The Dark Questions My Anxiety Asks Every January
Is this the year one of my parents will die?
(Oh my God, it felt awful even writing that.)
Will this be the year that Jesus comes back? Maybe they just calculated the start date wrong by twenty-six years, and so it will be 2026 instead of the Y2K rapture I lived through. I don’t even know if that math makes sense. But… what if this is the year Jesus comes back?
I wonder how many disasters will happen this year.
Like the kind with dates that end up in history books, on some future kid’s test.
It’s a new year, but I have the same anxiety.
It’s 2026, and at thirty-seven years old, my anxiety is meaner and asks darker questions.
It can be difficult to remember that these are just thoughts and not predictions of the future.
January is primed with uncertainty. A new year invites reflection, hope, and planning — but for an anxious brain, it also invites scanning. Scanning for threats. Soon, we start making lists of feared outcomes disguised as resolutions. Collectively, we look for signs, rituals, and good-luck omens.
As a specialist working with OCD, anxiety, and related disorders, I notice this time of year is often especially triggering. Anticipation rises. Obsessions intensify. Old coping habits resurface alongside new ones. Intrusive thoughts, safety behaviors, and compulsions are, after all, ways we try to make sense of the world and protect ourselves from pain.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by persistent and intrusive thoughts, images, urges, or sensations. These often center around fears that only seem to quiet after engaging in a compulsion or ritual meant to prevent a dreaded outcome.
If months of the year were mental health diagnoses, OCD would be crowned January.
January prompts us to plan, prepare, and control. And yet, many of the things we value most (i.e. other people, being loved, mortality etc.) — are not controllable.
The themes of OCD can vary widely. The intrusive thoughts I listed earlier might show up in someone with fears of death, worries about harm coming to family, religious or spiritual doubt, concerns about the afterlife, or existential questions about meaning and time.
What they all share is this:
they center on significant events outside of human control.
Some intrusive thoughts that often appear this time of year sound like:
What if one of my parents dies this year?
Will this be the year Jesus comes back — am I ready?
How many disasters will happen in 2026?
Will there be a date this year that future kids memorize in history class?
Thoughts are not predictions.
Thinking about something is not the same as intending it, causing it, or hoping it happens.
An anxious brain asks these questions because it wants to prevent pain. The problem is not the thought itself. The problem is how the thought changes what we do next.
So what helps when anxiety turns into persistent worry?
First, I try to name it: this is an intrusive thought, not a warning about the future.
There is always a possibility that the future unfolds differently than my anxiety predicts.
Then I notice the urge that follows — the urge to check, to research, to reassure myself, to pray the thought away — and I practice something called response prevention.
Here’s what that can look like.
If I start worrying that my parents might die this year, I might feel the urge to check on them repeatedly, lecture them about their health, search online for symptoms and treatments, or punish myself for having the thought at all. I might even try to cancel it out by thinking something positive or praying for a specific outcome.
Instead, as an OCD therapist, I remind myself that this thought is another way my brain is expressing love and fear at the same time.
I don’t have to judge myself for wanting to protect them.
I also don’t have to convince myself I can control when they will die.
I can choose to be present with them now.
And I can let uncertainty exist — without trying to solve it.