But What If?

I've heard one of my friends with kids say to her kids that she "won't play the what if game". 

Which... the anxious part of my brain is pretty much playing that ALL the damn time.

Sometimes I find myself telling that part of my brain to let something go and it's not easy to be in that loop.

An example:  When I'm heading to bed, I turn off the light in the living room and walk into the kitchen in the dark to plug in my phone and watch for the night to charge.

As I'm walking, I tend to use the weak light from my phone to make sure I don't walk into a wall or counter or something and sometimes doing this makes me wonder about if I were to ever lose my sight.

I remember that Val Kilmer/Mira Sorvino movie where he was playing a visually impaired man and she moved something in their apartment and he walked into it and if I recall correctly his sister got very angry that something had been moved because you just can't do that to someone who can't see.  Honestly, I don't remember the rest of the movie, but that scene stuck with me and sometimes my brain worries about what it would be like if I wasn't able to see.

Like I'll drop one of my small pills and think "how would I ever find it if I were blind?!" and I get anxious or stressed about that thought.

And I have to remind myself I don't need to figure that out and it's not a concern and will most likely never be a concern but it's there.

My brain plays the "what if" game a lot.  And sometimes I do a thing to maybe help future me, but I don't actually know if that thing will help future me.

Like in the preparedness sort of world... it's not "anxious talk" to have an earthquake kit, so I have one.  And I have a printed out sheet of what to do if there is an earthquake.  If there is an earthquake will I be calm enough to think to grab that sheet?  Or remember where my kit is?  I legitimately don't know, but I have them and I don't think they're overkill....?  But sometimes it's hard to know if I'm doing "overkill" things or not.

But see talking about and thinking about this can get me anxious because of all the what if's and unknowns.  What if I am naked when it happens?  Or in the shower?  What if I'm trapped?  What if it's the really really bad one?  What if what if what if?

It's been suggested to me that part of this is not having a solid sense of trust in myself - that I can handle what is thrown at me, despite ample evidence that I can actually handle things, and usually well.

So some "what if" is maybe healthy (what if I cut myself, do I have bandaids?) and some is less healthy (what if Jason is dead right now?  what if that car decides to drive into me at full speed?)  My brain is a wild and very full thing... and that isn't always easy to live within.