Long-term depression

@guener - I was just thinking yesterday about how my brain went quickly from my husband and son coming back from the hardware store about an hour after I expected (and no response to my text) Saturday to them having been in a car accident and died. I was imagining whom I'd call, the police coming by to tell me, what I'd do with my life, etc. How in the world did I jump to that? I did this quite a bit when my husband and I were first married 15 years ago: if he was coming home later from work than I expected, I imagined something terrible had happened to him.

I see now that this is catastrophizing. I don't do this with everything, but something happening to my husband is one that comes up from time to time. Perhaps I'm not the only one who does this kind of thing?

@lisalucier I'm guilty of doing the same thing. I tend to latch onto a thought and spend the next hour or so having it on a continuous spool. I do it with a brief statement and it's really hard to stop it. If I'm driving, the words play and replay and replay, usually in a rhythm, sometimes related to a rhythm the road or the car is making. It's a somewhat mild type of OCD. Art Linkletter said, kids say the darndest things. So does my brain.

If you can train yourself to identify that you are in a loop, it's helpful to say to yourself that this is an error in thinking that you can dismiss. I tell myself that I can set the problem aside until I'm feeling differently, and usually I just move on and don't even come back to it. This doesn't work so well if I'm feeling my depressive self, and when that's the case I try to remember that I will not always feel this way and try to pass through it. Tricks sometimes work, sometimes they do not, but they are devices that I try to use.

@jimhd one of the things I do to stop such thinking is to magnify the end result to the extreme and then say it out loud. I then realized how much it does not sound like sanity. It makes me realize my thinking is not what it should be.

Just adding that I do that also. But what's worse for me is PTSD symptoms..flashbacks of traumatic stuff in my life. Seems to be getting worse lately. So far I'm just saying the word STOP. Winter in Colorado, disabled husband, "lost" children. It gets to me. Thank you for sharing as it helps to know you're not alone.

@johnhans Thanks, John, for the good suggestion. What I usually do is try to distract myself with other thoughts. If I can maintain the distraction long enough, it may or may not work.

@georgette12 , those thoughts that stem from PTSD only serve to stir up the sadness, anger and pain, don't they. Sometimes it's appropriate to think through what's happened to us, usually with the help of a good therapist, but having the memories pop up, either at random or because of a trigger, rubs salt in the wounds.

As Johnhans suggests, having a safety plan in place is key.

Jim

Hi, @lisalucier and others,

While catastrophizing has not been a problem for me for many years, I think that many of the suggestions offered could be very helpful for anyone who is experiencing this type of anxiety problem. While I'm not a psychologist I do think that @georgette12's ideas about PTSD could be very true. Just wondering what sort of traumas in the past could provoke this type of thinking?

What @johnhans and @jimhd said about stopping the loop sounded helpful.

I found some links to articles that might shed some light on this type of thought disorder, perhaps they will be helpful.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/turning-straw-gold/201711/how-put-stop-catastrophic-thinking
https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety/catastrophizing

I'm wondering who else might be able to offer suggestions for stopping this type of thinking?

One of the things that my counselor used to do was this:Whenever I would bring up a trigger, a "blast" from the past, and I would say "What if such and such a thing happens?"

She would reply, " But what if it didn't?"

I would get very irritated at that. At the time, it seemed as though she wasn't really listening to me.

But she was. I finally understood that there was an alternative to the story. I did not need to live in fear of what might happen. I needed to give positivity a chance.

To do that I needed to get rid of negative self talk. That is a process that takes time and effort to do.

Just a thought.

Love and light,
Mamacita Jane

Hi, @mamacita - will you share more about what kind of triggers you are thinking of? Like a very negative specific experience you'd gone through?

@Lisa Lucier.
Triggers are mentioned all over social media. TW. To give you a heads up. Just in case that particular topic is likely to send you into a tail spin of emotions.

Holidays and weekends are triggers for me. "How was your weekend?" An innocent enough question. Unless you have an adult child in your family who is on again/off again with dangerous activities, mood swings, or substances.

"How was your holiday?" Oh it was just great, thank you for asking. Nothing like sitting in an ER waiting room for hours, hoping against hope that your adult child will live another day.

Too many interactions with the seamy side of life, and you will feel like the proverbial shoe is going to drop...at the worst possible time.

You want to face reality. Yet you want to remain positive, have faith, and hope for the best. You cannot live in fear.

So you decorate, you buy the food, you do what you can to live a life worth living. You pray, and you hope, and you hold on tight to your faith.

And somehow, the light shines through. You find yourself smiling in spite of yourself. And you think to yourself "What if it does go well?"

To be continued.....
Love and light,
Mamacita Jane