Stupid worry

[strawberry1756]

Hi can someone advise or reasure me please, I had this worry nigling at me and I need to say it because its doing my head in. Its sounds really silly and its probabley all to do with my anxiety. I am worried that because I have GAD that I will develop another disorder like OCD, Panic disorder, or agraphobia. Is this possible because my mind is weak already? Sorry if this sounds stupid. :flowers:

[alias_kev]

OK - I'll tackle this as no-one else has popped up. I'm kind of going to say "yes - BUT NOT really" so please READ ALL THE WAY TO THE END.

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I don't want to increase your worry but I'd say in some ways it is possible BUT WITH THE RIGHT HELP UNLIKELY. This forum is one of the places to find help.

Some (many?) people suffer from a mixture of things (I myself have GAD and phobias) so clearly we can have more than one thing wrong with us.

Partly though I think this is because the names we give our disorders are (medical pigeonholes and) man made and really each of us has a fairly unique condition that exists in a spectrum of disorders and behavours.

Untreated GAD affects our behavour and experiences. Obviously and sensibly (on one level) we try to avoid the situations that make us feel bad. In some people this might be called "avoidance" in others a "phobia" in others "social-" or "agora-phobia". Now it may also be quite possible for someone to ONLY have one of those "extra" conditions. Its very hard to say if that's because we don't know what induced it in them: a broader anxiety, or an unpleasant event, experience or belief.

CBT (a therapy) says that all these things (and more) stem from "irrational beliefs" which steer our behavour and emotions in unhealthy ways. So again we can imagine a wide spectrum of affects of which each of us has some - eg. The irrational belief "nobody likes me" might be exhibited by general anxiety, or a phobia of gatherings, or as broad agoraphobia, or in some other weird way.

I guess what I'm saying is that you may get OTHER LABELS attached to your condition and some of these may even be USEFUL in managing the condition and in causing improvements. BUT on a lot of levels this does not mean your condition is altering all that much or that you are in some sense "going madder".

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