If you go through life expecting calamity at every turn, it’s time to sit back and read on ...

I KNOW a woman who tends to worry about the least little thing and often expects something bad to be lurking around every corner. As she is the friend of a friend, I bump into her now and again, and I usually groan inwardly when she zones in on me for a chat.

I’m not proud of it, but when I spotted her recently at the end of a supermarket aisle engrossed in a label, I quickly hurried across to the next aisle, simply to avoid her and her constant state of anxiousness.

Had Miss Anxiety been born in a different era and been physically forced to travel on the Titanic, she’s the sort of person who would have talked constantly to her fellow passengers about the huge probability of the ship hitting an iceberg and sinking. The same passengers who would surely have glowered at her attempts to grab a seat next to them in one of the sinking ship’s few lifeboats.

After all, the last thing you want to encounter when you’re in a lifeboat in perilously cold waters is a woman who talks incessantly about the effects of hypothermia. It would be enough to incite thoughts of hurling her overboard and giving her spot to the nice man still conducting the ship’s orchestra.

But I digress.

Back in the supermarket, as I was searching for my usual brand of soap powder, I heard Miss Anxiety’s voice a few feet away.

“You must tell me what soap powder you use!” she said. “I’ve been using the ABC brand, but I’ve just discovered that it contains an ingredient that can be damaging to your health.”

“Yeah, if you want to eat it,” I wanted to say but didn’t.

She then spent the next few minutes talking to me about all the bad ingredients in all the bad detergents in the bad supermarket. During a break in her monologue, I told her that I had an appointment on the other side of town and excused myself.

“Drive carefully! There’re a lot of crazy people on the road,” she said, as I hurried down the aisle with a box of poisonous soap powder in my trolley. “Lock your car doors! And don’t leave your handbag sitting on the passenger seat, otherwise robbers will try to get into your car at the traffic lights.”

It’s normal to feel anxious once in a while, but if your anxieties stop you from doing things or you notice people making an excuse to get away from you every time you start talking about your ingrown toenail and how it’s bound to lead to a gangrenous toe, amputation and eventual death, it’s probably time to get some help.

According to an article I just read about anxiety, there are several types of anxiety-induced thinking that might indicate that you allow your thoughts to give you a distorted vision of reality.

It seems that many people are guilty of catastrophising, just like Miss Anxiety. When an official envelope plops into the mailbox, it just has to be a traffic fine; or a scowl from their boss implies that they are about to lose their job; or a spouse failing to return home at the usual time means that he or she has met with a terrible accident and is lying in a hospital morgue. Unlike Miss Anxiety, though, not everyone has the need to verbalise those fears.

The perfectionists among us can be just as bad with their black and white thinking. If something is less than perfect, it’s often written off as a failure. For example, if you’re invited to a perfectionist’s house for dinner, she will probably apologize if the chicken pie isn’t quite the perfect circle that she wanted it to be, or if the crème brulee could have tasted better with three grains of sugar less, or if the napkins don’t match her tablecloth exactly. She will likely plop into bed after the last guest has gone, convinced that the evening was a huge failure.

As a guest, it can be tiring listening to how things should have been – it can also diminish your enjoyment of the food somewhat.

Then there are the people who tend to focus on the slightest criticism, while ignoring everything positive. For example, a woman can be in a loving relationship with someone, but as soon as her partner gently points out that the dinner was, say, a little on the salty side, she will play it over and over and over again, especially in conversations with her girlfriends, as if the man is evil personified and doesn’t deserve another home-cooked meal, ever.

All of us feel anxious from time to time, and talking about our fears and concerns with family and friends can often be cathartic and help us see things from a more positive perspective. However, if you yammer on and on about your anxieties, it can cause people to keep their distance.

The next time you’re in a supermarket and you see people running down the aisles and out of the door, please don’t get all anxious and think that everyone is avoiding you. You might want to run like hell too, simply because the building could be on fire, and the alarm system could be dodgy, and since you have no identification on you, your young son might be the one forced to identify your semi-charred body, scarring him for life and causing him to take up with some bad, bad people.

■ Check out Mary on Facebook at www.facebook.com/mary.schneider.writer. Reader response can be directed to star2@thestar.com.my.

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