Fear of Mental/Emotional Illness Progressing

[DoraFlora]

Hey guys,

WARNING:
THIS POST MAY BE A TRIGGER FOR SOME.
Please read with caution and self-care/awareness.



This might sound strange. I have suffered with health anxiety with a few years, but this past year, and excessively the past few months the health fear has been around my mental health.

Yesterday I had a spiral panic attack almost all day over the thought that maybe one day I would kill myself, or maybe one day my mental state would deteriorate to such a degree that I would completely lose my mind or have a psychotic episode.

Let me say I have never had ANY psychotic tendencies. I have a history of self harm, but have NEVER attempted or planned suicide.
But sometimes (especially in the throes of a bad panic attack) I wonder if I will just get worse. (Catastrophising!!!) And it completely takes over my brain.

Does anyone else have these fears? If so, are there anythings you use to reassure yourself?

I am on cipralex right now. I am VERY sensitive to meds and was on 5mg for a few weeks and just bumped up to 7.5mg 10 days ago. I have felt an increase in overall anxiety the past couple of days and am wondering if it could be due to the increased dose.

But in any case...
am I alone here?

I know with health anxiety it's easy to fear things like cancer, or MS, or heart problems, etc (Believe me I have been there too, and am still there sometimes), but does anyone else panic about their mental health?

No horror stories please. Just looking for some reassurance or some sense that this is "normal" ...

-Dora

[SLA]

I dont have these fears anymore, but I have had them.

They are exactly the same as health anxiety fears, and maybe considered intrusive thoughts.

You are just buried deep in anxiety.

Just because the subject of the thoughts are different, it doesn't make the cause different.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I've seen tons of threads like this on here and elsewhere. Generally you will find them on the OCD board about things like schizophrenia but also on the GAD board by people worrying they are going mad.

There is nothing remotely triggering in your thread so don't worry about that.

Is this general worrying on a conscious level or does it appear out of nowhere (intrusive thought)?

[DoraFlora]

I've seen tons of threads like this on here and elsewhere. Generally you will find them on the OCD board about things like schizophrenia but also on the GAD board by people worrying they are going mad.

There is nothing remotely triggering in your thread so don't worry about that.

Is this general worrying on a conscious level or does it appear out of nowhere (intrusive thought)?

It's both. More so it's been a general concern. Like when I read an article about someone committing suicide I think, "how did that happen? did they have help? how do I know that won't be my fate?"

But the past 2 days it has been pervasive thoughts. It came upon me yesterday while in the bathtub and then I spiraled quite rapidly into a large panic attack. It felt like an avalanche, just picking up momentum.
So awful.

---------- Post added at 20:04 ---------- Previous post was at 20:00 ----------

Thanks, SLA, for that encouragement.

I appreciate the idea that it's still health anxiety, just rearing it's head a different way.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Well it takes about a week for Escitalopram to ready steady-state in blood plasma. Until then the additional & of the new dose will be rocking up & down a bit and then it will be consistent after the week. This may mean you have side effects and as it become stable at the new dose you are getting a consistent higher dose than before so that could contribute to side effects. Only time will tell on this one.

The one in the bath sounds like an intrusive thought. I have had these as a feature of my OCD and have spoken to a fair number of other OCDers with these (and I'm sure SLA will agree on this too) and they found overall increased levels of anxiety meant these thoughts were more frequent and more intense. As you reduce those background levels, the opposite happens. So, your increased dose may be impacted this.

There can be very unpleasant but it's useful to understand intrusive thoughts. Having the knowledge that they are the opposite of true character, per medical professionals, you have proof that you would not act on these thoughts. It's rare for people to act on their intrusive thoughts. Those with OCD only act on compulsive rituals as a result of them e.g. they may conduct "covert" compulsions like examining their thoughts or even manifest a compulsion physically such as checking a window lock to mitigate (often seen in Magical Thinking) or similar.

Intrusive thoughts are expected to trigger the fear response. That's why pulling the rug from under them by NOT reacting in negative ways and reacting with positive/neutral reactions (which the Amygdala that's looking for the feedback can't see since it only expects negative reaction to fight or flight) eliminates these thoughts. Obviously, we can't get rid of them, they are part of the human condition, but by in changing our reaction you find they flash through without a care in the world. I've beaten mine twice and that's how they are for me now.

Your more general concern sounds more akin to worry. You see something that triggers you to worry, the classic for HA and with it being a media story it's even more classical if you think about it.

The media tend to report the most sensational stories. Lots of people commit suicide but some will gain national press coverage and some will be lucky to get more than a few lines in a local rag. The more unusual, the more important to them. The more vulnerable, like a young person, or the more they can point to a system failure, the more the opportunity to sell stories.

None of us can ever know when it comes to psychosis. It can happen to anyone. But so can getting run over by bus. It's not one to worry about on that basis as it's irrational to worry about one and not the other. That's just how some people's anxiety focusses. Some worry about cancers, some worry about madness.

When you thought "how did that happen?", "did they have help?", that's just your conscious mind running through the kind of questions everyone asks. The difference is it's fleeting for other people, for you it has feelings/emotions involved so it feels stronger and you are reacting to it. Basically, by not being somewhat dispassionate to something that is outside of your control, you are allowing it to suck you in. It's just anxiety taking advantage of a compassionate person, it's a matter of stopping it running away with you into questions that's don't need to be analysed unless you are connected to the situation itself. You may never know they answers anyway and suicide is a complex business with many variables and the person themselves may not see any other way out so what you consider possible, they may not.

Whether any of us on here would ever commit suicide may be a hard question to answer for sure. I don't think I could commit to a no there because we all have our limits in life. But what we have to remember is all the things we have that pull us away from such things and this is part of the questioning that therapists do when assessing self harm risk. Because you have a history of self harm, it's perhaps more concerning for you because many people wouldn't do that either BUT that's a world away from suicide as you know.

Reading our thread it's obvious that you are fully rational, so that's evidence there is no concern about you. That's what I see anyway. The rest is the anxious mind inserting doubts and "what ifs" that can lead you to allsorts of possibilities that will never come to fruition. That's why I like to view my thoughts as my subconscious saying "what about this?" and I can choose to think consciously about it, bin it or react with a "meh" and not care. The executive functions of the brain are in control, you decide what you do in all things even in the presence of fear. Since our anxieties struggle with loss of control and uncertainly, worries like you have now happen to us all in various forms.