Upset over imagined events

[Anonymous]

Ever since I was a young girl, randomly I will think of certain disturbing/depressing scenarios (i.e. What if something happened to my father, my mother, my brother, etc). I will get sucked into this idea of tragically losing someone close to me and have vivid thoughts and feelings about how devastated I'd be if this happened. Now that I'm married and having kids I feel it so intensely. I am always alone when this happens and I will get very upset and cry and get really soaked up in the imagined misery. I know logically that it's not happening but somehow I allow myself to get caught up in the emotiona for a good half hour until I snap out of it. It doesn't interfere with my life and I have never mentioned it to anyone but I have always wondered, is this normal? Does anyone else get like this sometimes?

[Anonymous]

Yes.

I call it my heart cleansing moments.

[Anonymous]

Everyone has thoughts like this.

I think not everyone gets "sucked in" and cries about those thoughts, though. Maybe you need better things to focus on when you feel yourself starting to go down that path? A hobby, a side business, something to turn your attention to?

[Anonymous]

Mindfulness exercises would help you stop this cascade of anxiety.

[Anonymous]

Yup. It's miserable. I chuck it up to anxiety. Not sure how normal anxiety is. It is wide-spread though. People take meds and do therapy; neither has helped me.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I have definitely had this experience. Some of us are just more prone to anxiety than others. Add in some lost sleep, too much caffeine, or other stress and it can accelerate out of control. And because our kids are our hearts living unprotected outside of our bodies, thoughts of harm to them is unbelievably painful.

You CAN control your thoughts ... when you start "heading down one of those roads? ... you need to STOP and carefully, explicitly replace the idea with a better and more accurate one.

I used to have a really bad dream about my child drowning at the neighborhood pool every spring a few weeks before the pool opened. When I woke up from it, I would sort of continue the horrific scenario. I learned to view that annual dream as a reminder of the care and attention needed at the pool, but I also would sort of quietly repeat a mantra to push the thought out of my mind. "My kids are healthy and happily sleeping in the next room." Repeat over and over and over until a new and better thought naturally comes into my mind. Like what on earth is there for breakfast today????

[Anonymous]

YES. It's a great description, especially the sucked in part, where you imagine the whole thing playing out in your head. How you would feel, then what would happen, etc. I always figure it's my mind practicing or preparing for traumatic events.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I have definitely had this experience. Some of us are just more prone to anxiety than others. Add in some lost sleep, too much caffeine, or other stress and it can accelerate out of control. And because our kids are our hearts living unprotected outside of our bodies, thoughts of harm to them is unbelievably painful.

You CAN control your thoughts ... when you start "heading down one of those roads? ... you need to STOP and carefully, explicitly replace the idea with a better and more accurate one.

I used to have a really bad dream about my child drowning at the neighborhood pool every spring a few weeks before the pool opened. When I woke up from it, I would sort of continue the horrific scenario. I learned to view that annual dream as a reminder of the care and attention needed at the pool, but I also would sort of quietly repeat a mantra to push the thought out of my mind. "My kids are healthy and happily sleeping in the next room." Repeat over and over and over until a new and better thought naturally comes into my mind. Like what on earth is there for breakfast today????

Excellent post. If you need support see a CBT therapist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mindfulness exercises would help you stop this cascade of anxiety.

Can you please elaborate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mindfulness exercises would help you stop this cascade of anxiety.

Can you please elaborate?

Not PP but this helped me immensely with the same sorts of anxiety. I used to imagine my child getting cancer then I'd start freaking out, convinced it's a premonition. Acckkk! Then a friend gave me The Power of Now. It changed my life. A quick little read. I still read it every year or so and it has greatly improved my life. It's also made me a much better mom than I was able to be before. You are not alone, and I hope you find something that can help you.

[Anonymous]

Mindfulness for me is recognizing and acknowledging the thought, then letting it pass as unhelpful. I often say to myself, "That's on the list of things that are unlikely to happen in my life." I'm a very anxious person but never to the point of needing meds, or so says my former therapist, so that's how I try to train my thinking away from the thoughts.

[Anonymous]

google "intrusive thoughts".

I had these for years before I finally read about them and learned that others have them too. I thought for sure I was going crazy. I would lay in bed for sometimes an hour replaying horrible scenes in my head (fictional scenes) and then start getting anxious and stressing out that maybe it'd really happen.

Anyway, now that I've learned more about them an anxiety I've learned to not freak out about it and just do my best to think about something else.

[Anonymous]

Mindfulness Practice will help. But it is a practice. It takes time to learn. If you can find a mindfulness meditation class, it would really help.

Mindfulness helps you to center yourself in the "now moment". You'll start by learning to focus on your breath. You focus on your breathing and on a simple mantra. Something like - "Breathing in I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out" and you build from there. When negative thoughts or feelings appear, you acknowledge them without any judgment. You simple allow them to enter and exit your mind without any effort to control them. You focus on your breathing. The only real moment is the present.

I have been training with a student who learned from Thich Nhat Hanh. We are attending another retreat with him this summer. It has changed my life. You can google Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) or Mindfulness Meditation and download apps to get you started. Here's just one example-

Affirming peace and wellness for you, OP.

http://www.lionsroar.com/mindful-living-thich-nhat-hanh-on-the-practice-of-mindfulness-march-2010/

[Anonymous]

I do this all the time. I worry about everything that could possibly happen. I wish I could stop.

[Anonymous]

I used to experience these intrusive thoughts about imagined events. I work late in the evenings and I used to always imagine that when I drove up to the house after work, an ambulance would be out front because of some horrible accident or illness that had occurred to the kids or DH while I was gone.

Years later I was diagnosed with mild anxiety and OCD and it is all related apparently. Things that have helped: mindfulness, deep breathing exercises, stress reduction, meditation and exercise.

You may also have an undiagnosed anxiety disorder.