The Anxiety Monster is real, but he’s not what you think he is.
He lives in the dark, only vaguely visible as a terrifying silhouette. You can’t really see what he looks like, but you know he’s there, creeping closer to you. The only way to see the Anxiety Monster is to turn on the light. To do that, though, you would need to walk around him and find the light switch. And you can’t move, because you’re terrified that the monster will get you if you do.
If you turned on the light, this is what you would see:
The Anxiety Monster isn’t actually a giant creature that looms over you and plots your demise. The monster is really just the size of a mouse, but he’s been using the shadows to fool you into thinking that he’s bigger than he is.
But you’ll never know that, unless you turn on the light. Because the Anxiety Monster thrives in the dark.
This week, the Anxiety Monster was getting to me, and it took an unbiased third party to flip the light switch. I’m not someone who packs my weeks and weekends full of activities. If I have ONE thing going on in the day, then that’s it. I’m not planning anything else. For, this has been a full week (and it won’t be over by the time this post gets published).
I’ve got one meeting, one babysitting gig, one church event, one birthday party, one trip with friends in 4th of July traffic, and I just found out that my aunt and uncle will be visiting over the weekend as well.
As of writing this, I’ve only checked the meeting off of my list. But before I went to my meeting, I was stewing over my full schedule. My stomach was in knots, and I told myself, “Just get through it one day at a time.”
Right before my meeting, my palms were sweaty and I could feel my heartbeat in my throat. Here came the Anxiety Monster--because I didn’t know what to expect. Because I had questions about this thing that I had volunteered to do but had no experience with yet. I was in the dark, right where the monster wanted me to be.
It wasn’t until near the end of the meeting, after my group leader had led a calm and organized discussion and had happily answered all of my questions, that I relaxed. I relaxed and realized that my group leader had turned on the light and showed me just how small and pathetic the Anxiety Monster really was.
This meeting that I had been nervous about wasn’t actually a big deal. In fact, it was a very small deal. Something that my mind had blown out of proportion so gradually that I hadn’t noticed what it was doing until the event had passed and the world hadn’t ended.
The Anxiety Monster lives in the dark, because if you knew how small and inconsequential he was, you would never fear him. But lucky for the monster, human memories can be faulty.
That’s the kicker, isn’t it? That, even though I know how unimportant half the things I stress over truly are, I still fall for the Anxiety Monster’s trick. I still stand motionless in the dark, too afraid to walk around the monster and turn on the light.