Fears of developing other disorders?

[glacierman]

Hello,

I've had anxiety for a while but not an amount that bothered me. It was about 2 years ago, or so, when It started to really irratate me. I would start to have it in certain situations, like when I know that something had to be done at a point in my day. I think that the anxiety defenatly increased from that time though. From that point I beleive it has gotten worse.

The Main Problem:
I have such a fear of developing other anxiety disorders or disorders in general like, Social Anxiety, Schizophrenia, etc. I think this is due to a mild case of OCD. For example, I researched Schizophrenia and read that a common symptom is hallucinations/voices in your head, I will then begin to fear of hearing things in my head. Another thing I fear is social anxiety. I will think about social anxiety by myself and come up with bad scenarios, or even while im talking to someone. However, half the time I'm talking to someone I feel fine and find myself in a good conversation. Other times I overthink too much and do feel anxious in a conversation. The only good thing is, im 3 weeks into school and I tend not to have to much anxiety there for some odd reason. However, I feel that I will eventually.

The fear of developing other disorders is killing me though. Sometimes I think to much and get stressed out that I cause symptoms like anxiety, brain fog (unable to think straight and proccess things fast enough).
I've learned about cognitive behavioural therapy, does this help at all?


Additional Info:
20 Year old male
College student
No serious disorders in the family (besides depression, and mild anxiety)

[gypsylee]

Hello,

I've had anxiety for a while but not an amount that bothered me. It was about 2 years ago, or so, when It started to really irratate me. I would start to have it in certain situations, like when I know that something had to be done at a point in my day. I think that the anxiety defenatly increased from that time though. From that point I beleive it has gotten worse.

The Main Problem:
I have such a fear of developing other anxiety disorders or disorders in general like, Social Anxiety, Schizophrenia, etc. I think this is due to a mild case of OCD. For example, I researched Schizophrenia and read that a common symptom is hallucinations/voices in your head, I will then begin to fear of hearing things in my head. Another thing I fear is social anxiety. I will think about social anxiety by myself and come up with bad scenarios, or even while im talking to someone. However, half the time I'm talking to someone I feel fine and find myself in a good conversation. Other times I overthink too much and do feel anxious in a conversation. The only good thing is, im 3 weeks into school and I tend not to have to much anxiety there for some odd reason. However, I feel that I will eventually.

The fear of developing other disorders is killing me though. Sometimes I think to much and get stressed out that I cause symptoms like anxiety, brain fog (unable to think straight and proccess things fast enough).
I've learned about cognitive behavioural therapy, does this help at all?

Additional Info:
20 Year old male
College student
No serious disorders in the family (besides depression, and mild anxiety)

Hello :)

Firstly, Schizophrenia is a common fear of anxious people. It's a completely different thing though and anxiety itself doesn't lead to Schizophrenia. Trust me, I've been through some situations where if anxiety turned into psychosis, I would've got it by now.

Social anxiety, however, is easy to develop. Your problem is you sit there and think about bad scenarios like you say. It's very easy to do (I do it all the time) but the key is realising there's no point doing that. It's like a bad habit and when you catch yourself doing it, try and think "this is a waste of my time". That goes for most of the thinking we do.

CBT is very good for this kind of thing. Also learning about mindfulness and how to live more in the present moment. Anxious people mostly live in the future, always thinking about worst case scenarios which hardly ever happen!

It sounds like you have a pretty good understanding of what's going on in your head, so keep learning and you'll work out ways to manage it.

All the best :)
Gypsy

[glacierman]

thanks for getting back to me so fast :) And im glad to hear the part about schizophrenia not being related. But yes I do find the more I overthink things the worse it is. I began reading a book about CBT so im going to stick with it for a little. Thank you

[gypsylee]

You're welcome :)

Yeah keep reading about CBT. We all have negative thinking patterns that are removed from reality. The more you learn about them the more you can work on changing them.