“Murphy’s Law”
“You are having a good morning. You are driving to your next appointment and you are ahead of schedule, and you drive swiftly through all of the green lights. A few days later, you are having a stressful day, you are running behind, and you literally hit all of the red lights.”
Doesn’t this sound familiar? I call this Murphy’s Law. Murphy’s Law is “an adage or epigram that is typically stated as ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.’”[i] In addition, for me, Murphy’s Law also means that everything happens all at once and that things can be too good or too bad.
Here is another example. Back in January and February, my schedule was slower with a lot of downtime. Fast forward to April, in the span of four weeks, I had over eight different friends from out-of-town visiting Denver and wanting to meet up. A couple of other Denver friends that I have not seen since last fall also wanted to hang out. On top of that, I had to make two trips to Dallas and Los Angeles. Thus, I was out almost every single evening meeting up with friends and having a good time with my peeps. At the same time, I was socially exhausted.
Building on last month’s blog titled “Why is This Always Happening to Me?” and January’s blog, “Is This How I Want to Live, Anxiety,” Murphy’s Law is part of the continuum of anxiety and inner frustration that I struggle with, and somehow, it is something that I am having a really hard time dealing with. It’s like when things are going well, everything is going well. When things are going bad, everything is going downhill.
Of course, some incidents can be explained away and some I just don’t understand. For instance, April is Spring Break time so people are traveling more often. At the same time, I can’t stop myself from wondering why it’s “happening to me” and why things can’t (both the good and the bad) be spread out more evenly.
Whenever Murphy’s Law occurs in my life, I become very frustrated and annoyed. The frustration and annoyance come from feeling powerless. This feeling of powerlessness comes from the sense that I have little or no control over my calendar and scheduling, and it screws up the plans that I’ve set my mind on.
On the surface, it looks like this is my anxiety acting up. Digging deeper, I notice it is my depression that is fueling this reaction. It is quite common for people that are experiencing depression to also experience anxiety at the same time. This is called comorbidity. In fact, studies have shown that 60% of people that have anxiety disorder also have some type of depressive symptoms, and vice versa.[ii]
While I was struggling with severe depression during my twenties and early thirties, one of my biggest fears was enjoying happiness (the high) in fear that the high would be extremely temporary and that literally the very next minute I would slip back into the dark abyss of depression (the low). Since the highs were always so short-lived, I would prefer to sacrifice my happiness so I wouldn’t need to experience the crashing down. This is one of the reasons that I rarely celebrate my birthday or I don’t enjoy holidays. This mentality I have tells me there is no point in being “happy” for a couple of hours or one day knowing that I will soon have to go back and face my miserable life again.
Over a decade, this fear has morphed into a habit that has become part of my lifestyle, my mentality, and my mental health technique. The pros are a feeling of smooth sailing that prevents ups and downs in my life, maintaining my internal and external composure, and keeping everything in my life pretty consistent. The cons happen when I don’t allow myself to experience the different up and down emotions and truly and fully expose myself to them. I miss out on various fun and adventurous opportunities, and ultimately I prohibit myself from enjoying life.
For the longest time, it felt like my experience with depression was separate from anxiety. In fact, I didn’t even really notice I had anxiety until a few years ago after years of therapy recovering from my depression. Thus, when my anxiety and depression manifest simultaneously during Murphy’s Law incidents, I feel overwhelmed, defeated, and powerless because I feel like I have no tools to counter both at once. It’s like I am getting two punches at the same time, one to the head and the other to the stomach.
Murphy’s Law is something that I am continuously struggling with, and I have no solutions. Murphy’s Law is the symptom, and the real pain is the ongoing, recurring struggle with anxiety and depression.
I’ve been reminding myself of the word “resiliency.” I need to continue to practice what I preach and use the tools that I’ve shared in my previous blogs. I need to see this as a journey of new discovery. This means that instead of wanting to take a magic pill that will “cure” everything, I need to allow myself the opportunity to learn, explore, upgrade, and experiment with new mental health and lifestyle tools. I need to just keep going. If I fall, I need to pick myself up and keep going.
Just for fun and to vent my feelings, here is another Murphy’s Law incident that I just can’t comprehend and gets me worked up really badly every time. I go to Costco once a month to stock up. Every Costco shopper knows that weekends at Costco are like the zoo and it can get quite busy during weekday lunchtime and after work hours, too. One of the privileges of working for myself and from home is that I can go to Costco in the middle of the day to avoid the crowds, like at 10 am right when it opens, or around 2 pm after the lunchtime rush. Seriously, the last ten times that I’ve gone to Costco during those supposed “slower” times, Costco has been so packed and crowded. The lines at the checkouts and gas stations are ridiculously crazy long. Somehow, whenever this happens, I go berserk and get super mad, lol. The worst part is that, even though rationally I know that the busyness at Costco is a recurring phenomenon, somehow I still fall into the same old trap that my anxiety and depression have set up.
Meme by makeameme.org
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