Regards, Anxiety

Dear Brain/Stomach,

Hiya! I wanted to let you know that the medication you’re taking made me sick for a few months earlier this year (I had to lay low while I recovered), but I’m feeling much stronger now and am quite keen to get back to work. I fear some decisions have been made without full consideration during my absence; I won’t let that happen again.

I know you’ve been preoccupied with study for the last little while, but now that the class is over I expect you’ll have some time to think over the following concerns I’ve been trying to raise with you recently (see previous emails from August, September, and earlier this month). I’m particularly interested in addressing the issues I foresee with Moses starting school next year (we can move on to Hazel and the chances of Alan’s business suddenly going bankrupt once these have been adequately mulled over). It would be great if you could turn your attention to the attached points ASAP.

Regards,

Anxiety

from here

POINTS OF CONCERN

1. How are you going to manage to get out the door at the same time every morning in order to ensure Mo’s at school within the 15 minute drop-off window?  
2. What if Mo’s school is terrible and you scar him for life by sending him there?
3. What if Mo hates the extra time away from home and seems devastated about the idea of going each morning, and what if this lasts for an entire term or more, as others have told you to expect? 
4. What if the work isn’t challenging enough? 
5. What if the work is too challenging? 
6. What if Mo’s teachers are hard to get along with?
7.  What if Mo doesn’t make new friends? 
8. What if Moses makes friends with kids who I don’t really like, and starts behaving more like them? 
9. What if Mo’s bullied? 
10. What if Mo’s a bully?
11. What if you do reeeeally badly in your final essay thanks (in part) to your ridiculous stuff-up, and this lowers your overall mark for the subject and, consequently, your GPA, and then no university will want to accept your Honours application and the whole course therefore turns out to have been a waste of your (and my) time and all your dreams about working as a psychologist come crashing down? (I’m sorry, I know I said we were focussing on Moses, but this is really bothering me right now and I couldn’t help myself; think on this for a bit, will you? Preferably before sleep, for an hour or two.)
12. Will the 20 minute drive to and from school every day be enjoyable (it is the only time you find out what’s going on in the world), or increasingly annoying?
13. Will your study days feel frustratingly short if they’re fit in between two 40 minute drives at each end of the day?
14.  If the answer to questions 11 and 12 is ‘increasingly annoying’ and ‘yes’, should you consider moving closer to Mo’s school/Hazel’s preschool, or would a move be the last thing any of you need in an already-stressful year?
15. The limited amount of not-in-school time will mean that extra-curricular activities need to be considered carefully: 

• How will you cope with regular afternoon/weekend activities if having two plans per week currently makes you feel nervous? How much stress will multiple deadlines (school start time, activity start times) add? 
• Which activities will you choose? Should you go with one sport and one music activity, just one of those options, or neither? If Moses has no interest in either sport or music, how long should count as having “given it a go”? Should he have to give it a go at 5, or is that too young? 
• What if Mo would be a brilliant drummer or swimmer if he focussed on those, but you instead sign him up for guitar and soccer? What if he wants to do all of these things? Given that lots of people who are now very good at what they do say they started doing it when they were aged 5, what happens if Moses misses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be an olympian/superstar, and it’s all because of you.
• If, on the other hand, you go with the piano option at school, which seems to involve a lot of parental input, will this mean you spend a lot of your time nagging Moses to practice, and will this end up making you want to die? 
• How much will these activities cost, both money- and time-wise? Will they be worth the cost? 
• Does Hazel participate in these activities too, or does she just watch? What happens when Hazel’s old enough to participate and she and Moses choose different sports/instruments? 

I’m sure I haven’t covered all possible things to be fretted over; please feel free to add to the list as you come up with more. I look forward to going over these with you, again and again. And again. Thanks, A.