgia can amount to nothing and loses significance as time goes by.  Even the crèche or nativity scene loses significance if we are not reminded that we cannot save ourselves from our own sin.  We have hope out of the realization of our need of God’s grace and interaction in our lives.