My Anywhere But Here Blog

When Worry Crowds the Room

There are days when nothing outward has changed, and yet the room feels smaller.

The air feels tighter.

The silence feels louder.

Even ordinary tasks feel as though they are wrapped in something heavier than they should be.

That is usually the moment when I realize —

Worry has walked right in.

This morning, I awakened with my back off the charts on a pain scale of one to one hundred. If I am honest, it was probably a sixty.

I didn’t panic.

Pain like that has become familiar over the years. As I shared in my “About” section, I had a spinal fusion as a child, and since then I have lived with significant back pain. Some of it, I believe, has been compounded by medications — prednisone, autoimmune treatments, and now cancer drugs.

So be it.

I have learned not to worry about that pain anymore.

But when I look at the world and where we seem to be headed, that is what unsettles me.

We are losing empathy for humanity.

And I often wonder what we can do to reverse it.

I try not to worry about it. Truly, I do. But more often than not these days, that worry enters the room anyway.

It seems my worrying has shifted. The smaller, personal discomforts no longer hold the same weight. I first began learning that years ago after reading Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Dick Carlson during my master’s program.

And yet — when it comes to the bigger matters, the things far beyond my control — worry thrives there.

It sees those moments as permission.

As if my silence is an open door.

Perhaps what I have not done is speak to it directly.

Perhaps I have never clearly said,

“You may knock, but you must vacate the premises.”

Worry rarely announces itself dramatically.

It does not always arrive with headlines or emergencies.

More often, it slips in quietly.

It sounds like:

• What if this gets worse?
• What if I’m not prepared?
• What if something changes?
• What if I can’t handle it?

And before long, those “what ifs” begin rearranging the furniture of our thoughts.

Worry pulls a chair up to the table and sits close. It tries to convince us it is being helpful — that it is simply keeping watch, staying prepared, protecting what matters most.

But I am learning something.

Worry may feel protective, but it rarely produces peace.

Instead, it crowds the room.

It narrows perspective.

It steals the present moment and replaces it with imagined tomorrows.

And the hard part?

Sometimes worry disguises itself as responsibility. As love. As vigilance.

But there is a difference between caring and carrying everything at once.

When worry crowds the room, I have noticed I start holding my breath without realizing it. My shoulders lift. My thoughts race ahead of the day I am actually living.

That is when I have to pause.

Not to scold myself.

Not to pretend everything is fine.

But simply to notice.

To notice that not every thought deserves authority.

Not every fear deserves a seat at the table.

Not every possibility deserves my energy today.

Worry may walk in — but it does not own the house.

Is speaking authority over worry about control…

or about trust?

I think a little of both.

I am learning that I do not have to force worry out in order to feel peace. Sometimes I simply have to widen the room.

A slower breath.

A steadier reminder.

A return to what is true in this moment — not what might be true someday.

Peace does not usually shout over worry.

It waits.

It stands quietly in the corner until we turn toward it.

And when I do, I often find that the room was never as small as it felt.

It was simply crowded.

Carrying forward — even on the days when worry lingers — with gratitude for the breath that expands the room again.