So, last night on these boards I was chatting with a fellow about anxiety, mostly GAD. We were just BSing about symptoms and coping mechanisms, but I sort feel like I 'figured' it all out...well, to a degree.

We were talking about how self reflection often times can prompt a panic, fear or negativity. This could be thinking about our breathing, a feeling we had in our arm/chest, basically anything. It seems that us, with anxiety, and especially those who lean towards health anxiety, can spark up a minor panic just by self reflecting/analyzing.

For example, lately for me, I will focus attention during my higher anxiety moments to my breathing and sometimes this can lead me to almost convincing myself I am having a hard time 'getting enough air.' Even just writing these words gets me a little bit on edge. Or if that is not bothering at the moment, I might think about the brain fog and think my brain might explode; silly stuff like that.

Some counselors might say, "well you need to stop thinking about that stuff." Personally, I am not sure that is actually the best method. I use to think about my breathing when I was anxiety free. It didn't get me into a panic, it didn't scare me. The problem is, when I think about <something here> with anxiety, I think about all the negative possibilities associated with it. I used to get brain fog when I was anxiety free, it didn't throw me into a loop of the possibilities of brain decay, I thought "maybe I am hungry or was out too long in the sun." It didn't freak me out or send me into a panic.

When I am highly anxious, which seems to be a daily occurrence for me at this point (mornings in particular), anything I think on can get me panicky or most of the time, stressed. But the 'funny' thing is, most of the stuff I think on, or get stressed about now, I have thought in the past and it never stressed me out to a degree. When I was anxiety free when I'd sometimes become conscious of my breathing, I didn't think I had a collapsed lung, but I still thought about, especially when working out.

My point is (and perhaps I am rambling at this time), for whatever reason, when self reflecting/analyzing, with anxiety we have a tendency to go directly to negative possibilities, or fear the worst. I am sure this is common knowledge but to me, it was sort of a break through, just putting the pieces together.

The trick to curing yourself from the feedback loop of negative thoughts is to somehow remove the negativity. How come when I misplace my keys with anxiety, I think I am losing my mind but when I did anxiety free I would laugh about? Because I have been setting a pattern of negative thinking which needs to break.

Now the big question is, how does one fix that?

Perhaps the anxiety causes a deficiency of chemicals in the brain that are there to promote positive mood. With positive mood comes positive thinking. In this case maybe one needs something to boost those chemicals, whether that is meds, vitamins, herbals, etc...

Maybe we have just become accustomed to this negative thought process and we need to break it. This case might call for CBT and therapy.

Or maybe we need to face these negative thought and not let them scare us any more. This could be done via meditation/hypnotherapy or a hardcore session of looking in the mirror and saying, "bring it on."


I don't know, I'm just thinking aloud maybe...any thoughts?