Gentle empathy, H.A.L. I can turn the best of ideas into psychotic nightmares with my what-if anxieties. One if is too many and a million are not enough. I have the IQ of a french fry when I get to iffing around.

This might seem a little weird, but the trick which helped me kick the "What if" habit was to declare "I.F." to be an acronym for "Idiot Factor." When I catch myself what-iffing, I remind myself to get the I.F. out of it.

Gentle support while you find what works for you.

For what it's worth
Meditation, exercise, etc., work well for me as spiritual maintenance tools, but don't seem to have allot of impact on my long established psycho ticks, such as what-iffing, shoulding around, self-abuse, etc. I look for more specialized tools for managing those psycho ticks.

Self forgiveness. Yes, it is possible. We who experience anxiety tend to be very hard on ourselves, expecting more from ourselves. However, we need to approach these situations as we would respond to others, with gentle empathy and a forgiving attitude. We don’t have to be perfect because no one is perfect. Your medication is not going to change your thinking, you have to do that and it is possible. For now, forgive yourself. See the fact that you made a mountain out of a molehill, accept responsibility and apologize to anyone that may have been affected. Then file it under lesson learned and go forward. Guilt and shame serve no purpose but to drag you down. The more you practice, the better it will get. Tomorrow is a new day. If you aren’t in therapy, I recommend you do so. Therapists can teach you tools to use in your daily life to fix your thinking. It takes time for all the work you put in to become apparent, but if you are persistent, it will happen. Speaking from experience here. 62 yo, severe anxiety and depression my whole life but am now in recovery, it’s been hard, but it’s well worth the effort. What you are experiencing is common for your condition, keep in mind that most of it is just symptoms. The further you get in recovery, you will see a lot of your”issues” melting away to become irrelevant. Best wishes.