Afraid to be happy

[cpe1978]

In the ongoing spirit of my determination not to post, asking for reassurance about symptoms, but also not quite being out of an anxious place, I find it useful sometimes to post my thoughts about what causes HA - certainly for me, in the hope that perhaps it resonates with others.

A few weeks ago when I had a CBT session I put forward a theory to her. That although the words come out of my mouth that imply that I want to feel better, that actually I think I may be afraid of actually being happy. Perverse if you think about it and I wonder how many people feel the same way.

So for example. If I were to draw my life when I was a teenager, looking into the future this would be it.

- Married
- 2 children
- Living somewhere nice
- a job i enjoy
- good friends
- Plymouth Argyle in the Premier League

Well as luck would have it, I am married (punching considerably above my weight i should say), I have a six year old girl and a two year old boy. I live in a little place in rural West Yorkshire which is beautiful and I have a house that is perfect for us looking out over the hills of the Last of the Summer Wine. I have a great job as a Commissioner for the NHS and I have some wonderful friends. Even better than that - to my knowledge I am reasonably healthy too!

So why oh why is it not possible to take a step back and accept things are great rather than stay anxious just in case things become not so great. How do you get yourself in a position whereby bad news is a surprise that you deal with rather than an inevitability that you sit anxiously waiting for? All rhetorical questions I might add.

Don't get me wrong, this isnt a thread of self pity, more a thread of self reflection, as I believe for me, answering these questions, or at least being able to live with their unanswerableness is one of the routes to an anxiety free life.

Objectively I find all of this fascinating, how we can get trapped by our own minds merely based on the anticipation of something that on the balance of probablity won't happen, or at very worst might.

Or perhaps it is Plymouth Argyle's perpetual footballing decline that holds me in this space? :roflmao:

[katesa]

I think this is a big thing for some HA sufferers.

Like any illness, I think there are different types of HA and the one I (and, it appears, you) suffer from is more of a "Where's the Catch?" anxiety.

I don't know about you but this manifests itself in other ways, not just health worries. For example;

My wonderful, amazing husband, the husband who sums up everything I ever hoped for in a partner and never thought I'd have, hasn't answered his phone or called back for an hour. He could be in a meeting but........no, he's had a car crash and died! I know it! I knew we were on borrowed time. How could I have such a perfect spouse and NOT lose them tragically?

I'm writing for a living. I always dreamed of doing that. Yay!!!! But...hell. Somebody will figure out that I'm not that good at it. Or we'll get in serious financial trouble and I'll have to go back to my steady income job....I can't be allowed to actually enjoy my work. That's not how my life works.

(Through my pregnancy) So I'm finally pregnant after 2 years of trying! Yay! The perfect family I never dreamed I would have is almost complete......me, the hubby, the cat and this little baby......this baby is going to have a major disability. Definitely. That'll be the catch. That's if it survives to birth.......come to think of it, when was the last time I felt it kick? Has it been an hour......oh no, it's either dying or got some major problem. Maybe the cord is around it's neck right now causing brain damage or death! (said baby was born perfectly healthy and is now a very happy, bouncy 8 month old boy by the way)

The health anxiety bit is the most obvious because it's the thing that I would notice each day because of every day niggles and pain. But certainly, in my case, there were other things pointing to a bigger issue than just an obsession with my health.

Great insightful post as always mate

[cpe1978]

I think this is a big thing for some HA sufferers.


My wonderful, amazing husband, the husband who sums up everything I ever hoped for in a partner and never thought I'd have, hasn't answered his phone or called back for an hour. He could be in a meeting but........no, he's had a car crash and died! I know it! I knew we were on borrowed time. How could I have such a perfect spouse and NOT lose them tragically?


Or he could be in Hong Kong and out in a karaoke bar having a cool beer after a tough day's work :)

[katesa]

Actually he's eating sushi and drinking champagne in a 5 star hotel.

Git

[cpe1978]

WTF does he do? I get a soggy burger in the Travelodge at Waterloo usually (and have to pay for some of the food myself)

[katesa]

He's in "Fashion Daahling".

They're all a bit hoity toity. Spoilt sod.

[Miss Alissa]

Hi there

I know this is an older thread but I love this post for so many reasons. Firstly, for your determination not to post for reassurance…just biggest high fives to you for that. And secondly, I think your thoughts about anxiety and your relationship to happiness are kind of spot on for me.

Although I would have argued it VERY fiercely at the time, for me the issue was that I didn't think I deserved happiness. I was afraid of it because I didn't really trust it. I didn't think I was good enough, I didn't think I'd earned it, so I didn't really believe it would ever stick around for me. Happiness felt fragile and somewhat fleeting, whereas anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and that peculiar pain that comes with daily catastrophising felt safe in a perverse way.

Deep down, I believed I was dreadful at worst, a bit rubbish at best, so my brain figured that it probably made total karmic sense that I would be struck in down in some hideous way. What careless kind of fool would relax knowing that?!

As minds really like to be right, mine did the sensible thing and went off looking for all the evidence it could find to prove that The Very Bad Thing was indeed, just waiting around the corner for horrible old me. So I could be prepared and ready to fight it. Obviously. But because I, like most of us here, live a pretty safe and comfortable existence with a home, and food, and running water, and modern medicine, and as a rule no wild animals looking to eat our asses on a day-to-day basis, my brain couldn't find all that much evidence out there in the big wide world.

Undeterred, it turned its focus inwards and struck gold. Because the human body is a wonderful, crazy mess of odd sensations and tingles and twitches and anomalies, all of which are kind of perfect for putting through the doom-machine and coming up with the inevitable end of days scenario my thoughts had been sent out to find. And let me tell you, my brain really was top-of-the-class when it came to HA 'evidence' gathering. Total teachers pet. Very creative. Incredibly persistent. Every week, something new.

The road out of HA has been quite a long one, and along the way I've been both soothed and saddened by the tricky relationship so many of us seem to have to our own happiness. Soothed that I'm nowhere near the only one (I think the huge numbers on this forum alone speak for themselves), and saddened, because…well it's really kind of heartbreaking to realize how hard so many of us fight against something that is our absolute, natural right in life.

Is a complicated kind of self-harm and it seems to be everywhere. Having said that, we are biologically hardwired to prioritize negative thoughts so I guess it's always going to be something that requires a little more effort and understanding.

As for a way out of it? I think what you're doing right here is the answer. Being mindful of it. Practicing gratitude for all the amazing things in your life. Trying to better understand the relationship you have with uncertainty. Seeing your HA as a case of some wonky thinking and nothing else.

For me, it's been helpful to set my teachers pet brain different kinds of assignments. Your mind just wants to be right, and will generally do all it can to support the theories you're telling yourself…check what those stories *really* are. Make sure they're the ones you want to focus on. Your brain is going to get on that hamster wheel for something, may as well ask it to find evidence to prove that you're awesome and strong and lucky as hell :)

However, that does all sound like a lot of effort. Maybe a new football team is the way to go.

Good luck and much love.

x

[cpe1978]

Wow Miss Alissa what an amazing post and I can completely empathise with what you wrote. Kind of freaked me out to see an old post of mine as even in that relatively short period I think I have come some distance. What is even more pleasing is that there are others who too have made phenomenal strides.

As for the football thing..... CBT taught me to focus on the elements of things you can alter, unfortunately a football team is entrenched for life. Shame in my case it is 300 miles to home games :)

Thanks so much for posting.

[nadimac14]

I can totally relate to this, excellent post. I kind of had a revelation last night - it's as if I am afraid if I allow myself not to be anxious, I will jinx myself in some way? I'm waiting for a test result and last night I felt a bit calm for a period of time and immediately caught myself and thought 'I can't relax because if I do the results will most certainly be bad' ... as if the anxiety and worrying will somehow prevent that from happening? Does that make sense? It's almost an obsessive compulsive thing. Of course I know rationally that whether I worry or not the result will be what they will be. But anxiety is anything but rational....