3 signs that it is beginning again

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are a number of ways that anxiety distorts your thought patterns, with the effect of increasing anxiety and making it harder for you to make decisions, enjoy things you'd normally enjoy, and just generally function. Here are a few:

Catastrophizing is when someone assumes that the worst will happen. Often, it involves believing that you’re in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating the difficulties you face.

Jumping to conclusions can involve both believing that you know what others are thinking (mind reading) and predicting the future (fortune-telling or predictive thinking).

Overgeneralization means believing that the results of one situation predict the results of all future situations. If your thoughts often involve the words "all," "never," "always," and "every" you might be overgeneralizing.

Mental filtering means only seeing the negative parts of situations, and filtering out positive or neutral information.

Black and white thinking means seeing everything in extremes; there is no room for the middle ground and you see everything as all or none. Whatever the issue, there are no shades of gray when you are thinking this way. People are right or wrong and situations are good or bad.

If you recognize your thinking in any of this, especially around Covid, I would highly recommend talking to a medical professional about anxiety. I would also recommend maybe getting a workbook on CBT for anxiety, which will help you recognize when your thinking is being distorted by your anxiety and learn how to make adjustments so that instead of feeding anxiety, you can evaluate situations and make productive choices. Here is one: https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Workbook-Anxiety-Step/dp/1626250154

Or OP is just noting changes that are actually real and may be indicator of more restrictions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a number of ways that anxiety distorts your thought patterns, with the effect of increasing anxiety and making it harder for you to make decisions, enjoy things you'd normally enjoy, and just generally function. Here are a few:

Catastrophizing is when someone assumes that the worst will happen. Often, it involves believing that you’re in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating the difficulties you face.

Jumping to conclusions can involve both believing that you know what others are thinking (mind reading) and predicting the future (fortune-telling or predictive thinking).

Overgeneralization means believing that the results of one situation predict the results of all future situations. If your thoughts often involve the words "all," "never," "always," and "every" you might be overgeneralizing.

Mental filtering means only seeing the negative parts of situations, and filtering out positive or neutral information.

Black and white thinking means seeing everything in extremes; there is no room for the middle ground and you see everything as all or none. Whatever the issue, there are no shades of gray when you are thinking this way. People are right or wrong and situations are good or bad.

If you recognize your thinking in any of this, especially around Covid, I would highly recommend talking to a medical professional about anxiety. I would also recommend maybe getting a workbook on CBT for anxiety, which will help you recognize when your thinking is being distorted by your anxiety and learn how to make adjustments so that instead of feeding anxiety, you can evaluate situations and make productive choices. Here is one: https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Workbook-Anxiety-Step/dp/1626250154

Cool. Covid numbers are still going up at an alarming rate. Even if the person saying so doesn’t exhibit any of the foregoing signs of anxiety. That’s the thing about numbers - they aren’t susceptible to right wing crazies on the internet calling them chicken little.

Posting ominous threads on DCUM about how "it" is happening "again" is absolutely anxious behavior. What is happening? The pandemic? That's not happening again, it's ongoing. There are ups and downs. We are moving into a downturn, which sucks. But "it" is not "happening" "again". That's a cognitive distortion that maximizes the scary things the OP wants to focus on while ignoring all the other context that makes August 2021 very, very different from March 2020. I'm not a Pollyanna but I've been living with an anxiety disorder for 20 years and have learned that you have to train your brain to handle bad news and stress. Giving yourself over to it does not actually help you make difficult decisions or weather challenging times. The opposite.

I'm not op but the pp with debilitating anxiety. Can you share any suggestions for how you were able to train your brain to handle bad news and stress? I could use all the help I can get!

Thank you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a number of ways that anxiety distorts your thought patterns, with the effect of increasing anxiety and making it harder for you to make decisions, enjoy things you'd normally enjoy, and just generally function. Here are a few:

Catastrophizing is when someone assumes that the worst will happen. Often, it involves believing that you’re in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating the difficulties you face.

Jumping to conclusions can involve both believing that you know what others are thinking (mind reading) and predicting the future (fortune-telling or predictive thinking).

Overgeneralization means believing that the results of one situation predict the results of all future situations. If your thoughts often involve the words "all," "never," "always," and "every" you might be overgeneralizing.

Mental filtering means only seeing the negative parts of situations, and filtering out positive or neutral information.

Black and white thinking means seeing everything in extremes; there is no room for the middle ground and you see everything as all or none. Whatever the issue, there are no shades of gray when you are thinking this way. People are right or wrong and situations are good or bad.

If you recognize your thinking in any of this, especially around Covid, I would highly recommend talking to a medical professional about anxiety. I would also recommend maybe getting a workbook on CBT for anxiety, which will help you recognize when your thinking is being distorted by your anxiety and learn how to make adjustments so that instead of feeding anxiety, you can evaluate situations and make productive choices. Here is one: https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Workbook-Anxiety-Step/dp/1626250154

Or OP is just noting changes that are actually real and may be indicator of more restrictions.

Please explain how the fact that she had trouble getting an instacart slot is indicative of anything. How about these facts: There are no shortages of food/TP/whatever, there are no capacity restrictions anywhere, no one is panic buying (other than this woman apparently)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing is “happening again”. Fear based posts like this do nothing but contribute to the anxiety people may already be feeling. Just stop.

Please. This damn fear mongering is out of control.

[Anonymous]

I guess all of those jumping on OP like to deny reality? It’s just a fact that many places are reinstating mask mandates and adding back restrictions they had lifted, especially at a federal government level. It’s also a fact that cases & deaths are rising again, and that there are some supply chain issues/shortages already.

[Anonymous]

Or.... perhaps it was Sunday? And everyone was doing things last minute and the nursing home was short-staffed?

[Anonymous]

Sounds to me like you are disorganized as hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess all of those jumping on OP like to deny reality? It’s just a fact that many places are reinstating mask mandates and adding back restrictions they had lifted, especially at a federal government level. It’s also a fact that cases & deaths are rising again, and that there are some supply chain issues/shortages already.

Chicken Little.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess all of those jumping on OP like to deny reality? It’s just a fact that many places are reinstating mask mandates and adding back restrictions they had lifted, especially at a federal government level. It’s also a fact that cases & deaths are rising again, and that there are some supply chain issues/shortages already.

Yes you have to wear a mask again. That’s pretty much it. Everything is open and without capacity restrictions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess all of those jumping on OP like to deny reality? It’s just a fact that many places are reinstating mask mandates and adding back restrictions they had lifted, especially at a federal government level. It’s also a fact that cases & deaths are rising again, and that there are some supply chain issues/shortages already.

Chicken Little.

You obviously aren’t very educated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess all of those jumping on OP like to deny reality? It’s just a fact that many places are reinstating mask mandates and adding back restrictions they had lifted, especially at a federal government level. It’s also a fact that cases & deaths are rising again, and that there are some supply chain issues/shortages already.

Chicken Little.

You obviously aren’t very educated.

You obviously just want to continue fearmongering like its March 2020. Why aren’t you vaccinated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a number of ways that anxiety distorts your thought patterns, with the effect of increasing anxiety and making it harder for you to make decisions, enjoy things you'd normally enjoy, and just generally function. Here are a few:

Catastrophizing is when someone assumes that the worst will happen. Often, it involves believing that you’re in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating the difficulties you face.

Jumping to conclusions can involve both believing that you know what others are thinking (mind reading) and predicting the future (fortune-telling or predictive thinking).

Overgeneralization means believing that the results of one situation predict the results of all future situations. If your thoughts often involve the words "all," "never," "always," and "every" you might be overgeneralizing.

Mental filtering means only seeing the negative parts of situations, and filtering out positive or neutral information.

Black and white thinking means seeing everything in extremes; there is no room for the middle ground and you see everything as all or none. Whatever the issue, there are no shades of gray when you are thinking this way. People are right or wrong and situations are good or bad.

If you recognize your thinking in any of this, especially around Covid, I would highly recommend talking to a medical professional about anxiety. I would also recommend maybe getting a workbook on CBT for anxiety, which will help you recognize when your thinking is being distorted by your anxiety and learn how to make adjustments so that instead of feeding anxiety, you can evaluate situations and make productive choices. Here is one: https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Workbook-Anxiety-Step/dp/1626250154

Cool. Covid numbers are still going up at an alarming rate. Even if the person saying so doesn’t exhibit any of the foregoing signs of anxiety. That’s the thing about numbers - they aren’t susceptible to right wing crazies on the internet calling them chicken little.

Posting ominous threads on DCUM about how "it" is happening "again" is absolutely anxious behavior. What is happening? The pandemic? That's not happening again, it's ongoing. There are ups and downs. We are moving into a downturn, which sucks. But "it" is not "happening" "again". That's a cognitive distortion that maximizes the scary things the OP wants to focus on while ignoring all the other context that makes August 2021 very, very different from March 2020. I'm not a Pollyanna but I've been living with an anxiety disorder for 20 years and have learned that you have to train your brain to handle bad news and stress. Giving yourself over to it does not actually help you make difficult decisions or weather challenging times. The opposite.

I'm not op but the pp with debilitating anxiety. Can you share any suggestions for how you were able to train your brain to handle bad news and stress? I could use all the help I can get!

Thank you

PP here and I hear you! I have been there and still struggle -- I had a whole freak out this weekend about school and Delta and I still live it every day. I know people think I'm being sarcastic with this response, but I'm not -- I know what anxiety looks like and I see it everywhere right now, I think everyone needs help with it, myself included.

Anyway, getting a CBT workbook like the one I linked above was really vital to me. I still pull mine up on my kindle sometimes and read through it because it's just really helpful. The big thing with anxiety is learning to detach from your anxious thinking by observing it and recognizing that it IS anxious thinking, which will by itself help reduce your anxiety some. So I've found it super helpful to be able to name what I'm doing -- "Ok, I'm catastrphizing, or making a mountain out of a mole hill, that's a cognitive distortion caused by anxiety." The workbooks often have worksheets or exercises you can do for each of these though patterns to help break them, and those are still useful at times. They force you to write down your distorted thinking, identify how it distorts reality, and then identify information or context that helps to put your thoughts in proper context.

So an example would be, when OP thinks "Oh no, I couldn't get an Instacart appointment today, people must be hoarding again, it's 2020 all over again" I would step back and notice that's a very big conclusion to draw from a relatively minor event. Then I might make say to myself "Ok, this is one data point, let's see what Instacart is like over the course of next week and reassess." Or I might say "Ok, I accept that people might be hoarding again, what are some rational steps I can take to make that less stressful for myself." And move from there. The point is to separate yourself from your anxious thinking, and create some space for more information that might lessen the stress, or to create a plan for addressing the source of the anxiety.

I want to point out that it's not wrong to be anxious, right now or ever. It's just that this kind of anxious thinking isn't helpful. It doesn't get you where you want to go. I'm not saying "No, everything is fine, ignore signs that we are about to go through a Covid surge." I'm saying "Ok, here are some data points, let's look at more of them and take a step back and assess what steps we might need to take. But let's not jump to conclusions or have a collective freak out just because there's a voice in our brain screaming at us to do that. That voice is not our pal."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1) I had to wait 5 hours to get Instacart slot.

2) DS could not get an urgent care appointment before 8:50 today. We are just going to pediatrician tomorrow.

3) Nursing home would not accept hand-delivered care package for my relative.

Thank you for these facts from the ground, OP. They are much more valuable than the innumerable data sources on Covid prevalence.

You mean data sources like this?

Virginia is mirroring the surge that Florida is already seeing. But keep that head in the sand.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/virginia-covid-cases.html


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/florida-covid-cases.html

NO, You are intentionally being misleading.

Those two graphs are on different scales.
The Virginia graph you posted shows cases less than 2k per day.
The Florida graph shows over 25k cases per day
That is NOT called mirroring.
And in addition, you only posted deaths from Florida. The death rate in Virginia has remained flat.
Click on the link to see for yourselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/virginia-covid-cases.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a number of ways that anxiety distorts your thought patterns, with the effect of increasing anxiety and making it harder for you to make decisions, enjoy things you'd normally enjoy, and just generally function. Here are a few:

Catastrophizing is when someone assumes that the worst will happen. Often, it involves believing that you’re in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating the difficulties you face.

Jumping to conclusions can involve both believing that you know what others are thinking (mind reading) and predicting the future (fortune-telling or predictive thinking).

Overgeneralization means believing that the results of one situation predict the results of all future situations. If your thoughts often involve the words "all," "never," "always," and "every" you might be overgeneralizing.

Mental filtering means only seeing the negative parts of situations, and filtering out positive or neutral information.

Black and white thinking means seeing everything in extremes; there is no room for the middle ground and you see everything as all or none. Whatever the issue, there are no shades of gray when you are thinking this way. People are right or wrong and situations are good or bad.

If you recognize your thinking in any of this, especially around Covid, I would highly recommend talking to a medical professional about anxiety. I would also recommend maybe getting a workbook on CBT for anxiety, which will help you recognize when your thinking is being distorted by your anxiety and learn how to make adjustments so that instead of feeding anxiety, you can evaluate situations and make productive choices. Here is one: https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Workbook-Anxiety-Step/dp/1626250154

Or OP is just noting changes that are actually real and may be indicator of more restrictions.

Please explain how the fact that she had trouble getting an instacart slot is indicative of anything. How about these facts: There are no shortages of food/TP/whatever, there are no capacity restrictions anywhere, no one is panic buying (other than this woman apparently)

No snark but I think getting an Instacart slot was difficult due to people shopping in preparation for Hurricane Henri. We always shop in person but we got an Amazon Fresh slot due to the hurricane possibly hitting our area (NYC).

[Anonymous]

Masks in my building again regardless of vaccination status.
Two close relatives have breakthrough cases from situations they were masked but others weren’t. Mild illness is pretty much really sick but not hospitalized on oxygen.