Idea: Repetitive, anxious thoughts are like a cat meowing

This is not directly about teaching, and yet it can be. If you are like me and get lots of anxious thoughts around work, I hope this analogy will make a difference to you. If it does, please let me know and or let another person know. Thank you so much! 

I do not write this to make money in any way, just to share things that I feel inspired to write and feel compelled the share with others. 

 We had our carpet redone at the house. Now, when my husband and I decided to redo the carpets, I was under the mistaken impression that the amount of work involved would be minimal. Sure, we would need to move a few things - but how hard can it be? 

 We have a two story home and everything except the entrance, bathrooms and kitchens are covered by carpets. Not to mention, the two guinea pigs, one cat, two dogs, one fish and three children we have. Turns out, we needed to move 90% out of the house. Of course, we decided that if we needed to do that, we might as well Marie Kondo the house and paint all the baseboards at the same time, which the children are in remote schooling due to COVID. 

Makes sense right? Easy Peasy as my youngest would say. 

 So the job was a tad bit bigger than I realized. After a month of work, we were finally ready to move out. We had taken 25 bags of books to Goodwill, bags and bags of clothing, multiple loads to the dump, vans full to give away at other places and everything was packed. Thankfully, we were able to have some movers help us take all of our furniture to store in the pods we got delivered. 

 We still had more baseboards to paint, but it all did get finished within 12 hours of before the carpet was to be ripped out and put back in. So, it all happened in the end. 

 While the carpet was being placed in the house, we moved to an airBNB. We brought the two dogs and cat, but left the fish, and two guinea pigs at home. We were going back and forth each day, so it was going to be easy to take care of the animals. 

 We put the cat in the car, along with the three kids, and two dogs and headed over to the airBNB (thankfully just about a mile away). All was fine for about the first 30 seconds in the car. Then the meowing started. Howling might be more like it. The meowing sounded like the cat was in great pain. And it didn’t stop. Meow. Meow. Meow. 

 We brought the cat to the bathroom. Still meowing. We tried hanging out with the cat. More mournful meowing. We attempted to sleep at night. More meowing. 

Ok, the first night it was so bad, I got up at one in the morning, drove the cat back to our house and left it there for the night. Of course, I went to pick it up before the carpet installers arrived, because we didn’t want our Smokey to escape.

Night two - more constant meowing. We were keeping the cat in our bathroom and bedroom to hopefully help the cat adjust. There were times this day when the cat would stop crying and would purr. Only when Smokey was getting lots of attention from one of us, but then the meowing would start back up at full volume. 

I kept on being worried that we were going to annoy the neighbors because the yowling was so loud. 

 So somewhere between day two and day three, I was walking to the rental from my home and a thought just occurred to me. What if my repetitive thoughts are like the cat meowing. If I know that they are not pressing, and are not really a problem, I can just ignore them like I ignore the cat. Yes the thoughts sound urgent. They are yelling in my brain. They are very insistent. But. . . just like I can ignore the cat if I know he is actually ok . . . could I do the same thing for my thoughts? 

So, I tried thinking of some of my more repetitive thoughts as a cat meow. I don’t focus all of my attention on the cat meowing. I might say, poor kitty and give it a few pets, but then I ignore it and go about my day. I don’t yell at the cat. I do not get mad at the cat. The cat is just being a cat. 

 Could I do the same for my anxious worries. Instead of showering them with attention, talking back to them, telling myself I’m silly for having them and getting mad that they are still there, what if I treat them like the cat. Could I do it? 

 Finally, by day three the cat adjusted. Yes, some meowing occurred here and there, but overall it was less insistent, less mournful and there was more purring and sleeping and relaxing. 

 As for me and my thoughts, I’m a bit slower to adjust than the cat. And people say cats are hard to train! But, sometimes I catch myself focusing on my anxious thoughts and I think - Oh - it’s like the cat meowing. This is an old thought. I can let it go for a few minutes. Then the thought meows again. And again. And again. But, like the cat, I can go about my day and be compassionate toward the thoughts without paying it much attention. 

 Best of luck!

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