FEAR

Please can somebody help :-) !!!

Im really really scared all off the time off really really bad things happening to me or my family.

I know this is wrong but sometimes I read these forums and think "if only my only fear was speaking in public etc" I know this is wrong because everyones fear is important...

Im petrified of really really bad things happening. Im absolutely constantly scared im going to be wrongly convicted of a crime I didnt commit. It will be on the TV and in the newspaper. The nation will detest me. I constantly think about it. I think about how cirumstancial evidence will be used to convict me. So i think about everything I do everyday......will it help me in court? Willl it be used against me? I torment myself with "what if's"...my what if's end with with so much violence, fear, shame on me and my family and friends, I keep thinking - Maybe I should think about changing my career to one where its ok to have a criminal record? The what if's" constantly rotate in my head...are my family going to be attacked? will i lose everything? will i be homeless? will anyone ever listen to me? how lonely will I be? will i have food and shelter?

I feel excluded and different from everyone else ( and even though im popular and have lots of friends)...i feel seperate. and everything feels just a bit weird.

Most of my fears are so dark I cant share them with anyone. I have to keep them secret. I find it very difficult to work out if my fears are rational or irrational.

Im driving myself nuts at the moment and would really appriciate some words or advice

p.s. as far as I know I am not a criminal, I have a really respectable professional job, and Im a nice person!

I get so scared about the future i often think that it might be best if i somehow end it before the bad things start happening......that will protect everyone - my friends and family.

I havent actually done anything wrong and I know im a nice kind caring person. I just worry so much about horrible things that could happen..

Any advice?

I cant live with anxiety anymore. And I cant share it. And I just dont know what to do with it. Why cant I just be normal? Its so much stress. I started having obsessive intrusive thoughts when I was 15. Im 31 now....it's kind of ruining my life :-)

[Topcat]

It is quite common to have dark thoughts all the time especially about loved ones for fear of something happening to them.

It is just thoughts and you need to learn how to control them, have you spoken to a doctor about this as talking it over with a therapist would be helpful, they can help you to control those thoughts and turn them around, for instance if I ever think something bad will happen I quickly push the thought away now and replace it with a nice thought.

[northstar]

hi there, sounds like things are very hard for you at the moment :(

your fears are not uncommon with anxiety, i have had them myself and lots of others here come about the same issue. it's very upsetting when you feel like you can't control all these worries and get into circles of fear in your head, it' crippling & i'm sorry that you've suffered for so long.

i think though that you already know if you want to get better that you're going to have to do something about it, and that means sharing the problem. you're going to have to reach out for the help you need, you've lived this long with the problem and it's only gotten worse so don't you think it's time you were kind enough to yourself to get the help you need :)

the people here on this forum can give you advice, but they can't solve your problems for you i'm afraid. but there are LOTS of things that you can do yourself if you are willing :) i know from experience that it is very freeing when you finally reach out for that help and it's honestly the best thing that you will ever do for yourself!

for the kind of irrational fears that you are describing it can be incredibly beneficial to go see a therapist. i went to a psychotherapist for over a year, and i also went for a couple of sessions of neurolinguistic pogramming and both of them helped enormously! cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is the reccommended therapy for problems of your kind, you will find plenty of posts about it here from other members who are trying it out. your doctor should be able to refer you to a good qualified therapist if you talk to them. it takes courage, but you'll never look back :)

there is also another post that you can take a look at here: http://www.anxietyforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4087 it details all the things i used to help me get through my own anxiety problems, things that you can use in your own life if you choose :)

so basically i don't want to waffle on too much, i just wanted to express to you that if you keep hiding your problems & hiding from them that they're really not going to get better. if you want to feel good again you've got to be proactive about it, be kind to yourself and take the action you need, it's totally worth it & it will help you take your sense of strength and power back into your own hands. i really hope you find some success and begin to feel better soon :)

[joey9]

Hi Speckledove,

It sounds like one of the roots of your anxiety is a fear of shame. Not only is this feeding your anxious thoughts but its also stopping you from talking about them. It can be related to perfectionism - an intense need to be seen to be perfect, resulting in anxiety and depression when you 'fall from grace' or behave less than perfectly/make mistakes. Its a common theme in anxiety sufferers and there are CBT exercises you can do to lessen the fear. But also bear in mind that when we are physically under stress this can cause anxiety and your anxiety will pick on whatever you are susceptible to. So if your fear is being shamed, you might be able to live perfectly comfortably with this most of the time but in times of stress, your brain will go into hyperdrive and seize on this, giving you increasingly intrusive thoughts that you can't get rid of. So you need a multiple approach. Lessen the stress in your life wherever you can - look after yourself, take time out to relax, eat and sleep properly, take exercise, take supplements - B vitamins are good and 5-HTP works a treat. And whilst you try to get your body to calm down which will then help your brain to calm down, work on your fears so that they can't affect you as much when stress does come calling.

You might find that some of your fears aren't as awful as you think. If you don't like talking about them maybe you could try some kind of online therapy where you are more anonymous. I'm sure everything you fear is unlikely to ever happen, but I find the best way to deal with these 'what ifs' is to go beyond debating the feasibility of them ever happening over and over in your head, and start to tackle how you would cope if something like that did happen. People do get wrongly accused of stuff, and whilst it must be a pretty terrible thing to go through, people who love you would support you and you would get through it. Bad things do happen in life but people are resilient and they come out the other side and I'm sure you would too.

[Evilbob333]

Hi Speckledove

It sounds to me, and i am in no way qualified to make this assertion, like you have a touch of OCD...which, don't worry...is just another anxiety disorder (i just made myself laugh..."don't worry...its just anxiety" - thats a nonsense sentence if i ever read one!).

I have been diagnosed with having OCD and have very similar thoughts to this...what if i lose control and kill/harm someone, what if i committed the crime i read about in the paper, and more...probably just as dark and worrysome as yours. So you are not alone, and you certainly aren't a bad person for thinking this.

I am not fully recovered (in fact i'm having a shitter of a week!!!) but i am so so so so much improved on where i was 6 months ago, and i know that each and everyday i will continue to improve because i now have the tools and knowledge that i didnt have before. CBT has been and absolute godsend for me, and i'm pretty sure that i still have a lot to learn from it. Looking after my diet and sleeping well has helped, as has getting back to work and daily challenging myself to do anything that scares me.

[Robbed]

It sounds to me, and i am in no way qualified to make this assertion, like you have a touch of OCD...which, don't worry...is just another anxiety disorder (i just made myself laugh..."don't worry...its just anxiety" - thats a nonsense sentence if i ever read one!).

I have been diagnosed with having OCD and have very similar thoughts to this...what if i lose control and kill/harm someone, what if i committed the crime i read about in the paper, and more...probably just as dark and worrysome as yours. So you are not alone, and you certainly aren't a bad person for thinking this.

I don't know that OCD would be the proper way to put it. It sounds alot more like the common obsessive thoughts that most people with anxiety disorder have. To me at least, having primary OCD would mean a problem like having to check that you turned off the stove five times before leaving home or feeling like your life can't go on until you find that 'special' feather duster that you lost last week. But then again, much of this absurdity about naming stuff is due to the fact that mental conditions like GAD and OCD are defined based on symptoms rather than pathology. So a psychiatrist looks at the mere presence of obsessive thoughts (which almost everyone with anxiety disorder has) as having a separate 'illness'.

[Evilbob333]

Its a common misconception about OCD that it means you have to double check everything, etc... Its an anxiety disorder like any other, primarily signified by intrusive thoughts and can be accompanied by a series of behaviours repeated in order to try and stop the anxiety caused by these thoughts. The behaviours can be physical or mental rituals. However i do concede that this is a total case of labelling the same thing differently, and that probably all anxiety disorders are essentially the same thing with a different label.