I feel almost as if i am on the verge of a nervous breakdown

[gatsby12]

I feel like I am posting so much. I am sorry, i feel so terrible and i've never dealt with something this terrible in my head. I am told I am a very strong person but I feel like this is on the verge of bringing me to my knees. I feel like I am fighting a tank with a slingshot and a handful of thumbtacks.

The more I fight it the harder it squeezes my throat. I can't fight it and I no longer think I can. I used to think I had a future but I am not sure anymore. This feels like my very personally tailored hell. I dont feel safe anywhere anymore because it finds me in my safest place and its a violating feeling. Its like trying to fight someone in a house of mirrors but everywhere you turn a fist comes out and slams your right in the face. I see things and everything one way or another as a sign and associate everything as an omen. If so and so just had a kid that means I am going to jail. If its cold Tuesday I go to jail. If I think about X, Y and Z will happen. I cant look anywhere with out seeing something horrible or a joke about it. Everytime I hear, see the word "pedophile" or something in the context of it I feel like I want to vomit.

I feel like my life is ending before my feet. I feel like the castle is crumbling. I feel like ill never have a full life. No family, no more friends, no anything. This must be what it mentally feels like to be set on fire and thrown down a cliff. I dont know what to do anymore and I feel like I am running out of options. I am at my maximum levels of stress and at a PSI level where the system is going to pop. I have been catching my hand shake involuntarily and my body feels cold. I've been through years of hell and I have finally found my snapping point. My mind feels like its turning against me and everything I stand for.

I no longer feel intelligent, good looking or anything. I feel like a piece of shit. Everywhere I go is a dead end to me. Everyone my age is doing great things and what am I doing? Nothing. I spent 2 years trying to win someone over and it blew up in my face like a grenade. I am tired and I just want to lay down all the time but everytime I wake up I feel like I am gonna go to jail for something I didnt do and live a stigmatized existence. I am not a bad person but this has turnt me into an aggressive oaf. I am angry at everything and nothing is interesting to me anymore. I wish someone could grab me and hold me and tell me everything is gonna be alright but I dont have that person in my life. I am on the edge of tears all the time and I just want my mind back. I just dont know anymore. I have done nothing wrong but my mind wont settle for that. False memories and guilt, ahoy.

God, help me.

[debs71]

Hi Sharkster,

You clearly have a lot going for you. Your post is very descriptive, intelligently written and sums up what many of us think/have thought about ourselves and how we are feeling, at one time or another.

It sounds to me - as I mentioned in your other post about obsessive thoughts - like your mind is totally overwhelmed and muddled, and it is racing at 100 miles per hour. This is a classic sign of high anxiety, stress and the kinds of thinking that accompanies it - paranoid, guilty, low self esteem, overthinking everything, panicked, etc.

It also sounds like you may be struggling with some depressive symptoms too, and this figures since you mention the two years of trying to win someone over 'blowing uo in your face'. Often life stuff -disappointments, stressy events, etc - contribute to the way you are feeling now, and it all explodes in severe anxiety and a super-stressed mind.

First things first.....have you seen a doctor about how you are feeling yet? If not, you need to, and ASAP. Even if you have already, you need to see them again, as your symptoms and feelings need to be addressed. You don't have to be suffering this way, and there is help and a way forward here.

Trust me when I tell you that I have been where you are - feeling overwhelmed by everything, seeing no way out and forward and dreading what my mind will throw at me. It does not have to be the status quo for you and there is a way through it all, but you need to see a medical professional and be fully open about what is happening to you right now. xxx

[gatsby12]

Hi Sharkster,

You clearly have a lot going for you. Your post is very descriptive, intelligently written and sums up what many of us think/have thought about ourselves and how we are feeling, at one time or another.

It sounds to me - as I mentioned in your other post about obsessive thoughts - like your mind is totally overwhelmed and muddled, and it is racing at 100 miles per hour. This is a classic sign of high anxiety, stress and the kinds of thinking that accompanies it - paranoid, guilty, low self esteem, overthinking everything, panicked, etc.

It also sounds like you may be struggling with some depressive symptoms too, and this figures since you mention the two years of trying to win someone over 'blowing uo in your face'. Often life stuff -disappointments, stressy events, etc - contribute to the way you are feeling now, and it all explodes in severe anxiety and a super-stressed mind.

First things first.....have you seen a doctor about how you are feeling yet? If not, you need to, and ASAP. Even if you have already, you need to see them again, as your symptoms and feelings need to be addressed. You don't have to be suffering this way, and there is help and a way forward here.

Trust me when I tell you that I have been where you are - feeling overwhelmed by everything, seeing no way out and forward and dreading what my mind will throw at me. It does not have to be the status quo for you and there is a way through it all, but you need to see a medical professional and be fully open about what is happening to you right now. xxx

Yes, i have been to the doctors. I was prescribed Xanax and Zoloft to deal with my OCD. I use the Xanax every so often to either calm a severe panic attack or when I havent been sleeping or cant sleep. Zoloft at first helped me associate and categorize my thoughts but after a while stopped working at all. I went to a psychologist for a while to take a look at my head and thats when I finally came to terms with complex PTSD and my OCD. He said my fear of jail came from my childhood which makes sense. I stopped going because I am trying to get back into school and driving all the way across town and doing school wouldve been too much.

[TomT]

Sharkster buddy,

I know anxiety might bring you to your knees at some point but even at that point nothing will happen, you will not go insane or die or anything.

Do not compare with others as everyones life is different, everyone got blew by a girl I know I was, but girls come and go at our age.

Worrying about going to jail, well thats one you can fight with logic, all this time you have been thinking this but that scary scenario never actually happened. This is a simple excercise but a powerful one, ask yourself "If someone else would come to me and tell me this exact same thing what would I say to them?"

Regarding Coincideneces, well my friend I deal with them a lot and let me tell you a secret... they are all created by anxiety, hypervigilence is cause by anxiety and it stimulates attention and it can latch to anything and even more if its fueled by a magical thought as going to jail, there are no omens or signs or shit. Just patterns discovered by one anxious buddy. Just ignore them, its hard but you will get through.

Breath in, hold, exsale and smile my friend


Tom

[MyNameIsTerry]

Sharkster,

You've obviously got lots going for you, I've just seen you reach out to someone else who is really struggling to offer support with her autistic son. You also mentioned how you have helped others & their parents come to terms with it all. Thats a very hard thing to do I would imagine. You also mentioned how you have mastered it, well autism is very complex and strong so if you can do that, you can do this. I bet OCD is a problem in this respect because obsessions can feel similiar but isn't that something you have a good understanding of in mastering your autism? It's just a slightly different take. Can you use that somehow?

You are not the first person with OCD on here I've come across with the jail worries and questioning memories. That was all about past experiences biting them later in life. As Tom says, this is about logic because with these you will have little choice but to come to terms with them and try to accept the past is the past and thats not you anymore, you've learnt and moved on (presuming it's about past experience).

Tom's one of a few OCD people on here who have issues with coicidence and I've got Magical Thinking as one of my subtypes. You are not alone.

Have you noticed if your OCD is spiked by stress or overall anxiety levels being higher? I have, as have several others. I couldn't work on my OCD in a direct way at first so I went after my GAD, my primary condition, and it reduced my OCD and allowed me to start working with varying degrees of success on my OCD. Thesedays I have very few compulsions, many will be fleeting if at all. Spin back a few years and my days with jam packed with endless compulsions, hundreds of them over & over & over. I wanted to die and I saw no future. But here I am, still loads of work to do but at least I'm not in that prison.

My Magical Thinking would be about an image of my parents and then I would be thinking of harm coming to them and I would often be touching/checking something with my hands or even head nodding or eyes. I had to do that over & over again with a positive image of them and all it did was frustrate me and make me feel less in control of not only my own mind but also my body.

[TomT]

Now that my internet provider has come and fixed my service I can now reply fully .

Well, this is what I learned from coincidences:
* First of all it works the same way as any compulsion, so the way of being free from it is the same process, just dont engage it.

* Understand that what you are calling coincidences are not really that much of a coincidence but a matching pattern found in your brain, where am I going with this? well through the day many things go unnoticed, from the 100th post on 9gag you just watched or the 100th thought you had regarding plants or whatever, al of this thoughts go to one of the many levels your subconscious mind works with as they have not much importance, but they are still there. Eventually time goes by and maybe you remember on of those "ideas" (The concept behind the post of 9gag for example) and after that you get again in 9gag, suddenly you see a post regarding the same topic and your brain (as it is afraid of them ) labels it as a coincidence causing you a lot of stress... but... what happened here? well your conscious mind due to the anxiety didn't get all the data just the general message, what is the whole data? That is likely to find another post related to the same stuff on the same site or that is really ****ing possible that another person thinks the same thing as us. The same goes with an obsession with a number your case the number 19, I experienced the same thing with the number 23 and as you noticed you start seeing it everywhere, so I did a little experiment I focus on the number 36 and for some days I start making my brain aware that I needed to see the number 36 suddenly I started noticing it everywhere, magically the number 36 came to my reality giving me some awesome power regarding numbers? well... no despite what your magical thoughts my make you believe your logical mind says no to that. So why you get all messed up by random coincidences? Just because the fear of magical thinking, you relate that to going to jail, you know there is no reason to go to jail and you wont do nothing to go to jail, but an anxious mind likes to play with the odds of it, with the "what ifs" of life, as it is for me thinking about the whole reality topic.

* To conclude, coincidences OCD is a combo of many things, anxiety fueling attention as coincidences are a target of fear, selective memory as it forgets data that will disprove it as a coincidence and recalls only the times you had a "coincidence" and not the times you didn't, and last but not least magical thinking as the trigger for the anxiety.

* I have had them for quite some time now and as with everything with anxiety, nothing happened. Remember don't engage them just enjoy how your attention seeks for patterns, and what should be fun and interpreted as an "Aha" moment shouldn't be a reason of worrying.

Eventually they will fade but as I said previously do not focus on the manifestation of anxiety but the source of it, the obsession might come and go but it will stick around the longest if you do not learn to deal with stressful situations in a better way, ask yourself what is causing me the anxiety.

Tom

[gatsby12]

Sharkster,

You've obviously got lots going for you, I've just seen you reach out to someone else who is really struggling to offer support with her autistic son. You also mentioned how you have helped others & their parents come to terms with it all. Thats a very hard thing to do I would imagine. You also mentioned how you have mastered it, well autism is very complex and strong so if you can do that, you can do this. I bet OCD is a problem in this respect because obsessions can feel similiar but isn't that something you have a good understanding of in mastering your autism? It's just a slightly different take. Can you use that somehow?

Yeah, thats actually somewhat why I am here. I am here to analyze. I've been looking at what everyone has been saying and looking at the posts about symptoms people have been complaining about and taking what works. Autism is a funny subject in general. I maybe shouldn't have used the word "mastered." Sure, i dont scream autism by the looks of it anymore but I am still very different and the families of kids with it can tell after talking to me for a while. I wear a mask of normality and it feels like my tomb, i very seldom feel human. Its always a ninety percent. I dont mourn for myself but I do mourn for the parents.

There is no cure for what I have, it is down to my basic genetic code and the way my brain formed. There may never be a cure for what I have and there may not need to be one but I am not going to argue philosophy here to the best of my ability. I feel horrible for the parents because they are in worse kit then I ever could be. I can imagine the helpless feeling of watching your scream and cry for no apparent reason and looking for ages and watching your child come home after being beaten senselessly and the finanical burden it takes to try to put your baby back together because I was one of those kids. I debate myself sometimes on whether I should bring a child into this world- not because I have a high chance to pass it on but just because of how brutal this world is.

They are put into this torture chamber of "find the cure" and "i can fix my child" and I feel nothing but sorrow for them. Most of them are more willing to listen to a washed up pin-up model who screams that vaccines cause it and then go buy some woo cure-all snake-oil then any autistic person. The world really gives no shits about autism either. They give it those special titles such as "war on." Where are we on the War on Drugs or the War on Terror? War on Autism give me a ****ing break here, folks. They love putting on this compassionate face but no one gives a shit about the parents or their kids. They care about them like they do amputated veterans who gave a leg and an arm for them and and are having trouble getting a job now.

Now if I deviate from my rant I can probably now say what is causing my OCD. I am scared of jail and the isolating effect it has and it scares me to death. I am no criminal and I never violated any laws I dont have any plans on doing it either. My superego would never allow me to do anything terrible so I guess my memories and my OCD play into the "frame" factor. Its all a work in progress I guess. I am just a paranoid android.

Now that my internet provider has come and fixed my service I can now reply fully .

Well, this is what I learned from coincidences:
* First of all it works the same way as any compulsion, so the way of being free from it is the same process, just dont engage it.

* Understand that what you are calling coincidences are not really that much of a coincidence but a matching pattern found in your brain, where am I going with this? well through the day many things go unnoticed, from the 100th post on 9gag you just watched or the 100th thought you had regarding plants or whatever, al of this thoughts go to one of the many levels your subconscious mind works with as they have not much importance, but they are still there. Eventually time goes by and maybe you remember on of those "ideas" (The concept behind the post of 9gag for example) and after that you get again in 9gag, suddenly you see a post regarding the same topic and your brain (as it is afraid of them ) labels it as a coincidence causing you a lot of stress... but... what happened here? well your conscious mind due to the anxiety didn't get all the data just the general message, what is the whole data? That is likely to find another post related to the same stuff on the same site or that is really ****ing possible that another person thinks the same thing as us. The same goes with an obsession with a number your case the number 19, I experienced the same thing with the number 23 and as you noticed you start seeing it everywhere, so I did a little experiment I focus on the number 36 and for some days I start making my brain aware that I needed to see the number 36 suddenly I started noticing it everywhere, magically the number 36 came to my reality giving me some awesome power regarding numbers? well... no despite what your magical thoughts my make you believe your logical mind says no to that. So why you get all messed up by random coincidences? Just because the fear of magical thinking, you relate that to going to jail, you know there is no reason to go to jail and you wont do nothing to go to jail, but an anxious mind likes to play with the odds of it, with the "what ifs" of life, as it is for me thinking about the whole reality topic.

* To conclude, coincidences OCD is a combo of many things, anxiety fueling attention as coincidences are a target of fear, selective memory as it forgets data that will disprove it as a coincidence and recalls only the times you had a "coincidence" and not the times you didn't, and last but not least magical thinking as the trigger for the anxiety.

* I have had them for quite some time now and as with everything with anxiety, nothing happened. Remember don't engage them just enjoy how your attention seeks for patterns, and what should be fun and interpreted as an "Aha" moment shouldn't be a reason of worrying.

Eventually they will fade but as I said previously do not focus on the manifestation of anxiety but the source of it, the obsession might come and go but it will stick around the longest if you do not learn to deal with stressful situations in a better way, ask yourself what is causing me the anxiety.

Tom

Yeah, i recently had a fixation on that wack job numerology stuff but I snapped out of it. I was scared that when I saw 111 or 11:11 (note to self never ever ever ever go looking for logic in an ocean of meaningless data) that what I just thought would happen and my OCD would love to get the last word on that. My brain (like everyone elses) back catalogs everything and essentially looks for an hole to fill apparently. My run in with spooky magic nearly killed me. I doubt anything will happen but that anticipation anxiety is intolerable.

[TomT]

Hey,

As the good Terry once told me, try not to make suck declarations, words have power over your emotional state. If you been dealing with this for quite some time then its been tolerable. Seems silly but happy thoughts really work.

And don't feel bad for posting too much, thats what the forum is all about whether is for improvement or a small set back on achieving calmness posting is the main reason of the forum.

Happy xmas!

Tom

[gatsby12]

Hey,

As the good Terry once told me, try not to make suck declarations, words have power over your emotional state. If you been dealing with this for quite some time then its been tolerable. Seems silly but happy thoughts really work.

And don't feel bad for posting too much, thats what the forum is all about whether is for improvement or a small set back on achieving calmness posting is the main reason of the forum.

Happy xmas!

Tom

You too, Tom.

[TomT]

Sharkster buddy I found something as a Xmas present for us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHCHEykUxP4

check it out is about coincidences