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...
Hi everyone! I hope that you are all managing to cope with your anxiety symptoms. I just joined the group today because I’m looking for some advice and support for the acute anxiety I’ve been dealing with for the past couple of months. I’ve mainly been struggling by ruminating on past mistakes that I’ve made, whether it was something to do with my current romantic relationship or with my friends.
I had already previously confronted all of these mistakes and their causes internally, forgiven myself, and learned from them. That is, until now. Recently, I’ve started questioning whether or not I am a good person and I’ve started to rehash all of these old mistakes, going so far as to purge and share them with my partner.
My therapist has rightly told me that these compulsive confessions are not helping me or my partner in any way, because all it does is feed my anxiety further and cause my partner to doubt my desire to be with him. By doing this, I’ve been hurting us both.
So now, here I am, still experiencing these negative thoughts and wondering how on earth am I going to just move past them?
Has anyone else experienced something similar, and if so, how did you manage it?
Also, sometimes I’ve felt like I deserve this anxiety, like it’s my punishment for having done bad things in the past.
I feel like I don’t deserve to relax or feel at peace or distract myself from the past mistakes, and so I constantly rehash it.
It’s like little alarm bells go off in my head whenever I’m relaxing, telling me “wait, wait, you’re a bad person, you’re not allowed to feel alright!!”
Let me know if anyone else has experienced this haha!
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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.
Have you discussed these thoughts with your therapist?
Do you have friends that you can chat with, because saying all of this to your boyfriend doesn't seem to be doing anything good. Instead of telling him this stuff, write it all out in your journal.
Yes, I have thought about past mistakes. But they are in the past now, I can't go back and change what happened. Can only look forward. Learn from them and be a different person next time.
I'm in total agreement with your therapist about the counter-productivity of continually vomiting my OCD thought loops over my friends, family, and most especially my partner. Those highly repetitive loops get old enough running their endless loops through my brain. Letting them dominate my relationships, too, shrinks my world to the space between my ears.
But unfortunately, attempts to ignore those thought loops out of existence don't seem to work, either. I have a ton of tricks for channeling and remediating them. My first step is always to get them into words and share those words within my therapy support network. This very forum is one of the nodes on my therapy support network.
Keep sharing those thought loops here, Anxi. Here, the sharing might even help someone else find exactly the words they were looking for.
Welcome aboard, Anxi. You are not alone. Listening. . .
You've taken the important first step in writing it out.
Now, keep writing in a private daily journal.
What you did in the past is before. What you do now is current. Keep the past in the past.
If you are finding yourself unloading onto your partner and making things tense, then STOP. Stop, pause, breathe, choice, until you find yourself in stop, pause, breathe, choice, calm.
Push positive direction in words, thoughts, emotions, feelings, and make your choices for your well-being to be better balanced.
Writing it out is definitely a great thing! Being able to visualize those thoughts will help you process them better.
I practice daily meditation and yoga. Both are very relaxing and helps to relax the mind.
I have a therapist and also participate here. It definitely helps to vent and know that the people who read or listen to what you have to say actually understand what you are going through.
I love to read/listen to audiobooks. It takes my mind to another place for a while.
As far as working out the issues, my therapist has me practicing the PPP (Personal Peace Process) ….
I am copying this straight from my therapist:
PPP - This is a list of events or specific situations with specific feelings that have occurred in your life that still have an intensity of feeling. We just describe enough of the event so that we know what we’re referring to and then write the SUDS (subjective unit of distress) level that you’re aware of now as you write them on a scale of 1-10. 10 being the most intense the feeling is right now. You can use this to refer to when you want to do clearing of the past.
Example sentence: The moment when (what happened) and how I currently feel (emotion) about it.
I repeat it in my mind and use focused breathing for 2 minutes. I rate my feeling(s) from 1-10 before and after repeating it. Be firm and express it inwardly or outwardly.
Try not to look at your negative thoughts are something to “let go” of. That is vague. Research and try techniques that will allow you to be at complete peace with your past. You become aware of knowing that it happened, but will be able move forward with clarity and complete acceptance of who you are. :)
Hope this helps… please reach out if you need to talk!
It can be so frustrating to know that your thoughts and fears are irrational, but not be able to quell them. Sometimes, my anxiety will make me believe that I’m just using the “irrational” argument as an excuse to not pay penance for my mistakes. So, it’s really helpful to have others acknowledge that these feelings are irrational and that there are some mechanisms for dealing with them.
I am so glad that I joined this group, and I’m really excited to gain more insight from everyone and to hopefully support you all as well. :)
In hindsight, I wonder if my subconscious was holding on to those gems, irrational wrappings and all, patiently waiting for me to recognize the treasure I was treating like trash. Just wondering. . . Proof unavailable.
Its very difficult for people not in this funk to understand much less deal with it. Imagine someone who continued to bang her head against a wall, creating bleeding, pain, loss of consciousness, and you ask why do you keep doing it, no answer but they keep doing it. It seems obvious that you cannot change the past, but can only improve the future but when you say this, anxious, depressed people just nod their head and talk what things they did wrong, not what they can or will do now.
Curious what kind of therapists and what kinds of medication are best for this.