What keeps us awake at night? What fears haunt us? What nightmares visit us over and over?

Worrying about things that are important to us is a normal experience. But when do we know when it has gone too far? We worry because we desire things to go our way. We want the best result in all our endeavors. We seek success and happiness and recoil from the prospect of misfortune.

Yet on occasion, our worries tend to encompass more and more aspects of our life. We worry about things that may never happen and imagine worse case scenarios or catastrophic outcomes. When we reach this point, we start having trouble concentrating because our mind does nothing else except worry. Constant worry drains our energy making us feel tired most of the time. We become restless. We develop difficulty sleeping or remaining asleep.

Sometimes our fears worsen all because we do not wish to face them. This is especially true of matters which we shouldn’t really fear. We become afraid of things that cannot really harm us. But we have to realize that whenever we fear something, we grant it power over us. And the more we avoid it, the worse the fear gets. In such a situation, we have to challenge our beliefs by facing our fear head on. By so doing, we may prove to ourselves that there is really nothing to fear.

Fear is all about not wanting to lose control. One way to handle our fears is to give up the notion that we are always in control. Worrying about what may happen does not guarantee a better tomorrow; it only ensures that today will be more miserable. Therefore, we need to acknowledge the possibility that we will sometimes be powerless to change whatever circumstances arise and just accept whatever happens. Sometimes, we merely have to let things proceed naturally and just let go.