The Humour Club discussion

...pointless waste of time or effective means of holding the up the sky?

I rarely sleep as I spend my nights lying awake worrying or getting up to check that the fire has truly gone out and that no pipes have burst in the basement. I worry about everything from things I should have done differently to things I cannot change.

My husband, on the other hand, never worries. He says worrying doesn't help anything and will not change the outcome, so why bother. I have noticed that he is tormented nightly by nightmares. He whimpers and twitches in his sleep even more than the dog, and I maintain that this comes from NOT worrying. Fears and nagging concerns will haunt you in your subconscious if you don't spend hours mulling them over in the daytime.

On the rare occasions when I do sleep, I sleep the sleep of the innocent and just. All the problems of the universe have been temporarily sorted out and I can relax in the knowledge that they will be there waiting for me when I wake...and the worrying can begin again.

It's just how I roll...

I have a tendency to worry about the wrong thing. whatever I worry about never happens and the stuff I never thought to worry about just slams into my life.

I worry too much about the things it's too late to change. My MiL frets constantly about stuff, and I don't see it as a model anyone wants to copy.

When my mind won't let go of stuff and let me sleep, I write stories in my head. Usually melodramatic, wildly exciting stories with narrow escapes and desperate situations all over the place. It focuses my mind away from the hamster wheel of worry/fretting/writhing in humiliation and I usually fall asleep with the hero hanging from a cliff.

I'm with your husband Melki, worry doesn't fix things. I don't have nightmares either, I just have the same reoccuring dream. "What are we going to do tonight Brain?"

I'm a worrier too. Especially right before falling asleep; is the door locked, is the heater making a strange noise, is that noise outside a racoon eating our garbage...luckily my wife sleeps through my half dozen ups and downs as I check out the window or scurry downstairs to the basement.

I'm not sure how useful it really is. I would argue it is a way to prepare for the future, but, truthfully I don't think it is a very productive way to do it. The better way is to read a book about surviving the apocalypse. Let all your worries melt away.

I'm hoping someday that science will prove that worrying actually KEEPS the bad stuff from happening.