This is Steve, mid-sixties, alone now for four years. He’s a manager, in business, membership in a service club and plays “less golf than I’d like to,” a not uncommon life-style.

 Steve says: 

“Learning to be single?  I must be a slow learner because it’s been four years now and I’m only now getting comfortable about a lot of things.  Maybe I’m not supposed to be comfortable; maybe you’re supposed to stay a bit off balance and call it remembering.  But what’s the gain in that.  Why live that way?

But, anyway.  My trouble was that after Teresa passed I just didn’t feel comfortable being away from home. For work, it was OK but other times I had the feeling that I really should be at home. It wasn’t just a thought, I worried, and hated to admit that to myself.   Anxiety, plain and simple.

I’d never felt that way before I lost Teresa.  I was often away at work, sometimes I’d travel for a week or more away, attending conferences or on business and never had anxiety about being away.  We’d always keep in touch by phone.  Was I missing Teresa? Of course, but I didn’t worry, then.

I really began to feel it and knew there was no good reason:  there was no one at home needing me as there had been for the last couple of years of Teresa’s life.  The house itself was okay. Neighbors keep good watch for me, in fact even when I am home they seem to know a lot that surprises me when we talk.

After a while, with this anxiety, I realized that if it went on I’d be worrying about worrying and you don’t want that. That kind of problem has a special name.

But what to do?  It’s all very well for friends to say to you ‘Don’t worry,’ or ‘Everything is okay, enjoy yourself,’ or ‘Get used to it’ or ‘It will pass.’

When people talk that way, for all their good intentions they are mainly reassuring themselves, because they don’t want for themselves what they are hearing.  And I suspect that they may see the same kind of thing happening to them at sometime, and they don’t want that either.

But I was anxious.  And I wasn’t ready for the Anxiety Depression Association of America but I’ll admit, I did go browsing on their website.  So, what to do?

Years earlier I had surprised myself by losing weight in a strange way. No, it wasn’t a diet, it was something else.  At a conference, I had heard about using something called affirmations and “self-talk” to help learn a new way of doing or thinking. To change habitual behavior. And to be honest when I heard about it I was more than skeptical to the point of disbelief, I wanted to prove that it was hokum and just would not work.

But, long story short, I used the technique and lost weight over a 6‑month period without doing anything more than reciting “affirmations.”

That’s what popped up in my mind as I tried to kick the anxiety that was really bugging me. Why not try affirmations to to lose my persistent worry? It was worth a try.

So, I reviewed the stuff about affirmations on line – as usual, it pops right up. You write affirmations in short sentences, make them personal, present tense and positive. Like, use the “I” pronoun, use a present tense verb and only positive.

I’d give it a try to get rid of the anxiety attacks bugging me about being away from home and feeling guilty about it, feeling that I should be home, I was needed there.

The first one I wrote was: ‘I’m confident that everything at home is OK.’

That was personal, present and positive. Should fill the bill.

Then, I wrote: ‘I take care of home business as it arrives.’

There were several more, but you get the idea, all the sentences written in the same way and giving the picture of the way I was, ideally. You get the idea, no? Try reading about it on line under ‘affirmations’.

I’m not one to go dragging among childhood memories or adolescent family events looking for the causes of what worries me now, or anything else for that matter.  I’m very here and now, the present, and doing something about that.  I love what Louis Armstrong is supposed to have said: ‘if you ain’t where you’re at, Baby, you ain’t nowhere.’  I like that.

What was the take-home for me?  I found, and still do, that  these affirmations, as they’re called – personal, positive, and present tense, help me learn new ways of adjusting to being single. Got rid of that anxiety in the process.”