This CONSTANT worry on my vacation [Help needed]

[Ampresus]

So I went on vacation with my sister and mother to Istanbul, Turkey. I have been here before, but that was back when I traveled with my dad (and sister etc.) 

My parents are divorced and so I decided to travel with my mom for a change (sister made the same choice). I am a decently build male, people think I am at least 18 years old and if I don’t shave I reach 22 sometimes! However, I notice how wary I am of other boys (or just old men) staring at my mom and/or sister. I always feel this slight sensation of NEEDING to defend them (formally my dad used to carry this burden). Shit is driving me crazy sometimes. Whenever they catch my presence they start to look away, but I sometimes notice people still trying to catch a glimpse.

I don’t blame them. Porn is banned in Turkey. Most people here are muslims and have only had one sexual partner. Personally I do it too and I bet I have made many fathers and brothers here go nuts. Hell, I have never had any sexual partner. At least these grown ass men have made some progress.

When we went to take a Turkish bath, there was a fitness room. I saw a young dude with his chest out coming all the way to the front practice machine and starting to work out heavily. He kept looking at our direction. Not gonna lie: He looks decent. But I hope you can understand the amount of pity I felt for him. I don’t suppose he can walk up to any girl on the street here (could be a taboo idk). 

Anyways, what would you advice me to do? Should I just try to worry less? I am also constantly wary of pickpockets and other scammers. 

[Forestluv]

@Ampresus This sounds like “fight or flight” getting triggered in which a person perceives a potential threat to the well-being to oneself, friend and/or family member. The body responds into a fight or flight mode for survival. Nothing wrong with that, it can have practical value in some situations. Yet the mind can also perceive it’s environment from a distorted lens and misjudge actual risk. 

When fight or flight gets triggered, it can turn into a feedback loop through thought stories and mis-perception. This can amplify sensations and lead to excessive discomfort, worry and an OCD pattern of checking and looking for things in the the environment that it may perceive as an imminent threat. The mechanism can be hyper-sensitive, mis-calibrated and dialed up too high. If this arose in me, I would try to step out of the dynamic and ask if I am interpreting potential risk in the environment clearly and if my response is proportional to the risk. Context is super important. Ideally, I want to devote a certain percentage of my mindfulness to those risks and use the rest of my awareness to enjoy the event. I may only need to devote 5% of my mind to potential risk and have the other 95% enjoying the event. In other situations, I may need to devote 95% of my attention to deal with a dangerous situation. . . . The problem arises when I mis-diagnose a situation by under-estimating or over-estimating. I’ve been in low-risk situations where I excessively worried, thinking it was high risk. And I’ve been in high-risk situations, mindlessly wandering around unaware of risk. 

If excessive fight or flight continually arose - in spite of my cognitive understanding that it is irrational - there may be some type of underlying conditioning going on that I should introspect and deconstruct.

It sounds like you feel a need to not only protect yourself, yet also family members. Perhaps re-access the situation to see if you are seeing it clearly. Is the environment really a risk to your safety? If so, to what degree? Is the safety of your family members dependent on you? If so, to what degree? . . . For example, if someone in a public fitness center was checking out my girlfriend with elevator eyes, I may find it inappropriate and annoying. If she was uncomfortable with it, I would want to be in tune with that and communicate with her. Yet it’s not really threatening in this context. We are in a public place. There is a very low risk of severe harm in this context. It’s not like a look of desire means he is going to stalk us the rest of the day and eventually drag us into a back alley where five of his friends are waiting to beat me up and abuse my girlfriend. . . Some guys give those kinda looks and vibes. However, if he approached us, physically grabbed one of us and said something to intimidate us - that would elevate the situation and intervention would be appropriate. . . As well, if I am traveling with someone and sense some personal risk to us, I may communicate with my partner without exaggerating the risk. For example, as we are planning the day in the hotel room I may say “Hmmm, it looks like we will be in highly concentrated tourist areas today. We won’t need our passports, so perhaps it’s best to leave them here in the hotel room”. 

Excessive worry can  actually attract what I am worrying about. For example, if I am in a highly concentrated tourist area and there is a sign asking people to be mindful of their belongings to avoid theft,  it may be wise to put my wallet in my front pocket and not to set my backpack down  and walk away. If there is something of value in my backpack, like a train ticket, I may push it down to the very bottom of the pack. Then, I wouldn’t worry and I would enjoy the tourist attraction. If I am anxious, worrying and obsessively keep checking that I still have my wallet and everything is still in my backpack, that could attract attention to me and could actually increase my risk. And I am not attracting other things like appreciation, wonder and meeting new, interesting people. Law of attraction stuff.

[Ampresus]

@Serotoninluv So basically I have to stop for a second, ask myself if there is really something going on or if I am just deceiving myself. Making sure I diagnose the situation as correctly as possible? 

[Forestluv]

4 minutes ago, Ampresus said:

@Serotoninluv So basically I have to stop for a second, ask myself if there is really something going on or if I am just deceiving myself. Making sure I diagnose the situation as correctly as possible? 

Pretty much, yea. Sometimes it is that simple. Other times it is more nuanced and deeper. For example, there are times I’m not sure and it’s not so simple as a clear correct diagnosis or a clear mis-diagnosis. Rather than trying to find one perfect clear view, I try to be open to clarifying my view. This involves being open to information and different perspectives, yet also experience and intuition. For example, when I traveled to Colombia I had a lot of ideas about what the country was like. When I got there, I spoke with locals regarding Colombian culture and personal safety. I realized many of my ideas weren’t quite right. That they were sorta right, but not quite. The locals helped me clarify my ideas. Yet I also had an intuitive sense if someone was speaking with me genuinely or if there was some agenda going on. 

[Moreira]

Im going to istambul next week to have a hair transplant. Ill wear 2500 of cash, and am not worried of pickpockets. Also Ill wear my samsung tablet.

Dont you have a strongbox in your hotel? And for your mum and sister dont worry, I know women that traveled alone to Turkey and nothing wrong happened.

[Nahm]

@Ampresus Inspect the root feeling of your thoughts ‘judgment’ and ‘pitying’ people, and you paradoxically find yourself no longer in the position of fear, but love & understanding, which people will sense. Your experience of all of realty will change wonderfully. Feeling’s been telling you “NO!” to these thoughts since the very first one. Inspect it, emotionally allow the karma to process out of the body. Side note, your likelihood of getting laid will go through the roof. People often want to feel like you feel without judgement. It can seem downright “magic” to folks. ?‍♂️

Seeing people as pickpockets & scammers is your own vibrational resonance, but you haven’t realized this yet. When you do, it comes with intuition which see’s such an incident a mile away, if at all. 

[cetus]

Edit.