 Welcome to the anxious morning every weekday morning will take a few minutes to go over important lessons that you can use in your anxiety recovery journey The anxious morning brings you support education inspiration encouragement and empowerment Read or listen quietly on your own time free of the endless noisy scroll of social media Use the information to help you along the path to recovery from panic disorder Agoraphobia and other anxiety problems for more visit us at the anxious morning calm Worry and worrying is a common theme in our community You may label yourself an excessive worrier or tell me that you were unable to stop worrying about things Many things all the things Worry becomes a trap that for many feels inescapable and creates a somewhat torturous loop I have written and said many times that worry is not a plan worry is thinking Worry does not accurately predict or solve specific problems Worry does not create any specific future nor block a specific future worry exists only in our heads Worry for the most part is not required Seneca said nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation Now given my stance on worrying. Why would I bring this quote into the picture? It almost seems to encourage worry Seneca was one of the great stoics I've been a practicing stoic for years without ever really knowing it Stoic philosophy will arise now and then in the anxious morning because there are many recovery lessons to be taken from it And no being stoic does not mean being devoid of emotion. That's one of the big misconceptions about stoicism Seneca was not talking about specific worry or rumination Rather the stoics teach us that we should live in accordance with the natural order of things and the natural order of things Stuff goes wrong We make plans then sometimes they break we want things to go smoothly then sometimes they do not life happens Sometimes it is not what we want and it remains largely out of our control Stoicism teaches us that we must acknowledge this but that we also must acknowledge that we are inherently capable of handling it If things do go wrong in this light Seneca is not teaching us that we must worry He is teaching us that we must be simply aware and accepting of the fact that things can and sometimes do go wrong Being aware and accepting of this fact does not require an attempt to think our way out of that We can't no matter how hard we try Worry does not create or influence the future in any way. So it is a pointless exercise in every sense of the word Now what would Seneca or any of the great stoics do about this inconvenient truth about the universe? We live in they would take some time to consider in general that things may go wrong They may make practical plans to address some general conditions Then they would trust that regardless of what does or does not happen. They will handle it and be okay Take a moment to consider your worry habits today. What do you believe about worry? What do you think it is accomplishing might you shift from worry to planning then from planning to disengagement and acceptance? The trick in that sequence is learning to recognize when planning has reached its practical limit That takes time and requires that we navigate through the discomfort of leaving some plans Unmade when our fear is telling us that this is a mistake, but this exercise is well worth it You can't just decide to stop worrying But you can start to understand the role it plays in your life and its limitations That's a step in the right direction On Monday, we're going to visit the topic of exposure and exposure therapy for the first time Hey, if you're enjoying the podcast and you'd like to get a copy of it delivered every morning into your email inbox Including a full text transcription head on over to the anxious morning dot email and sign up for the newsletter And if you're listening on iTunes or Spotify or someplace where you can leave us a rating or review Take a moment and rate the podcast and maybe write a small review It really helps us out or just tell a friend about us. Thanks a lot