Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
Hello everyone, im new here. But let me get right into it. The past few days ive been obsessing over 1 specific word. It popped into my head a few days ago and now I constantly repeat it to the point where i think im going crazy. Ive barely slept because im constantly trying to block out the word. Its been bringing me so much discomfort. I know it sounds crazy and if i just stop letting it make me uncomfortable itll go away but with having anxiety and panic disorder my brain obsesses over small things and I just don't know what to do to calm my thoughts
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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Years ago, I won a mirrored armoire from my job. It's in my bedroom but I rarely stand in front of it. Yesterday, I had to have a dexascan done so I had to change into a gown. There was a full length mirror in the changing room. I'm aware that I gained 5 to 7 pounds over the last year from cheating on Keto but I didn't know what it looked like. It was a reality check.
Obsessive thought loops are normal for me and more than just sound crazy. They are crazy beyond crazy. Painful, too. Mine seldom go away on their own, though they will eventually shift topics. The new topic is seldom an improvement on the theme. My two most effective tools for dealing with them are:
1) I translate the obsessive thought to a foreign language and speak them out loud to turn them into language practice. If I am unable to translate them, it is much easier for me to let them go as mental chatter.
2) My thought loops typically create small pressure centers within my cranium. I center my thoughts on finding those pressure centers and visualizing a mental massage of those painful spots.
But that is me. . .
Gentle support while you find what works for you. Welcome aboard. Hope you find stabilizing companionship here.
It's stuck...to unstick...under... hope this helps.
What you are saying doesn't sound crazy at all. Anxiety does things to our minds. You are not a crazy person. You are a valuable person who is experiencing anxiety. These obsessive thoughts can be managed. You can gain more of a sense of control. I have them too. Horrible intrusive thoughts about horrible things. I'm no't a bad person. I've experienced a lot of trauma and these thought are really there. I learned over the years to set in place, what I call, a statement of mastery. It's my mind, it belongs to me, I don't belong to it. I'll make an inner statement like: Not now. I will not have this thought now. I then develop a replacement thought that is a good thought for me. An image of something I like...art, flowers, horses, something that brings me joy. I then make an inner statement about my abilities. I have great skills at making people laugh, etc. This has been a process and this has taken dedicated practice and repetition to do. Everyone has their thing that will work. I hope this is helpful in some way for you!
The first step in my strictly personal approach to dealing with obsessive thought loops is getting them out of my head and into the real world. Once I have those proverbial cards on the table in full light of day, it is much easier to sort the vital truths from the psychotic clutter. Thinking about ^it^ feeds the psychoses(pl). Speaking ^it^ aloud and/or writing ^it^ out gives me a far better chance of exposing the psychotic BS as pure psychosis unworthy of further development. As a secret, ^it^ remains an exotic possibility. Secrets tantalize.
Two tools I apply to the symptoms you have described here and have experienced repeatedly through my entire 40+ years of recovery from child prostitution are:
1) Speak ^That Word^ and all its associated links over and over until ^It^ loses the power to trigger me to psychosis.
2) Sing, hum and/or tap those songs you are playing in your head to distract yourself out loud. As long as I am only listening and/or playing the songs in my head, they are stimulating my neural pathways. Allowing myself to sing, play and/or tap them out loud turns them into a channel for the repressed emotions in addition to stimulating my physical senses in the process. It quite literally gets me out of my head with cognitive links to reality. It also helps me silence my inner critics. Is it even productive to care how my life has been judged by myself or anyone else?