Living with Anxiety: The Wurst Is Yet To Come

I Didn’t Always Have Anxiety

Hard to believe I know but I used to be pretty carefree. Once I had kids, something switched. Suddenly, I had these tiny humans relying on me, and the weight of making sure they were okay became overwhelming. I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking my first baby wasn't breathing. I'd shake my husband awake screaming she's not breathing she's not breathing. Having kids definitely was when my anxiety started—and over the years, it’s grown into this constant hum of dread, like I’m waiting for something to go wrong, for the worst, the big one. 

Mistrust: The Root of My Anxiety

A big part of my anxiety comes from feeling like I can’t trust anything anymore. I remember buying a Volkswagen TDI diesel, thinking I was making a responsible choice—a low-emissions car, great for the environment, right? Wrong. Turns out, VW had rigged the system. Their cars only passed emissions tests under specific conditions, and the rest of the time, they were polluting way more than I ever imagined. I had been driving my kids around in a car that was poisoning the environment. That was a punch to the gut.

The Illusion of Ethical Choices

After that, my ability to trust corporations, especially when they claim to be ethical, pretty much evaporated. And it wasn’t just VW. Look at food labels—terms like “cage-free,” “organic,” “grass-fed”—they’re all designed to make you feel good, like you’re making the right choice. But most of it’s marketing smoke and mirrors. “Cage-free” chickens might just be crammed into barns, barely better than cages. Though you could trust the color of the yolk to tell you? Companies even add cumin to chicken's diets to make their yolks more yellow! I did find this rating of eggs for anyone interested in finding a really good egg made by chickens who aren't tortured. “Grass-fed” cows could have been fed grass for just the last meal of their life to meet the label’s criteria. If you really want something meaningful, you need to look for “grass-fed and grass-finished,” but even then, how much can we really trust these labels?

A World of Lies: Politics and Manipulation

This all ties back into a bigger problem: We live in a world where companies and politicians are masters of manipulation. Look at politics. I’m not one to point fingers at just one side ( but come on, the right has been especially blatant), but the truth is, lies are currency. Politicians will say whatever gets people worked up, knowing full well there’s no downside for spreading misinformation. It’s all about riling up their base. Accountability? Gone. As long as they’re saying what people want to hear, they’re untouchable.

The Chaos of Mistrust

This lack of honesty, whether it’s from corporations, food producers, or our leaders, has thrown my sense of grounding into chaos. I can’t trust what I’m being told. I can’t trust the systems in place to protect us or our planet. It feels like we’re being lied to at every turn, and that uncertainty breeds anxiety. I think a lot of us feel it—the sense that something’s deeply wrong with how the world operates.

Environmental Anxiety and the State of the World

Add to this the state of the world itself. The environment’s in a downward spiral, and instead of putting resources into saving it, we’re funneling money into weapons and warfare. It’s insane to watch. I want to vote in politicians who will stop the wars, take care of people, where health care and education are human rights. But, we are only offered up warmongers. 

Catastrophizing Every Little Thing

I worry about the world my kids are going to inherit—one where they grow up glued to screens, disconnected from nature, and bombarded with information they can’t trust. I’m guilty of it too—spending more time than I’d like to admit staring at a screen—but it’s hard to see a way around it. It feels like the only way to stay connected to the world now is through technology.

This mistrust has created a generalized anxiety that affects everything. Heap onto that menopause anxiety and trust me, I'm a hot mess. Every small event feels like it could explode into a disaster. Whether it’s worrying about the food I buy or my ex taking my son on the John Muir trail for 9 days during the middle of last year's heat wave, my mind takes each concern and runs with it, turning it into a potential catastrophe. I have somehow come to believe that if I run through every wurst case that I will be able to better deal with it when it happens or it's somehow a talisman against that bad thing happening. 

The Wurst Is Yet to Come: Coping with Catastrophizing

But most of the time, these little catastrophes never happen. I end up worrying myself into a frenzy AND WASTING TIME over things that turn out to be nothing. I operate from a place of negativity...and for what?! That’s why I made myself “The Wurst Is Yet to Come” tee with a dancing wiener. Because all my catastrophizing often turns into what I like to call a “wiener of a worry". 

Laughing at Anxiety

The world we live in gives us plenty of reasons to be anxious. From environmental destruction to political chaos, it’s easy to feel like everything is out of control. But most of my anxiety, the daily stuff, is my brain playing tricks on me—creating worst-case scenarios that never come to pass.

So if you, like me, find yourself constantly worrying and catastrophizing, remember this: the worst might seem inevitable, but most of the time, it’s just a dancing wiener of a worry.

This shirt is for all of us who torment ourselves with worrying and anxiety.