不要对没发生的事感到焦虑了

不要对没发生的事感到焦虑了

The plot of my only recurring nightmare goes like this: I'm back in college and have not attended one of my classes all semester (usually math or science), and now a final exam is imminent.

我唯一反复出现的噩梦是这样的:我回到大学，整个学期都没有上过一门课(通常是数学或科学)，现在期末考试就要到来了。

I'm completely unprepared, time has run out, and I don't even recall where the classroom is, so I can't find the professor. I wake up without a resolution.

我完全没有准备好，时间快没了，我甚至不记得教室在哪里，所以我找不到教授。我在没有解决办法的情况下醒来了。

This is how every brain works. It diligently perseverates over worst-case scenarios, like an anxious new parent. It's just trying to keep us safe and usually does a great job at it.

每个大脑都是这样工作的。它像一个焦虑的新父母一样，坚持应对最坏的情况。它只是想护我们周全，而且通常做得很好。

But that same things also make it too easy to worry about the wrong things. It clouds our thinking with fear of outcomes that will never come to pass or aren't nearly as bad as we let ourselves imagine. That's the type of worry the writer Erma Bombeck equated to a rocking chair: "It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere."

但同样的事情也让我们很容易担心错误的事情。它让我们的思想充满恐惧，让我们担心那些永远不会发生的事情，或者根本不像我们想象的那么糟糕的事情。作家埃尔玛·邦贝克(Erma Bombeck)把这种担忧比作一把摇椅:“它让你有事可做，但永远不会让你有所成就。”

And all that useless worry is detrimental to our overall mental and physical well-being. It can misinform decision-making, raise stress levels, keep us up at night and erode our happiness.

所有这些无谓的担忧都不利于我们的身心健康。它会误导我们做出决定，增加压力，让我们夜不能寐，侵蚀我们的幸福感。

For some, anxiety and worry are so toxic and burdensome that medication and/or therapy is needed to fully function. "What worries you," John Locke wrote, "masters you."

对一些人来说，焦虑和担忧是如此有害和沉重，以至于需要药物和/或治疗才能充分发挥作用。约翰·洛克写道，“你担心的东西控制着你。”

"One thing life taught ye was how stupid it was to worry about things ye didnay know for sure, things that might no even happen, nay point in worrying about them," wrote the Scottish novelist and playwright James Kelman.

苏格兰小说家、剧作家詹姆斯·克尔曼写道:“生活教会你的一件事是，为自己不确定的事情担忧是多么愚蠢，为那些可能根本不会发生的事情担忧是毫无意义的。”

You may need to teach yourself the same lesson, and tracking your worries can be an effective way to do it，but make it quantifiable so you can be a bit scientific about it.

你可能需要给自己上同样的一课，跟踪你的担忧是一种有效的方法。但要把它量化，这样才更科学一些。

I concluded my personal experiment, and it didn't free me from all worry, of course. But I worry less often and about fewer things.

我结束了我的个人经验，当然，这并没有让我从所有的担忧中解脱出来。但是我担心的事情越来越少。

Now, when a worry starts to brew in my mental cauldron, I take a hard look at whether it's just fictional preparedness, whether there may be something good that could come if it does happen and whether I can do anything to prevent it.

现在，当我的脑海中出现一种担忧时，我会认真考虑它是否只是虚构的，如果它真的发生了，是否会有好的事情发生，以及我是否能做些什么来阻止它。