Rewiring Your Brain & Living OOO

We're all writing our stories with every moment that passes—stop thinking about what you "should" do and embrace life as it comes.

P.S. This is our weekly digital version of In Kind. For even more essays, interviews, and style content like this, discover back issues of the print magazine.

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Finding the Glimmer

Words by Hannah Weil McKinley

I started therapy again. After two years off, my anxious thoughts had bested me on trips away from home and sent me spiraling one too many afternoons not to talk about it, with a professional. So, I’m a month and a half in, and I’m unpacking some of the thoughts that have plagued me more recently in life—the stuff that keeps me up at night, about kids getting sick or losing parents or losing my partner. There’s that, the big stuff; but there’s also the daily questions:

“Am I making the right choices?”

“What could I have done differently?”

“Am I a good mother?” 

We were in the midst of a session last week, and I was explaining the mental gymnastics I’m doing. How I start to convince myself that something imminent is coming, some kind of dread or doom, because, well, it has to.

“Do you believe that everything is already predetermined?” my therapist asked.

“No. I believe things might happen for a reason, but I don’t believe that everything is already decided,” I answered honestly.

“Then why are you convinced of outcomes when you’re just in the midst of writing your story?”