Responsibility Anxiety

As I've mentioned before, anxiety has themes. One of the themes that comes up a lot for me is responsibility. Being responsible for another person's health or happiness stresses me out . . . a lot. Like other anxieties, it waxes and wanes. Some days, I can watch five kids and a dog for four hours and be perfectly fine. Other days, the mere thought of having to pour someone the right cereal to milk ratio in a bowl is enough to bring me to the verge of panic. So, I thought I'd talk about it.

Anxiety about responsibility presents a lot of problems in my life. I'm responsible for the cooking and cleaning in my house, for the most part, which can make me anxious. Some days, I have to scrub the entire house clean just to feel like I'm on top of things. I'm also a full time writer/blogger/author. I get twinges of anxiety all the time about deadlines, meeting clients' expectations and making enough money to pull my own weight. I very rarely have problems in any of these areas, but anxiety doesn't care. It even makes me go back and forth on whether I want kids because, you know, I'll be responsible for them.

I suspect my fear of being the cause of anyone's pain, hunger, displeasure, etc. fuels this anxiety and OCD theme. I also suspect it's behind a lot more of my anxiety than I notice. This knowledge doesn't change anything for me. I didn't all of a sudden realize it and come up with a plan to stop it. I'm not going to shirk responsibilities. Besides, another theme would just pop up. I think I'm just going to keep doing the things I'm responsible for and giving the anxiety that comes with it the finger. Oh, you think I'm going to disappoint everyone, anxiety? Well, I just might and see how you like that.