3. The Future Terrifies You
Live in the moment, they say. This is the life hack to being happy. Don’t worry about the past they say, you can’t change it, they say. But don’t worry about the future, because it hasn’t happened yet. What are you left with, then?
You are left with the present. This is not inherently bad advice. There is appreciating the moment. To be able to look at a sunrise and experience its beauty is a gift. To be able to laugh without worrying about tomorrow is also a gift.
But if you really think about it, you can find a gift in most moments if you look for them. But, what if the present is not comfortable? What if, instead of it being a calming and enjoyable moment, it is riddled with anxious tension? Would you want to experience this moment?
And if this moment is so horrible, then what is to stop the next moment from being just as or maybe even more unbearable? Where are you left to exist? This a real dilemma anxious people face every day. This here and now is a terrible place to be, but tomorrow may be even worse. This is how anxious people tend to think.
This is the reasoning that keeps them from thinking about the future. You could say that if there is a chance of the future being bad, then there is also a chance that it could be good. But anxious people also tend to dwell on negative possibilities, which render these statistics useless.