Determined not to moan about the NHS (because I think its mint) I’ve held back on writing for a few weeks because I wasn’t finding the group CBT to be particularly helpful. However, last night was fantastic and I’m actually looking forward to giving the techniques a go. The trouble at the moment is that I am taking Sertraline to ease the anxiety so can’t really test them on my super anxious brain because its currently not very anxious at all. That being said when Dom called me into the kitchen to see one of our cats doing something cute yesterday my stomach dropped, convinced I was going to see a cat dead on the floor. So, with that in mind, I think today I’m going to share the overactive imagination part of my anxiety.
For ages, I’ve been too ashamed to share these thoughts because I believed I must have been conjuring them in my imagination myself. I thought it was a personality problem and couldn’t understand why I was such morbid dick obsessed with dead people. If I love you, I have seen you dead a fair few times. In my pre-medication days, a phone call from my dad prompted a speedy run-through of all family members lifeless bodies as I tried to figure out which one he was telling me had died. A few years ago when Dom would be home before me I’d cry in the car on the way home convinced he was dead in the house. If one of my cats didn’t come in for breakfast I would trawl every single Facebook group dedicated to lost and found pets looking for pictures of their lifeless bodies. On holiday this year, I had it in my head that all three had died and my mates who were house-sitting weren’t telling me because they didn’t want to ruin my holiday. I searched those Facebook pages a lot on holiday. I have seen more dead cats than I care to remember.
The CBT course has taught me that these thoughts are examples of my brain trying to protect me. I feel about as protected as an albino naked in the sun. These thoughts have plagued me for years and I love how infrequently I get them now. I will need to come off the medication eventually, and when I do I need to remember the tips from CBT so this final part is a note to myself, a reminder of what I have learnt and plan to do.
When you get a worry write it down. It has to be written down. Pushing it to the back of the queue means it will come round to the front again and next time it will be louder. Acknowledging it and writing it down for consideration later should allow you to move on from it in the short term. Have a ‘worry time’ scheduled in for each day. In this time go through the list and allow yourself to worry. The likely hood is that most will now be irrelevant and won’t take much time to process. For others, if they’re real things to worry about and not hypothetical, create a POA. Write down the worry, and every possible option available to you. Make a pros and cons list of all these options then decide on your course of action. Plan it, do it, then review it. Easy.
A big thank you to those who have reached out to me over the content in my blog. Apologies to my family who are mostly hearing this for the first time here. If you need support please visit your doctor and tell a loved one. Also, read Jog On by Bella Mackie.
Overthinking Anxiety 