Episode 15: Stop Borrowing Stress From the Future

Are you constantly worrying about what might happen next? Future-focused anxiety can leave you feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and mentally exhausted—even when the problems you’re worried about haven’t happened yet.

In this short episode of Helping From the Inside Out, Rosa Jones, LPC, explores how anxiety, overthinking, and worrying about the future can pull you away from the present moment. While planning ahead is healthy and necessary, repeatedly imagining worst-case scenarios can create stress over situations you may never have to face.

You’ll learn a simple strategy for interrupting anxious thoughts and bringing your attention back to what you can control today. Instead of asking yourself to solve every possible problem, Rosa encourages you to pause and ask: “Is there something I need to do about this today?”

If the answer is yes, take the next step. If the answer is no, give yourself permission to come back to the present.

This episode is especially helpful for anyone struggling with anxiety about the future, chronic worry, overthinking, stress management, fear of the unknown, or difficulty staying present.

Because you can plan for tomorrow without carrying tomorrow’s stress today.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to recognize future-focused anxiety and overthinking
• The difference between healthy planning and excessive worrying
• How worrying can affect your stress levels
• A simple grounding question for anxious thoughts
• How to focus on what you can control in the present moment

Helping From the Inside Out is a mental health and personal growth podcast from Freedom Support Services, offering practical tools to help you manage stress, strengthen your emotional health, develop healthier relationships, and create meaningful change from the inside out.

📝 Prefer to read? Check out the full episode transcript here:

Welcome to Helping from the Inside Out, a weekly moment of encouragement for human services and healthcare professionals. If your work is secure for others, this space is for you. Each week, we offer a short reminder to protect your well-being so you can keep serving with strength. This podcast is brought to you by Freedom Support Services, where our vision is to heal people who heal the world.

Ever notice yourself feeling emotionally exhausted about something that hasn't even happened? There you are lying in bed, worrying about some meeting you're gonna be in tomorrow, a bill that's due next month, or what you're gonna eat for dinner at a wedding you've been invited to six months from now.

It's all so exhausting. And the crazy thing about it is that it hasn't even happened. There's no guarantee it will happen.

So we are spending today's energy worrying about tomorrow. It is so important for you to remember that tomorrow has enough troubles of its own. It can worry about itself. Your responsibility is to be present right here, right now, because right here in this moment is when your life is happening. Tomorrow isn't promised to any of us.

The moment that we have is the one that we're in. And so I want to encourage you not to allow things that haven't happened and that may never will steal you and rob you of the opportunity to experience the goodness that life has to offer you today. That's right. Because everything available to you today isn't horrible. Everything available for you today isn't awful.

But a part of the reason why sometimes you can't enjoy it is that you're too worried about tomorrow. So the next time you find yourself getting carried away into what might happen, what about this? What about that? I want you to grab a hold of yourself and notice and remind yourself you know what? I don't have to carry tomorrow and today at the same time.  I don't have to do that.

I want you to remember that when you look too far into the future and you focus on the future too long, it's always going to create worry and stress. Focusing too far ahead makes me stressed.

Staying present in the moment is where I can find peace. So when you feel unsteady, and you feel unnerved, and you feel ungrounded, remember that this is just an indicator that I need to come back into my present moment, into the goodness that my life has to offer today. That's the best any of us can do.

This is a powerful message. And I know that if you're anything like me, there's somebody in your life who needs to hear this.

Share this message with another health or human service professional who needs to hear this because we do worry and we need a reminder that we don't have to be stressed out about tomorrow.

Let's just focus on today.

I'm Rosa Jones with Helping from the Inside Out, and this is a podcast of Freedom Support Services, where we are healing people who heal the world. Have an amazing week. Thank you so much for listening today.

If this has helped you, be sure to hit the subscribe button wherever you're watching or listening. Share this with another healer or helper who gives so much to others. Visit us at www.myfreedoms.com/podcast for more resources.

Until next time, keep helping from the inside out.