Do any therapist or people who go to therapy have any tips to stop being scared of your mind. Lately when I’m alone I’ve found myself questioning if I was crazy, if I want to hurt people or if I will become severely anxious to the point where I want to hurt myself. I know these thoughts aren’t true but they feel so real I can’t ignore it. It’s really hard for me because these sudden thoughts cause my mood to change
What I found very helpful in my journey of recovery was realizing that I can have any thought, feeling or sensation and continue doing what I want to do or value. For example- You’re sitting at home alone and you have a thought about going crazy and hurting yourself. Realize what you had was a thought, it’s a real thought. Maybe you got anxious from that thought? Anxiety is a real feeling. Maybe your mood changed? Maybe your body became tense and breathing shallow? Realize this is all real thoughts, sensations and feelings. Now notice how you react to these thoughts, feelings and sensations. Do you just let them be there without performing a compulsion? More than likely, when you’re struggling with mental health, you’re performing a lot of compulsions. I know I definitely was when I struggled. I would constantly check for mental reassurance like ruminating. I would seek reassurance from others. Try to control my anxiety. Try to cope with my anxiety. The compulsions were endless. So how do you “ignore” all of this? There is no ignoring. It’s about accepting these experiences and cutting out the compulsions. Those 2 things. Accepting and cutting out compulsions. I always confused accepting with ignoring. They are completely different. A good practice to understand acceptance is go outside, and accept a tree. How do you accept that tree? It’s something you do every day and don’t even realize it! You do nothing…. The tree is there. You didn’t ignore it by walking towards a different direction and avoiding it. You didn’t judge the tree. You didn’t label it as a “bad” tree or an “OCD intrusive” tree or a “happy” tree. The same comes to your thoughts. You don’t have to label every single thought that your brain throws at you. You don’t have to put your focus, time and energy towards a random thought. Thoughts are just something your brain will always do. Just like how your stomach will digest food. The practice of acceptance is NOT doing anything. Make acceptance easy. If you have a good understanding of acceptance then cutting out compulsions will come much easier. Your brain just cares about the compulsions. The topic does not matter. This is a huge key… the topic doe not matter. That’s why many people who suffer from mental illness always have “themes” that jump around. Realize that your brain just cares about the compulsions. The topic does not matter. Your brain knows you label anxiety as a bad thing. Your brain naturally wants to protect you, so it’s going to come up with things that make you feel anxious and uncomfortable to have you perform a compulsion to make you feel better- that’s all that is going on here. There’s no special sauce you have to take or mantra you have to develop. Cutting out compulsions such as checking, controlling and coping.. while accepting whatever goes on in your head is the path to great mental health. 😊
this is great!!!
Hi everyone. I’ve been doing therapy for about two months now and I would say it’s slowly helping me a lot. I explained to her the breathing techniques and “sitting in the anxiety for a bit” and I feel like those are helping. But then my therapist said “don’t sit in the thought because then you might act on it”. I don’t “sit in the thought” but rather i sit in the anxiety to comdition my brain into thinking it’s not a threat. But ever since yesterday, my therapy appointment, I’ve been really shooken up. Even though I don’t “sit in the thought” I feel like a bad person that she even had to bring it up even though I explained it wrong. I’m so upset I feel like I just took 3000 steps back from my progress and this little thing is really scaring me. Am I a bad person? I don’t want to act on any of my thoughts and it scares me so bad I hate living.
Hi about a week ago I found out I have ocd and chronic anxiety! I tried zoloft and it was terrible for me. I also started therapy and I take hydroxyzine but I will discuss further medication with my doctor. My question is I have a huge fear that I'm going crazy, I am crazy, or schizophrenic to the point I'm so hyper aware of my surrounding ill look out the corner of my eye to make sure I'm nit seeing anything ill make sure to double check what I'm hearing and it's so draining! I get really scared and go into a panic and cry 😅 I need some reassurance has anyone felt this way my doctor and therapist explained it to me but I'm still very scared. I feel like one day I'll have a break and I won't be the same! I tried the grounding exercise and breathing it helps temporarily. I also cut out smoking weed and none of my family has this but I feel like I have it or ill develope it even though it's rare!
so since mid december i’ve been feeling like this , well first in mid december I’ve started feeling anxiety like normal, normal as in physical things like feeling like im going to pass out, shaking, chest pain, etc. but then it got worse , then it turned into more of mind stuff like feeling not real , feeling weird like idk. my mind is always runningg like on over drive, like looking back at myself that doesn’t seem like me. like idk. i can’t stand to look at myself anymore bc it doesn’t feel like me. i can’t be alone , when i think about to it makes it sm worse. but how do i stop thinking ab it? or make it better. i’m scared it’s gonna get worse. like i can’t even do my makeup anymore bc i think something bad will happen. i can’t go certain places , like stay the night bc i think something bad is gonna happen.
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