Endless worries

[Rom]

I keep thinking and worrying endlessly that im going schizo or psychotic i know people with anxiety worry that their going crazy but i dont know if this is the same.Basically i saw a program with people on it with schizophrenia and ever since have been sick with endless thoughts that go round and round that i could have it aswell.I feel that any minute i could be diagnosed with it and treated for the rest of my life as one.It feels that i could secretly have it but everyone else not noticing this is my number one fear that is most frightening for me.

[LisaLisa]

Hi Rom

I use to worry about being bipolar. First i got anxiety and depression and then i started looking stuff up on the internet and really freaked myself out about bipolar disorder and also schitzophrenia aswell. But it was just the way that my brain was reacting becuase i was so depressed and anxious at the time.

It happens now with thoughts about hiv. But if i had never ever thought of the ilness then it would be something else becuase the problem isnt thoughts about schitzophrenia or hiv , or having either of these, the problem is the way my brain - and yours too - reacts to the thoughts of these ilnesses. For me its like it 'sticks' on these horrifying thoughts and then intense feeling of anxiety that comes with it fools our brains built- in survival systems into thinking that becuase it feels realy really bad that it must be important for our survial and as you would expect we become obsesssed and gripped by fear with the ideas that we have or could have these ilnesses and as we can never bee 100% certain withanything in life , the fear goes on.

The trick is to retrain your brain to not react the these scarey thoughts and triggers.

When i worried about mental illness my triggers were things like ....not being able to sleep, panic attacks, compuslive thougths, worrying about my thoughts all day everyday, really strong anger and disgust and loasa of other woerd emotions. Feeling weird feling sof emotion at the wrong time , feeling no emotion or indiferent, vivid dreams and worrying about them. Worrying about being psychotic and hallucinating - although i never did.

It was really hard becuase they were the very things that i should have been trying to stop reacting to... but i didnt know that because i was trusting my emotions as I awlays had done up till then and had no idea that anxiety cuased these messages to get messed up......a very viscous circle. I did manage to get over those worries but i dont know how and i think that is why they are back now but with physical worries instead. I get all of the above still but i dont worry about them at all becuase i worry about physical sensations instead so the cycle stills goes on :lac:

Try hard to accept your symptoms as anxiety and nothing else and see them the same way that you would see a cold or a something minor, dont worry about them and dont add another unessesary level of worry on top of your anxiety .

The way forward is to just 'sit' with the anxiety that keeps coming and carry on with your day . It will be very hard at first and relaxation breathing and deliberatley finding ways to calm down will help calm your mind enough to keep going. WHat happens is that your brain bgins to see that you are nolonger responding to the triggers so eventually it will stop alerting you to them and the horrible fear feeling will lessen and stop. It was take a while and it will be difficult but it does work.

Hope your feeling okay today, sorry thats all so long winded but i know how you feel and when i felt like that i wish someone had told me this then becuase it really helps


Lisa
xxxx:hugs: