When Panic Sets In

Wow, what a crazy morning I have had. Lat night, my email client, Mozilla Thunderbird, began to act like a schizophrenic doing many things all at once and yet getting nothing accomplished. I tried to fix it last night; thinking it was just some internal glitch. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I went to bed hoping everything would be right in the morning. Well, it wasn't and I've been working on it since 7am (it's not just past noon).

Relieved that I have finally fixed the problem as well as losing the last 6 months worth of email has me thinking how dependant I've become on email and the inherent stress involved with such dependancy. I won't go into a diatribe about how good the good old days were without email because that would simply be silly and, it'd be something that I truly wouldn't believe. Email and the internet has changed what I do for the better and there is no argument that can convince me otherwise.

So my concern isn't over email, its really just about what happens to the body and mind when dependancy is involved. Take this morning for instance, when I couldn't access my email. Sure, I could go online to access it but I have many emails I needed to respond to this morning from this past week. And the horror associated with losing all those emails really took about a year off my life (turning 40 has me concerned about turning 80).

Stress and anxiety seem to rob my comfortablility; and when things don't go just the way they are supposed to go, I become unraveled. I unraveled this morning and am just now beginning to restring my sense of self back together again. As I pull the strings tight, I am wondering how I might restring myself so I don't freak when such unraveling occurs.

The Bible reminds me to, "Trust in the Lord with all your might and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge God and God will make your pathway sure." I think of this verse and wonder exactly how to carry out such a mindset. Do I adopt a willy-nilly "It's all in the Lord's hands" attitude when confronted by stress? Or, do I treat it as a reminder to just calm down and realize when things seem out of control, to simply turn to God and say, "HHhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeellllllllppppp!!!"? Perhaps I could use lower-case letters in my plea for divine intervention.

I know a lot of people who take expensive psychotic drugs to help them control their anxiety. Sure, they have out of control anxiety about everything, not just a once-in-a-while email problem. They need their medication; I wonder what I can do to help myself not freak out with those once-in-a-while problems. I guess I need to do more thinking about this- do you have any ideas?