Anxiety

It's amazing how much time just being sad can take up. I had a rather large moment of anxiety this morning. I thought it had only stumbled on a few moments of my day. The clock, however, indicated that over one hour of my precious morning time had been stolen. In the words of the Price is Right: "That's too much!". I'm concerned about what will happen to my finances, my relationships (including with the boyfriend and my daughter), my job, my routines, etc. when I begin maternity leave. Which could be any day now... Scary!

I feel like I am starting to get a good financial plan in, and I've been chucking money into my savings, hopefully to prevent me from having to use any credit until my EI comes in. I am also aware I can't do a complete budget until then, so I am thinking wisely, and make mental notes of what is a "need" and what is a "want". This can sometimes leads to spiraling because there are so many things I need to buy (food, gas, certain child care items, daycare, minimum loan payments, RRSP contributions, ...) and so many more that I want to buy (subscriptions, more food, birthday presents, household items, organizational items, ...). This sometimes leads to negative thoughts spiraling as I tend to focus on how I may have picked one or two "wants" in place of a "need" eventually becoming something along the lines of "I am such a failure, I don't deserve anything including happiness or respect. I am nothing but my failures which indicated by the amount of debt I have, and how little I am putting towards it". It can get as dark as "I don't deserve my child, she deserves someone better to be her mom.". Worse of all, awful negative sentiments from my daughter's father from when he wanted me to abort the baby will enter my mind and they are the most untrue and hard thoughts to get out! Keeping in mind that I have been put over 50% of my salary on debt, paid off $10,000+ credit card debt, and dealt with some major life changes in the past 24 months, I should have nothing but confident I can do this.

Obviously, I haven't been able to cope as effectively as I would like. I do not want to keep wasting my time (and likely my health) worrying this much about my financial future. I think I need to re-employ a few tasks that have helped in the past.

1. Set aside time for worry
2. Start journaling my worries
3. Follow with a list of three great things in my life
4. Focusing on the moment, and all the things I might be missing.
5. Revise my thought patterns. Stop spiraling before it begins.

For example, I am trying to turn it from.. "I am so in debt, I can't afford anything" to "I'm so thankful, I have had a change to pay off as much debt as I have". Or change "I wish I could buy that. Why did I make so many mistakes" to "I've made some hard choices, and I'm very glad I paid extra on my line of credit this month". Or "I'm going to be in debt forever. I should give up and buy this. Why does it even matter?" to "I'm not going to let myself still be paying off my student loans when I'm 40. I'm going to crush those suckers!".

Most of the time, I really do feel lucky. I am going to be proactive to make sure it stays most of the time. Life is beautiful. I intend on seeing it that way.

Are you able to tell when you anxieties are starting to interfere with your life? How to do change it around to focus on the good?