Thoughts and advice please?

[Sarah1994]

Hi I was wondering if anybody could give me some thoughts to what this is

[gypsylee]

What what is? :)

[Ryker]

The OP may have fallen asleep mid-post and struck submit button with forehead. I do that all the time.

[Sarah1994]

Hey sorry, didn't mean that!

Basically I have social anxiety but when it gets bad instead of feeling anxious thinking about social situations I end up getting paranoid fears that I know aren't within the norm? It sounds crazy, but i've had anxiety for almost 5 years now and when it flares up I seem to worry about hauntings and evil presences etc? I don't know if it's some sort of weird coping method to distract myself from the real issue, but I've been too embarrassed in the past to bring it up to a councillor. I am sane btw lol but it's caused me to have panic attacks on and off for years.

[Ryker]

Hi - yes, that's perfectly normal.

You get anxiety, the message gets back to the old brain that you're scared stiff. There appears to be nothing around to be scared of so your brain, in a rather helpful! Way creates suggestions of things that you may like to be scared by.

Well done brain you tosser!

Brains do that sort of thing.

As animals we survive by pattern matching. When you see a flash of light in the foliage your ancestors could only stand a chance of survival if your brain produced images of potentially deadly predators so you can match that memory against the light pattern or movement that you're seeing.

The idea is that you should do the matching and say - "phew! It's not a saber-tooth tiger" and get on with your day.

What us anxiety-heads do is think - "nadgers! It's an invisible tiger," ..."it's a stealth tiger ," ..."it's a tiger in a tree disguise. " ..."It's a mutant killer tree...." And keep the worry-and-pattern-match game going.