The “What If” Monster

I have a pretty loud What If monster. I’m guessing I’m not alone. Every single time I’m faced with a new (or old) something, my monster immediately swoops in and lays out a long list of possible worst case scenarios. I’m talking some serious doom filled fabrications. This can be anything from a new relationship, an important meal I’m preparing, a new DJ gig, an Uber ride late at night, my kids in an Uber ride late at night, etc. Literally any picture will be painted in 50 shades of dread and fear by my veteran What If monster. I used to think we were the same being, and therefore believed those fears were coming from the deepest parts myself. Through study of Buddhist psychology I have learned that’s not the case at all. My monster, along with the other many parts and committee members that float around my psyche, are parts of the human brain that have developed and taken hold in order to protect me from possible danger. One of the ways it does this is by preparing me for the worst. If I see doom coming I can at least know what lies ahead. I can plan my line of defense, I can strategize. I don’t fight with this monster anymore since through spiritual practice I have learned to not only not identify with it, but to understand how to communicate with it with gentleness, curiosity, and gratitude for how much it’s trying to protect me. But as much as I may have learned how to talk to my monster, I admit to getting dragged into its cries of fearful warning. There is still a part of me that tumbles down the rabbit hole of worry, and I mean very, very often. I recently heard a teacher say that they’d realized that they’d spent at least half their life in a perpetual state of dread. That resounded with a thud. It made me so sad to think of how much time, energy, and physical and mental health has been sucked into the vortex of fear by the part of me that is completely fixated on the terrifying “what if?” I have been practicing a lot with this lately because I’m really sick of automatically conjuring up worst case scenarios. Yes, I know exactly why I do that psychologically in addition to this just being how the human mind works. There are numerous reasons and factors for this, and I gotta tell ya, I no longer want to be enslaved by old voices telling very old stories. I understand these voices are here to look out for me in the only way they know how. I also know that the brain is an organ of neuroplasticity that can be rewired with deep consistent thought training. With spiritual practice, the soul ultimately comes forth and begins to drive the bus, and so thought patterns start to get quieter and take a back seat. This is an oversimplification, the point of which is to relay that there is a deeper force behind the ruminating mind that acts as captain of our experience. Only through determination and patience in working with these forces can space be created between our neurotic habit energies and our truest nature of calm, peace, and freedom from believing in constant impending danger. I like the term “unconditioned freedom”, as in a feeling that exists underneath all our stuff, a feeling of innate peace that is not dependent on anything. It is a place of inherent joy and trust that no circumstance can mess with. I believe this lies within each human being, and was placed inside every single miracle of human life. We react so strongly to babies not just because they’re cute but because we subconsciously recognize the purest parts of ourselves in them. It’s a reminder that we, too, have that magic buried in there somewhere in our human mental attic.
There are a couple of tactics I’ve been using to quiet my What If monster. The first and perhaps more obvious one is, what if everything goes amazingly well? What if the best case scenarios are the true outcomes. Why talk myself into potential disaster? How we talk to ourselves really matters.
Second, I started asking myself, “if the universe has decided I’m ready for (insert new thing here) then who am I to argue?” This one has been really helpful because it reinforces trust in guidance. I always write about my trust in the universe; I cannot only say that half the time. And if I wholeheartedly believe that I’m being guided and held every moment, then that includes all my experiences and opportunities, especially the scary ones where I’m being forced to seriously level up and embrace challenge. Challenge drives change, and I have begun to see new terrifying scenarios as chances for major growth. Plus, any obsession about the future means I’m immediately out of the present moment; fixating on the past and future is another thing the brain loves to do, and it’s my responsibility and practice to return home to each Now moment. Thoughts and neurotic tendencies must be skillfully tamed in order to return ourselves to being grounded in moment to moment reality. It’s ok to feel scared and have nerves, but we must not lose ourselves in them.
I recently had a situation where the exact scary outcome that I’d been fixating on weeks prior to the actual event happened. I spent so much time being dragged around by my What If monster. She had me in a trance of fright. It was as if Universe said, ok, she’s so scared of XYZ so let’s roll it out and see what happens. And you know what? I was fine. I didn’t like what happened and it was extremely unpleasant, and yet I was perfectly safe and did not lose my center by doing a deep dive into doubt and shame. This was one of the lessons in that particular scenario: could I stay steady in the face of the thing I had been most afraid of? Perhaps that’s a far healthier question to ask. The truth is we cannot ever predict the future. The brain can conjure up all sorts of both favorable and unfavorable outcomes, but we won’t know until we arrive in real time. We simply do not know. Life is not paint by numbers.
Learning to work with my What If monster has been transformative. It will take lots of time, patience, and practice but I’m determined to not waste the rest of my life living in states of imagined terror. What a damn shame that’d be.