Racing Thoughts When I Wake Up (I think?)

[Shyplane]

I've been having trouble with what I assume to be schiz OCD, and I've actually made a LOT of progress with getting better. I've sorted my anxiety and pretty much ruled out all the symptoms I thought I was having (hypnogogic/pompic hallucinations, DR/DP, etc.) I've managed to get those symptoms under control and attribute them to anxiety.

Though, while tackling all of those other symptoms, there is only one left that is causing me any disturbance. Sometimes, my mind will wander and I'll find myself thinking of just random sentences, words, or phrases. Now, I actually conquered this for a few days. It usually happens while I'm at work and as I'm just mindlessly resetting the shelves, that's when I notice my brain thinking of those random thoughts. They actually went away for a few days after I taught my brain not to react to them, so I forgot about them. (hopefully that makes sense)

With all that, I woke up this morning to those thoughts, but they were racing. I'm not really sure what racing thoughts are, or how they can manifest themselves, but the easiest way to explain it is that they were racing words, sentences, etc.

After being awake for a little while, and being able to get some food, and distract my brain, they went away.

It just scared the living hell out of me because I believe it could be a symptom of schizophrenia.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Racing thoughts are just really that, constant fast thoughts and your mind seems to be running away with itself. Basically, a load of stimulation. You may even find you talk quickly when your anxiety is doing this.

The mind wandering and coming up with random things is a condition known as - being a human being! :yesyes: We all do it. The problem is when you go through anxiety you start becoming much more aware of things you took for granted and start to work through whether they mean something, plus thoughts tends to race more because of the stimulation issue.

Thoughts popping into your mind are normal. They are called "Mind Pops", when they are not intrusive thoughts, and this is a newer area being researched. So, work on putting it down to that. Now, just in case you start Googling Mind Pops, yes those with schizophrenia get them too hence you will see that discussed BUT in their case they form the beginning of hallucinations.

[SLA]

I used to work on the checkouts at Tesco, and I used to spend my days THINKING and letting my thoughts run away with me.

I think it is actually a lack of stimulation that causes these things. I used to play out random scenarios in my head.

And at night after the shift, whilst trying to get to sleep, I'd spend the first 20 minutes in light sleep dreaming that I was sat at the checkout scanning bread.

Its normal. So you can forget the worries about schizophrenia or any of that stuff.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Too much stimulation too, SLA. Glutamate is the biggest neurotransmitter (which is countered by it's inhibitor, GABA, the area the Benzo's aim for) and Glutamate is related to thoughts and how much our mind is working. I suspect it's a matter of the brain trying to fight to retain balance and because we are a bit "out of whack", we get things like this due to other neurotransmitters.

Mind wandering will be the lack of. Mind racing more too much.

[NoraB]

It just scared the living hell out of me because I believe it could be a symptom of schizophrenia.

It's not Schizophrenia. It sounds like you're doing the right things in dealing with it it's just that when you wake up in the morning with thoughts going feral, as I call it - it's a lot more bewildering than in the day where there are things to distract you. I also get songs enter my head amidst all the bizarre thoughts and then I have those on loop as well. This morning it was Dan Hartman's I can Dream About You.

My dreams are so whacked out that I wake up panicking and then I can't stop thinking about the dream. So I start distracting my brain by counting backwards or alternating vegetables and countries in alphabetical order. Failing that, I listen to OH snoring and that's fairly distracting.:scared15:

There was a time when I thought I was going crackers but my CBT therapist sorted me out and now I just accept it and try and work on my thoughts throughout the day.

Key word - distraction.

All the best.

[MyNameIsTerry]

It's not Schizophrenia. It sounds like you're doing the right things in dealing with it it's just that when you wake up in the morning with thoughts going feral, as I call it - it's a lot more bewildering than in the day where there are things to distract you. I also get songs enter my head amidst all the bizarre thoughts and then I have those on loop as well. This morning it was Dan Hartman's I can Dream About You.

My dreams are so whacked out that I wake up panicking and then I can't stop thinking about the dream. So I start distracting my brain by counting backwards or alternating vegetables and countries in alphabetical order. Failing that, I listen to OH snoring and that's fairly distracting.:scared15:

There was a time when I thought I was going crackers but my CBT therapist sorted me out and now I just accept it and try and work on my thoughts throughout the day.

Key word - distraction.

All the best.

Don't you get woken up by something feral, it's just called Compo? :winks:

[NoraB]

Don't you get woken up by something feral, it's just called Compo? :winks:

With his ferrets.:D