Your anxiety gets worse when good things happen
When things go well you become more anxious, not less. Good news, success, positive developments reliably trigger a waiting-for-the-other-shoe feeling, more acute than the anxiety you feel when things are neutral.
Come, let us understand what the mind is doing, for it is not what it seems. The anxiety is guarding against loss, and good things give it more to lose — it is not that you cannot bear happiness, but that a good thing creates the possibility of losing it, and the guarding mind, built to defend, rouses precisely when there is now a treasure to watch over; the good news did not cause the fear, it gave the fear an object. The vigilance does not prevent the loss; it only forecloses the having — the bracing does not make the feared loss less likely, it only ensures you cannot enjoy the good thing while it is here, paying the loss in advance whether or not it ever comes, so the watching guarantees the one thing it meant to prevent. And let yourself have the good thing now, since the watching cannot keep it — notice the other-shoe feeling, name it as the guarding mind and not a true warning, and return to have what is actually here, for the future loss will come or not by its own causes, and you may as well, at last, receive the good thing while it is present. What good thing lately did you find yourself unable to simply enjoy?
What changes unlock by starting
- You see the anxiety as guarding, not brokenness
- You see vigilance forecloses the having, not the loss
- You name the other-shoe feeling as the guarding mind
- You return to have the good thing while it's present