weird thoughts, dunno if its anxiety or summit else

[sharp]

Hiya,
i suffer from anxiety and depression but have some thoughts going through my head which i dont know if they are down to my condition, and id like to share them to see if any1 else has them or if i have some other problem.

I over analyze people. instead of seeing the nice in people i always try and look for whats wrong with that person.

i always feel like i look fat and like a scrubber but darent buy new clothes incase people think im stuck up for having new clothes.

i dont know if there is an afterlife so incase there isnt i dont wanna enjoy life and have good memories for it to be completely wiped from me. id rather have bad memories then id have nothing to miss. I am also terrified of my mind being completely wiped of the momories of my kids, i really hope there is an afterlife.

I love my kids that much i am absolutely terrified and tortured with thoughts of something bad happening to them. I literally feel sick with the love i have for my kids. most parents would be picturing their childs future but i cant as i always picture what could go wrong.

I always live with the thoughts of "what if" and the thoughts of a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death. for instance my dad was killed on a mototrway and i always think if he pulled in for summit to eat or to make a phone call hed be here now so now i live myself around that. ie if im due to go out on the motorway but i need the toilet i mite think " well if i go to the toilet now and we have an accident, ill blame myself for going to the toilet first".(or ill think i could die through going to the toilet) or i feel like i should go to the toilet cos that could save my life if there is an accident which i managed to avoid thru going to the toilet. i know it sounds weird but i believe every scenario that happens in your life can mean life or death.

i tend to avoid alot of things in life that i believe could be bad. ie i wont go to a club in fear of being attacked, i wont drive out of my home town etc

i feel lke a morbid git with the thoughts i have so pls sum1 tell me if they are the same or if i have some other condition as i know i shouldnt be thinking like this

[wingman]

Hi sharp :)

Let me just reassure you that YES!!! your thoughts are to do with your anxiety and depression, the depression part of your illness makes your mind see things in a darker way. you know like we have that saying that some people see things with rose coloured glasses, meaning they see things good all the time, never seeing anything bad, depression has the opposite effect making us see everything bad, doubting the good in life, even to a point of making us ignore the good things in life so we can see the bad, its the way our minds work in depression, but it doesn't make it true you know, even if thats how you see it.
You say you feel fat and like a scrubber, but thats how you see yourself it doesnt make it true though. Depression as this way of making us prisoners in our own thoughts, not really seeing the real world as it really is. We think the world is bad when we are suffering this sort of illness but thats because we focus on the bad and ignore the good.
Take you wanting to buy new cloths, you know if you do it will probably cheer you up a bit, but your thoughts cant have that so your mind lies to you and tells you that if you do, people will think you are stuck up, when in reality people will look at you and think you look really nice. Depression has this horrible way of making us lie to ourselves to keep us trapped in the darkness and most of the time we dont even realise that our thoughts are doing it to us.

This thing of the afterlife is something i know about, now dont get me wrong here, im no expert, or bible bashers, my partner just happens to be a spiritual medium and runs a spiritual forum (no im not going to spam) and a lot of members are looking for reassurance for when they pass over, my opinion on this is that there does look like there is lots of evidence to support the afterlife, but i am what the spiritual people call very grounded, and i say to them, live your life on this earth plain, thats why you are here, to experience things to love and to laugh and all that stuff, why worry about something that we cant alter, life is for living. Because i too suffer from anxiety i worry about death, lets face it, anxiety makes you believe you are about to die everyday, but everyday you wake up to another day and on it goes. I see death like this, there are two options, we die and we go on to the afterlife with all the experiences we made on earth, we go home to a good place as all my spiritual friends say. OR, we die and its like sleeping, we dont know anything, we have no fear, no worries, no thoughts, nothing, we dont even know we are have passed away, so it seems to me that the worst thing about dying is the fear of it while we are alive, and of course when we suffer anxiety and depression, fear and worry is all we have, not just with dying but with everything we do in life, we have a fear of life itself.
The point to all that waffle though is this. No matter what we do or how all this ends up, we make memories, not only for ourselves but for others to remember us by when we are gone, so the way i see it, why not make good memories, even if we die into dust, we will live on in the memories of others that loved us, like our families and children.
Did you ever get therapy sharp, over the sudden death of your dad, because the way you feel is common when its a sudden tragic death like that, it can and does alter the way you see everything, and does fill you with "what If's" which is understandable, we fear for our kids anyway, but when something so sudden and tragic like the way your dad passed, it will make you feel more paranoid about their safety, about everything you do, and i really do suspect that you never came to terms with it, and so it has altered the way you see ordinary things, safe things, turning them into a life or death situation for you, and your children, when in fact most of the time what we do is safe and wont lead us to harm, but again our thoughts lie to us to keep us down and not living life like we should....

[sharp]

Thanks for your reply wingman, its awful, i get up everyday thinking of all the things that could go wrong with whatever it is im doing.
no i never had therapy when my dad died i actually thought i was dealing with it but now im not so sure.
I was speaking to my health visitor a few weeks ago and i explained to her that im a boring person that doesnt wanna do much and she hit the nail on the head by saying i dont wanna enjoy life or do anything fun in fear of having the rug pulled from under me.
when i was younger i used to think i was invincible at times, never thought anyhing would happen to me but when my dad died it made me realise how easily it can all be snatchd away so i live my life like this and avoid things i believe could be dangerous.
Also a few more things i do which bug me are:
1.I find it hard to let things go or just brush things off for instance if i read something that scares me it will stay on mind for weeks or months so now i avoid reading gossip magazines so the horrible stories dont get stuck in my head plus if its a story about an illness i can guarantee ill start getting the symptoms i read about, also 1 time my son was being bullied by an older kid, i told this kid off and to be quite honest i went mental and start really shouting at him which i know i shouldnt have done but he start being rude to me and the whole situation angered me for weeks.
2. I am very fussy. i could want something really badly but cant afford it for a few weeks. in a few weeks i get the money but i find every excuse to not buy this thing i really wanted. i can go to the town to go shopping and come home with nothing cos everything i like i find every excuse not to get it.
3.I am very undesisive and i expect every1 to make descisions for me. ill only buy something if someone else gives me the thumbs up. one time i went to buy a diary to write about my anxiety in. i was undecided between 2. it took me ages to decide which 1 to get and i was actually considering buying both and asking my partner which 1 i should use but i realised how daft that would be.
i dont know if these 3 have anything to do with my anxiety and depression so i thought id list them to see if any1 else is the same.

Thanks for the website i will take a look, i was saying to my partner that there is that many psychics that not all could possibly be lying could they? and if they are it is a sick joke.

[wingman]

The thing about anxiety and depression, it alters the way you think, your mind becomes a sponge for all the bad things in life, and a barrier against all the good things, its the way it works. Course when youve been doing this for a while, you get into a mind set of worry and indecisions which effects the rest of your life, even simple things like buying a dairy, you start to doubt your own decisions of what you like and try to leave it all up to other people. or if its something you know will make you feel better about yourself, little thought will creep into your head, that you dont actually know are there, designed to pull you down and make you feel worthless and not worthy somehow, so you end up not getting the things you really want.
Things also get us down more because we are already on the edge of all we think we can cope with, then if something new happens to worry us, like your son being bullied, we cant cope with the extra stress so we get more angry and frustrated because we wonder why life cant give us a break, not really seeing that life goes on, and it will from time to time throw problems our way, its just that we find it difficult to deal with it.
This thing with your dad, it probably is the route cause of how you are feeling now, and you cant blame yourself for it effecting you this way, its hard enough when we have warning, like with illness and they pass away slowly over time, we have the grace to prepare the best we can, but to be snatched away, and in such a tragic way too, it will effect you badly, anxiety or not, it makes you think of your mortality and how quickly it can be all taken away, and we forget about the many millions of people who live into a ripe old age, and not by sitting at home with locked doors, but living an ordinary life doing ordinary things and nothing bad happens, and nothing bad happens to most of us (unless of course we take up sky diving for a hobby) but most of us dont. this is why when something like what happened to your dad, it effects us so much, and this is why you probably need to talk to someone about it. I do think this could be your main trigger for the way you are feeling now. I think it would effect anybody much the same way.

[sharp]

Come to think of it since my dad died iv had them thoughts and fears but i thought it was just me being me and not that i had a problem.
Its been nearly 8 years so is it common for it to take that long to eventually spill out as i only had a panic attack 4 weeks ago which i cant understand why it has took 8 years for my depression and anxiety to fully surface. One thing iv noticed is my fears keep getting worse over the years.

[wingman]

Well all i can say is, think back to what you was like before that happened to your dad, i bet you saw life a different way, you will still have had fear and anxious thoughts like we all do as that is our survival instincts, but when you dont suffer from anxiety we are able to let the thoughts go and get on with our lives. Its only over time when the thoughts build and build until it sets us off down the depression and anxiety illness road that we notice we have a problem. So yes it could take years to fully come out as things build up, then you are not able to shake the feelings off and so they build up some more, then of course life changes, we have children which then not only makes us worry about ourselves, but about them too.
Ive suffered from anxiety for 20 years and so i know the ins and outs of how all this stuff works, but the thing with depression and anxiety, its one of those things that knowledge is not power over it, so it doesn't stop the worry, mainly i think because over time your brain chemistry alters, a bit like a car mis firing, and this is why they put us on meds to get the chemistry right again so we can think a bit more clearer, but unless we actively seek help to find out what the problems are, the worry and the fear continue and slowly gets worse. This is i think mainly because until we find the heart of the matter, we are constantly itching at a sore we cant see, and i do think that the heart of the matter is your dads tragic death and hows its left you feeling vulnerable in your own life

Dont worry about this though, it doesn't matter how bad you feel now, there is always light at the end of the tunnel with the right help and support that deals with the grief you are still carrying around with you. Im sure you have dealt with your dad passing over, but it seems you haven't dealt with the way he passed and how its left this fear in you of how dangerous life feels to you now.

Its hard for you to see i know, but life is the same as before you got ill, when you felt happy and confident and didn't feel like this. Whats changed is the way you see life, and not life itself. Its like i always say, " we build our own worlds in our heads and if we build a bad world in our head then the world will seem bad, but we can build a good world in our heads too" sometimes though we just need a little help...

[sharp]

Thanks for your replies wingman, iv always been a bit miserable well more shy but the time when i was most happiest is before i lost my dad. my partner actually says i live in the past cos i talk about it alot but thats just cos thats when i was happiest. I know i need to move forward cos im never gona get the past back plus iv got 2 beautiful children that are my world and a very supportive boyfriend, i actually feel guilty for feeling like this because i feel like i should be one of the happiest people in the world as i have what a lot of people would love to have. Its weird i love what i have i wouldnt change my kids for the world but im also unhappy which makes me feel like im being ungrateful for what i have when im not.
Also are them websites on the bottom of your messages your partners sites as i wouldnt mind giving them a look.

[wingman]

Thats the real cruelty of anxiety and depression though, it makes it seem like we arent really happy with our lives, when in fact it has nothing to do with the life we have now, but something that made us scared in the past, that triggered something in us. Some people are able to get over those times, but some people need a little bit more help.

Yes those two websites in my siggy are both mine and my partners, the unity place is a more a fun place like facebook, the spiritcharms is my partners spiritual and life chat site... (just girls together talking about girl things mixed in with spiritual stuff for those who want it) your more than welcome to join if you wish. :)