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“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” — William James
It took me 35 years to realize that sometimes the hardest thing to get used to is having nothing to worry about.
I was lying on the beach on the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania.
White sand, tall palm trees, turquoise blue water in front of me, and my beautiful girlfriend lying next to me. There was absolutely nothing to worry about in that moment.
Still, after about an hour of lying there while my girlfriend was enjoying her book, I started to feel weird.
I didn’t know what the problem was, but I was sure that something was off. My heartbeat suddenly went up and I became anxious.
My head turned from left to right as if I were searching for something, then my hands started shaking, followed by my legs.
I knew I was having a panic attack because I had experienced them before, but never in the middle of paradise.
I didn’t tell my girlfriend because I was ashamed.
Instead, I went to the bar and secretly ordered two shots of vodka, which I drank immediately, hoping they would calm me down.
And it worked.
I followed them with a glass of wine, lit a cigarette, and after around 30 minutes of suffering, I was drunk but fine again.
The irony of the whole situation was that there wasn’t any problem that would justify having a panic attack.
I was always waiting for something to go wrong
This wasn’t something that happened to me once. I experienced different versions of it many times throughout my life, which made me curious about what the actual reason could be.
So I went to my doctor and told her what had happened, but she wasn’t particularly interested in figuring out the root cause. She gave me some sedatives in case it happened again.
Then I brought the topic up in therapy.
My therapist said it was an eruption of accumulated stress I had carried with me into my vacation. That made sense when I first heard it, but there was one problem with that explanation: it didn’t only happen when I tried to enjoy my well deserved days off.
It also happened at home, sometimes on completely ordinary weekends when everything was alright. It didn’t always come in the form of a panic attack either.
Sometimes it was just this inner unease, this vague sense that something was off.
I behaved like a suspicious cop who was constantly expecting danger.
When everything seemed to be cool at work, for example, I could interpret a single facial expression from my boss as a sign that he wasn’t fully happy with my performance.
He never said a word, but I created the story myself and reacted by working harder.
Even without any negative feedback, I could convince myself that something was happening in the background and that sooner or later it would become a problem for me.
It wasn’t exactly paranoia, but sometimes it came pretty close.
I did the same thing in my relationships, even during our happiest moments.
You know that feeling of it’s too good to be true?
There must be something wrong with her. There must be something wrong with our relationship.
The pattern became increasingly obvious: I created problems for myself or made my life harder even when I could have been having the best time of my life.
Whenever I achieved a goal, for instance, I immediately defined another, harder one. Subconsciously, I found a way to skip the phase of enjoyment and peace and move straight back into struggle.
Overpreparing for situations that barely required any planning became normal to me. I even rehearsed small talk in my head before attending an event.
These were the more subtle consequences of my actual problem because not every peaceful moment ended in a panic attack.
I think the beach situation was simply the most extreme version of the same pattern. There was nothing around me to fix, anticipate, or worry about, and somehow, instead of feeling peaceful, my whole body went into alarm mode.
But why was my brain doing this?
After spending years in therapy and practicing self awareness on my own, I finally started to understand where all of this was coming from.
I grew up in a difficult environment where dealing with problems 24/7 was normal. Survival mode became a part of me.
People often don’t believe me when I tell them about my childhood, but there were very few periods when I could simply enjoy being a child. My environment was too unpredictable. Things could escalate at any minute on a completely random day.
Compared to other kids, my normal life was a life full of problems.
I was constantly waiting for the next one to show up so I could deal with it. I didn’t consciously choose to live this way. It was simply the environment I had adapted to.
On a conscious level, I actually hated it. I complained a lot about having such a hard life and wondered why problems kept showing up for me.
At some point, I genuinely believed I was cursed.
And yet this is how I lived for around 30 years: worrying about the next problem, expecting the next disaster, and preparing for battles that didn’t even exist.
Until I realized something.
I wasn’t afraid of problems.
On the contrary, I was incredibly familiar with them.
What I wasn’t familiar with was their absence.
I kept turning back onto the bumpy road
That realization changed the way I looked at my entire life because it came with an uncomfortable recognition: many of my previous difficulties had been caused by me.
Every time my life was moving in the right direction, I somehow jumped behind the wheel and turned onto the goddamn bumpy road again without even noticing it.
Because I had never learned how to enjoy life when nothing was wrong.
When there was no problem to deal with, I created one or made my life harder with thoughts, goals, challenges, tight deadlines, or conflicts.
So what could I do about a subconscious mechanism that was quietly sabotaging my peace?
Well, I had to learn how to navigate a good life, which might sound surreal to someone who never had this problem.
And of course, recognizing the pattern didn’t make it disappear. My brain still does this shit.
The difference is that today I can sometimes catch myself before I march into the next artificial war.
Learning to leave things alone
In the past, when somebody didn’t reply to me quickly, I immediately suspected that something was wrong and took it personally.
Today, I’m aware of this pattern and try not to react the same way. If somebody doesn’t reply to my message, I assume they are busy with their own life. Until they directly tell me there is a problem, there is no problem.
The same applies to my job.
I used to search for new jobs the moment my boss wasn’t in a good mood. I interpreted his behavior as the beginning of a potential problem that could eventually cost me my job, so I started preparing for the worst before anything had even happened.
Today, if there is no recurring negative feedback, I assume everything is alright.
My boss could have slept poorly. He could have had a fight with his partner. There are countless reasons for someone’s behavior, and most of them probably have nothing to do with me.
The same applies to relationships.
If I’m in a relationship and everything is going well, I try to accept the simple fact that everything is going well. I don’t search for signs of a possible catastrophe that I need to turn into a discussion, and I’ve stopped trying to read my partner’s thoughts or the thoughts of other people in general.
That’s something people who are used to living with problems often do. We read and interpret everything as a potential threat.
Now I try not to act until my girlfriend actually says, “There is a problem. Let’s talk about it.”
And then there are goals and achievements.
Constantly setting new and harder goals was another convenient way to make my life difficult again. If I worked on several ambitious goals simultaneously, my schedule became tight, everything needed to be organized, my own needs came up short, and eventually I became frustrated.
The strange thing is that all of this felt familiar.
So now, when I achieve a goal, I try to live with the empty space for a while. I use it to rest, read, practice yoga, or simply do things without needing them to lead anywhere.
The thing I’m learning is to accept that not having any problems is a valid state of life.
Problems still feel like home
But I’m not perfect at this, and probably never will be.
When I talk to someone, let’s say at the gym, and that person tells me about a problem, I can still feel my brain waking up. It immediately switches back into its familiar firefighting mode and starts looking for solutions to the problems of people I barely know.
I remember searching for jobs for people I hardly knew because I wanted to help them.
Today, I try to just listen. I tell people they can reach out to me if they need help, wish them the best, and then return to my own life.
I try not to carry their problems home with me just so I can feel “home” again.
Still, I often catch myself thinking about solutions for other people. When I go for a walk, my brain loves having a problem to deal with, and I don’t think this part of me will ever completely disappear.
Maybe it doesn’t have to.
What matters is that I’m aware of it now. I can catch myself and ask whether there is actually a problem that needs to be solved or whether my brain is simply looking for something familiar.
Because a life without problems is actually pretty great.
Real problems will show up again. That’s inevitable.
And when they do, I can use the superpower I spent most of my life developing and deal with them.
But hopefully, the next part of my life will be about becoming just as good at living when there aren’t any.
Thank you for reading.
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