I remember the first time I heard news that shook the ground beneath my feet. It was not about me, but about someone I loved. A diagnosis. A word that suddenly rearranged the furniture of my mind. In that moment, my thoughts stopped being orderly and became a crowd—loud, chaotic, uncontrollable. I said to him, almost apologetically, “I can’t stop thinking. It’s like my mind keeps running ahead, imagining what could happen.”
He did not dismiss my fear. He did not say, “Be strong,” or “Don’t think about it.” Instead, he said something that stayed with me, “Feeling disturbed is natural. Becoming paralyzed is not.”
That single sentence quietly separated two things I had always mixed together: emotional reaction and emotional surrender. He explained to me that when disturbing information enters our life—a diagnosis, a loss, a threat—it is quite human to feel stress, concern, even anxiety. These emotions are not signs of weakness; they are signs of being alive. The problem does not begin when anxiety appears. The problem begins when anxiety becomes the manager of our mind.
I realized that I had started treating my worry as if it were doing something useful, as if thinking more and more about the problem was somehow contributing to its solution. But in truth, most of my mental activity was not problem-solving; it was mental circling.
He once gave me a simple but powerful example, “If someone has to get an injection,” he said, “it is natural to feel uneasy in the morning. But spending the entire day imagining how painful it will be does not make the needle smaller.”
That hit me. My worry was not protecting me; it was exhausting me. There is something deeply seductive about obsessive thinking. It gives the illusion of control. As long as I am thinking, analyzing, imagining, it feels like I am ‘doing something.’ But often, I am not doing anything at all—except draining my emotional energy. He taught me a quiet but transformative distinction: There is what I feel, and then there is what I choose to follow.
Triggers, he said, are not in our control. A word, a smell, a message, a memory, an idea—anything can suddenly bring a painful thought to mind. But what is in my control is whether I chase that thought, feed it, and let it occupy the stage, or whether I gently refuse it more space.
This was a new idea for me. I used to believe that if a thought appeared, I had to deal with it fully—either solve it or suffer it. But he suggested a third option: disengage. He once asked me, “When a song starts playing somewhere, and you don’t like it, do you stand there listening until it finishes?”
Of course not. “You either move away,” he said, “or lower the volume. Thoughts are not very different.”
That day, I began practicing something simple but life-changing: noticing when a thought is not useful. Not every thought deserves hospitality. Some thoughts deserve to be acknowledged, thanked for their concern, and gently shown the door.
I remember one night when my mind returned again and again to a single fear: “What if things get worse?” Each time the thought came, my chest tightened. Instead of arguing with it or drowning in it, I tried something new. I said to myself, “This thought is understandable, but it is not useful right now. I cannot improve tomorrow by torturing today.” And then I deliberately shifted my attention—not to distraction, but to action. I asked: What can I do that is actually within my control? Make an appointment. Read about treatment options from reliable sources. Prepare emotionally to support my loved one. Pray. Rest.
It was astonishing how much calmer my mind became when I stopped trying to predict the future and started taking care of the present.
He used to remind me again and again, “What is not in your hands, put it in God’s hands. What is in your hands, don’t neglect it.” This simple division gave me immense clarity. Some things belong to my domain: my actions, my responses, my focus, my discipline. And some things belong to God’s domain: outcomes, timing, ultimate healing, life, and death. Confusing these two domains is one of the greatest sources of human suffering.
When I try to control what belongs to God, I become anxious. When I neglect what belongs to me, I become irresponsible. Balance lies in honoring both.
Over time, I began to treat my anxious thoughts like notifications on a phone. Some are important. Some are spam. Not every notification deserves immediate attention. And something beautiful happened when I started practicing this: I stopped being ashamed of my anxiety. I no longer told myself, “I shouldn’t feel this way.” Instead, I told myself, “It’s okay to feel this way—but I don’t have to obey this feeling.” That shift changed everything.
He once encouraged me to write down the moments when I successfully stopped an unhelpful thought and how I did it. At first, it felt strange—almost unnecessary. But then I realized how powerful it was to make the invisible visible. I could now see patterns: Which thoughts disturb me most, which times of day I am most vulnerable, and which inner dialogues help me recover faster. And when I began sharing these small victories with others, something surprising happened: they started sharing theirs too. We were no longer just surviving our thoughts—we were learning how to work with them.
There is a quiet strength in learning how to say to oneself, “This is painful. But pain will not become my master.”
Life will bring disturbing information again and again. That is not something we can escape. But we can decide whether every disturbing piece of information will become a permanent resident in our mind—or just a passing visitor. Anxiety is human. Obsession is optional. And between the two lies a powerful, dignified choice: to live with awareness, restraint, and trust. Not by denying fear. But by refusing to let fear decide how I live.
