Anxiety & Intrusive Thoughts

[Blondie517]

New to the forum :) Looking for help with intrusive thinking. I was diagnosed with GAD about 6 years back (although struggled with it a lot longer).. It has always centered around my health - Cancer, health problems, etc etc. Recently, my anxiety has taken on the form of intrusive thoughts. Upon doing some research, I would even say I have some Pure O tendencies because my thoughts do become pretty obsessive. These intrusive thoughts have become so distressing that I have recently gotten back into therapy after a long run of not needing it and having little anxiety. I thought for sure when I finally got these thoughts out in the open my therapist would have me put away, lol, but she hardly seemed phased by them at all! Chalked them up to anxiety and we are going to work on CBT. My problem is the constant doubt/what if questioning that has come along with these intrusive thoughts.

What if my therapist is wrong? What if she doesn't understand? What if I am a danger to myself and she just doesn't see it? What if she has never dealt with someone like me before?

For the record, I completely trust my therapist's opinion as she has greatly helped me in the past, but I can't help but doubt these things. I have never, ever had any issues with depression or harmful thoughts in the past and my therapist has reassured me I am not depressed or suicidal (I can barely type the *s* word without feeling anxious). I have always looked at my anxiety as a blessing in disguise, I am so fearful of death that I appreciate all life has to offer. So what is with these damn thoughts?! My fears went from ovarian cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, etc to mental health problems such as becoming depressed/suicidal, going crazy, losing control, etc. I'll gladly take back the health anxiety related to more physical issues, this is just torture!

Please tell me I am not alone ;)

[jessed03]

Hey Blondie,

My dad's a big fan of your music.

Pure O was the next step my anxiety took. Like you, I remember thinking, "Gosh, can't I have the health worries back?" OCD is one exhausting condition, huh?

Ultimately, the only way you can beat it is by not playing the "what if" game. You can't win that game. It's rigged against you, my friend. The more you try to rationalize or ruminate on illogical ideas, the tighter the OCD noose around your neck becomes. I've met so many people with this condition, mild and severe; none have ever said to me, "Yeah, dude, I simply ruminated on those 'what if' questions a little harder and cured my problem!"

OCD needs a compulsive element to exist (it wouldn't be called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder otherwise!) Take away that compulsive element and the house of cards comes falling down. In our case, our compulsions are mental. Rather than wash our hands every 5 minutes, we check and analyze mentally. Some people develop severe Pure O because they believe they may have cheated on their partner in the past. They know they didn't, but they need to feed that obsession with compulsions, which in this case would be the endless analyzing of previous actions.

So the way you get on top of your problem is to cut out your own compulsions. You need to start putting your time and energy into fuelling sanity, rather than answering unanswerable questions.

This is fairly easy to do, thankfully:

First: Relabel your doubts, worries, obsessions, etc. Your amygdala - the fear centre in your brain - is on high alert right now, and the more you worry, the more you validate its decision to remain in this state. When you have one of these difficult what-if questions, give it a label. "This is my OCD. This is my anxiety disorder flaring up. This is a normal part of the medical condition I'm receiving treatment for."

Second: Shift your attention. Once you've realized you're suffering from an anxiety/OCD spike and you've labelled your symptoms as such, you'll want to make sure you don't give that chain of thought any energy. Cut the juice, sister! Whereas before you'd probably engage in several minutes of thinking, now, you don't. Put your attention elsewhere. Not forcefully, but firmly. Make a decision not to think about something, and stick to it. Sure, things are gonna play out in the back of your mind, you may find yourself ruminating when you're not paying attention, that's ok. Just refocus your attention away from this mental process as much as possible. Let it all happen while you're watching TV, playing a computer game or chatting to friends. Just don't be consciously involved in the what-if process.

Third: Reframe your condition. Anxiety/depression/OCD - they're tough. But there's very little that's real about them. Most depressives have a warped idea of themselves and the world, while most anxious people worry about stuff that will never happen. Understand as the days and months pass that what you're going through really isn't that profound. It's more or less caused by a chemical imbalance that has activated certain difficult brain states. It's tough, sure, but try to keep perspective. Just because you feel fear in your body, doesn't mean you have to react. Doesn't mean anything at all, actually! The body gives out false alarms all the time. As its job is to remain in anticipation of threats, it'll constantly serve up wrong messages. What's exhausting about mental illness is the feeling your mind is giving you these challenging problems you have to solve. Most of the time, you really don't need to solve them, or figure them out. You just need to start following a different script.

Working with your therapist will be helpful, but anxiety and Pure O can strike quickly. I just wanted to give you some kind of blueprint so you don't find yourself stuck down a rabbit hole wondering if reality is real.

If, as you're reading this post, you're thinking, "Hey, not bad, what what if this won't work for me?" or something like that, start those three steps and go to town on that negative thought. Know that as a person you have enough natural intelligence and intuition to solve whatever problems arise in your life. You don't need to consciously perform mental gymnastics in order to predict the future and work everything out. :)

[Blondie517]

While I'd love to take credit for such an awesome band, alas, its just my hair color! Haha! Thank you for the quick and thorough response, I really appreciate the reassurance (although I shouldn't even be looking for it if you ask my therapist, dont tell! lol). For the record, I haven't been diagnosed with OCD, it's more of a self diagnosis from googling harm/pure O symptoms (which I also should not be doing).

Everything you said is so right, esp. the "What if it won't work for me?" part. That's basically where I'm at now. It's not that im hopeless that I won't ever get over this fear/thought pattern/obsession.. I have gotten over many in the past.. It's the WHAT IF I dont? Can I live with this forever, what if I really am crazy? It almost seems too easy, if you dont want these thoughts, don't think them! If it were only so simple, right?

I love the reframe your condition idea.. Like I said, I haven't been diagnosed with OCD or depression, and I don't think Im truly depressed, but I try to tell my self, okay, even if you were, it's not a death sentence! I am just terrified of it for some reason. I am terrified that suicide even exists, that as humans we are capable of such a thing.. And what if I'm capable of it? What if its what my subconscious really wants? Why would I think this way if I don't want it? You always (okay, not ALWAYS) hear about people who commit suicide that people never guess in a million years were even depressed.. What if that's me and I don't know it? More WHAT IFS, I know, I know.. I am rambling, lol. I don't know why I continue to try to problem solve these things, they don't make sense and I just can't seem to accept that!

I almost wish I had a compulsion as my understanding is that when the compulsion is done ("correctly") the person feels better? I'm just stuck in my own damn mind, having a war with myself. Actually, I take that back, I know very little about true compulsions and do not wish to insult anyone as I am sure it is not so simple as I made it sound.

[Goomba]

Jesse that post is 10/10