Dear Lara:

Anxiety. Any day when I walk and I feel a pain in my knee, as I do sometimes, I feel that fear. I remember fearing the possibility of having a knee replacement surgery one day. That scares me. Any medical procedure does, any time of being disabled, even if it is for a day. Some nights I don’t sleep well, the night before last I didn’t. What I am saying is that we are in this together, all of us humans. We are all scared.

Every one of us is scared. And we are scared of a lot of the same things. We had bad things happening to us before, but we are scared of bad things yet to happen.

We need to be as mindful as possible, as attentive as we can be, pay attention to the here-and-now, to what we are doing, the choices we are making, so to prevent injuries, and prevent problem otherwise, problems that can be prevented. Otherwise, it is possible to endure the fear itself, to contain it. I am doing this myself so  I know it is possible.

In other words, we are all afraid and fear is not going away. It is something we have to live with and we can get better at containing it, not letting it take us for a ride all the way to panic and/ or depression.

One of the ways for us to prevent problems is thoughtfully choose who we interact with, where and how, if at all. How about telling your father: don’t joke with me anymore, don’t try to be funny, say what you mean in a direct, straightforward way. Do  you think he may, just maybe accommodate you, and not just for a day, but all the time?

anita