Berk and I have a rental property near Sarasota, FL and his sister lives full time nearby.

Whenever some kind of weather event is headed that direction, I need to strategically leave the room when they talk on the phone. The conversation starts spinning fast, decorated with worst case scenarios and predictions of total devastation.

Worry talk from Berk spills over to me in direct ways too: “Be careful driving…” and “Don’t leave after dark…” and “Don’t run outside…” These types of directives are issued my way every day.

Berk and I have been together for over 10 years now and it’s something that’s always nagged at me.

Doesn’t he trust me? What about the decades that I took care of myself just fine before he walked into my life?

When you study yoga, you learn the ethical practices of the yogic tradition. They’re likened to the 10 Commandments from Christianity.

One of them is non-violence, which can be interpreted many ways, including how we treat ourselves and others.

In the teachings, one of the ways we are violent to others is worrying about them.

In fact, the ancestor of the word worry comes from Old English wyrgan, meaning ‘to strangle.’ In the 16th century worry began to be used in the sense…‘to assault verbally,’ and in the 17th century, the word took on the meaning ‘to bother, distress, or persecute.’

I get that… I do feel “bothered” and “verbally assaulted” when Berk is telling me what to do because he is worried.

In my 200 hour yoga teacher training, we dove deep into what worry is truly about.

In a text we studied, Deborah Adele wrote:

Worry is another way violence gets masked as caring. Worry is a lack of faith in the other and cannot exist simultaneously with love. Either we have faith in the other person to do their best, or we don’t. Worry says I don’t trust you to do your life right. Worry comes from a place of arrogance that I know better what should be happening in your life. Worry says I don’t trust your journey, or your answers, or your timing. Worry is fear that hasn’t grown up yet; it is a misuse of our imagination. We both devalue and insult others when we worry about them.

It makes you step back and think, right?

Learning this has been very helpful for me with Berk. While, on one hand, it makes it crystal clear why his “worry” bothers me so much, it also helps me feel compassion for him.

I know Berk has a lot of fear, it peppers his life.

Worry is fear that hasn’t grown up yet.

That makes me want to give him a big hug.

It is also one of the bazillion reasons that yoga teacher training changed my life. Those 200 hours were like an experience where I took off one pair of glasses and put on another pair where the world, my relationships, my purpose and my path all looked completely different.