Latest thought - causing some anxiety

[cosma05]

Okay, so you've probably heard this one before... sometimes on the news or in the paper you hear of someone dying from something rare or undiagnosed. Lately, something that's been plaguing my mind is the thought of "what if I drop dead" or.. "what if I have a heart attack". Mind you, these are not getting to the point where i'm panicking about them...but it's causing low level anxiety and just kind of lingering you know?

Mind you, i'm still doing everything I usually do over the course of my day...it's just a nuisance more than anything!

[Charlene]

Hi cosma5,

Your thoughts of "what if I drop dead" or "what if I have a heart attack" can lead to unwanted feelings and sensations caused by anticipatory anxiety. Right now as it is, you mentioned that you aren't at the point of panicking about them, but in a sense you are testing yourself, (even if it's unintentional), to see how you would react, should these events ever play out.

At this point, you are very fortunate that you are not panicking about those thoughts (most anxiety sufferers do), so please do your best not to teach yourself to become fearful of them. You see, this "testing" that you're doing....this mind-game of sorts, it's not one that you want to play out in your mind. And by habitually thinking these scary thoughts ("what if I drop dead"), you are training your brain to search and select memories (even memories from what you saw in the news) of anything that's frightening. And your brain will eventually learn to make the association of the made up fearful thought and a body response to it. This is something that you should want to avoid doing. So the next time you find yourself thinking "what if I drop dead", please do your damndest to stop the scenario from playing out in your mind. You really don't need to evaluate how you would handle yourself in that situation. You have all the control in the world to do this. You are the master (or in your case, mistess) ;) of your mind and thoughts, so please, choose your thoughts wisely.