There's a feeling I know too well. Everything is fine — no crisis, no looming deadline, no conflict. And yet, somewhere deep inside, the anxiety is already there. A quiet but persistent whisper that says: this can't last. That something bad is surely on its way.
For a long time, I didn't understand it. I thought I was just a worrier, or someone who couldn't appreciate good things when they came. I was even a little ashamed of it — how could I not relax when, for once, there was nothing to worry about?
Then, slowly, the picture started to come together. This feeling wasn't about the present at all. It was about the past. My body and nervous system were still running on old software — still braced for impact, even when there was none coming.
It was as if calm wasn't a safe place to be, but just a brief pause between two storms.
The first time I said it to myself — that maybe this was my childhood trauma speaking — it was both frightening and a relief. Frightening because I had to admit this wasn't just a bad habit or a quirk of my personality. But also freeing, because for the first time, it made sense.
I started paying attention to what was actually happening
What I noticed was that in those moments, it wasn't specific thoughts that appeared — it was a physical state. A tightness. A low-level readiness, like my body was perpetually on standby. And then my mind would rush to fill in the story: what could go wrong, what's about to fall apart, where's the catch?
Over time, the pattern became almost predictable. When everything was going well, I would almost automatically start searching for what wasn't. As if I genuinely couldn't believe that lasting peace was possible.
But recognizing the pattern also meant I could start to interrupt it. The most important thing I learned was to distinguish between the present and the past. That sounds simple. In practice, it's anything but — because when that feeling switches on, it's completely convincing. It feels absolutely real and absolutely now.
So I started trying to pause and ask myself: what is actually happening right now? Is there a real threat? Or is this just a familiar internal state that has come back for a visit? I can't always "switch it off" immediately — but even just recognizing it helps. Reminding myself that I'm not necessarily responding to something real, something happening right now.
It also helped to change how I relate to calm itself. Before, whenever things were going well, I would almost reflexively start pre-worrying — and I'd justify it to myself as simply being prepared for every possibility.
Now I try to notice the difference between genuine forward-thinking and robbing myself of the present moment by dreading something that hasn't happened yet — and may never happen at all.
It doesn't always work. There are still days when the feeling pulls me under and it's hard to climb back out. But I'm no longer as frightened by it as I used to be. I don't automatically assume I'm right, that something terrible is coming.
And slowly — very slowly — I've started to experience something new: that calm doesn't have to be temporary. That it's possible to live without constant bracing. That silence isn't always the warning sign before a storm. Sometimes it really is just silence.
That's a thought I'm working hard to make a permanent part of my world.
