Wednesday's Woe - The Curse of the "If Only"s, ~by Tommy and Angie Prince

Wednesday's Woe

The Curse of the "If Only"s

~by Tommy and Angie Prince

Soon after Merry Katherine's death, we were overwhelmed by the "If Only"s and the "What If"s. We would ruminate, over and over assaulting ourselves with "If Only" behaviors we could have done that might have led to a completely different outcome, an outcome that included her being alive…  

I remember one of Tommy's was, "If only we had duck-taped her to a chair when she was so determined to on on that beach trip…"

Now he says, "If only I had been in control, the way I had thought I was…"

~The "If Only"s~ How prevalent these were early on, but thankfully they do recede. Not completely. But they do recede. (Yet just this morning I was hit with an onslaught of them… It seems I barely survived them, but lost a lot of sleep in the fight. And such a lack of sleep often seems to just feed the problem, creating even more "If Only"s in the days to come. What a vicious cycle they can create!)

"If Only"s do a wonderful job of 

• Suppressing your appetite,
• Getting a terrible night's sleep, and
• Raising your blood pressure to a dangerous level.

I wonder if that's our emotional psyche's attempt at finding comfort, yet the effect often seems to be that of working ourselves up into such a frenzy that we are barely able to function!

How about you? How do you do when you get hit with the "If Only"s?

Picture, thanks to Google Image