Hello everyone again,
I am back still battling these obsessive scary thoughts. I was wondering if I might ask for a bit more assistance or some advice if y'all don't mind. I have been battling the normal scary thoughts (just like everyone else) i.e. turning in to a crazy person, mentally ill, turning into one of those people who do bad things on tv, becoming a monster and hurt others or myself..etc, etc...
I was wondering if anyone experiences the symptom of tightness in the front of their head? Just a dull ache. You can't concentrate, your mind is cloudy, and it won't go away. How do I get rid of that? Also how do I overcome these thoughts? It freaks me out these thoughts. As you all know, we can be darn creative with our thinking and imagination. Well, I would rather be imaginitive about something else other than these thoughts. If you can help, I thank you.
You guys are all wonderful people. I hope we all can tackle these issues once and for all and leave them in the dust.
Thanks again.

Hi Willy,
I too have the same obsessive scary thoughts. I did the program a little less than a year ago and did wonderfully but I am doing it again a second time.
I have the same thoughts
What if I...
go crazy
am mentally ill
hurt someone
kill myself
start seeing or hearing things
all of these silly thoughts!!!
I try to tell myself that they are that, SILLY THOUGHTS!!
I am terrified when I hear about scary things happening in the world especially this virginia massacre that just happened.
How awful.
It's everywhere you look. On the news, in the paper, on the internet. Unfortunalty I have been reading it all. I think subconsiously i am trying to test myself( sounds silly I know)
But sometime sI think I want to see if the thought of hurting someone or myself still scares me. ANd guess ehat it does.
But Today I have been telling myself that I am SCARED of these thoughts, therefore I wouldn't act on them. Its the people, like this CHo fellow who caused the massacre, who like this kind of thing.
i actually was reading the paper and read about how he wrote disturbing stories and things like that. Well that scared me but then I thought, OH no In the program they tell you to write down all of your scary thoughts and then replace them with funny silly thoughts or positive affirmations and I do that. Does that mean that since I write the horrible thoughts, that I will one day do this??
Well the answer to that in ABSOLUTELY NO!!
Neither will you willy!
They are just our minds way of distracting us from something that we do not want to deal with. FOr em I knwo that right now I have a bunch of stuff going on in my life.
Vacation next week, (and might I add that my passport is still not here), homework up the booty, and packing and work to get done!!!
How I am going to get it all done before I leave??? Well simple one thing at a time.
Do I still get overwhelmed with it? YES
Do I distract myself with these terrible thoguhts sometime? YES
But hte good news is , now I can recognize that. It seems that you can too willy.
You posted on here becaue you wwanted some relief from them,
Well the only way to get relief from them is to not entertain them. this is still a very hard concept for me to grasp as well.
What I find that helps me is to tell someone them. I tell my boyfriend or my mom and they laugh at me!
As a matter of fact I have a funny cute story,
My mother and I went to a Party City store for a few party things we needed for my neice's christening. Well I was battleing the same oldf wieerd thoughts, and one of them was "what if I stab someone" (silly I know, the funny thing is, it doesn;t bother me anymore, it was the thoguht for that day that scared me)
I'm sure you know what I mean, everyday it seems to be a new thought.
anyways, we were walking around the store and I was feeling a bit uncomfortable with the way I was thinking but wasn't going to let it stop me from doing what I needed to do, so I head down the gag gift aisle.
I see this toy knife there. It has a retractable blade that goes down when you go to "stab"someone. It also make screaming noises. the silliest little thing, Well I found that to be hilarious.
As I was walking around the store obsessing, I see ths knife. right then I knew that possibly that was a sign from God or some other higher power, to not take myself and these "silly thoughts so seriously. I walked over to my mom and said should I get this to stab people?
We shared a very good laugh, and maybe that was all I needed to get over that thought, becasue it no longer scares me!!
I just thought I would share that with you Willy!!
Again rememer, its the people who have these thoughts, and enjoy the thoughts, that do them, Not you it's just a side effect of anxiety!!!
Let me know what you think!!
taske care and God bless you!

I feel the same way and u are not alone but reading angel story helped me and nobody is alone.. god bless

Are you able to block or put a Stop sign up when you start thinking these thoughts?
If you can learn to block the thoughts, you can begin to deal with learning how to not worry so much, and the anxiety level will go down.

I am on lesson 9, and there is a section on worrying for 15 mins a day.
Spend and dedicate 15 mins to every scary thought you might have. But when those 15 mins are done, then you must put your blocking action to work.
If you start to get the what if, how will I , I should thoughts./ STOP them and tell yourself you have already worried about it, and worrying is taking too much time from your time.
Also say, I will concentrate on this at my 15 min. session. I will not worry or let it affect me at this time. It is the wrong time and place.

If you can catch the negative thoughts right at the beginning, it might help you to stave off the panic and anxiety.
I have tried this for the past 3 days, and yesterday I had the best day I have had in weeks.
I would like EVERY day to be like yesterday. but I know that is not realistic yet.
And since I have chronic illnesses, I know they will flare, and I will have to deal with the anxiety and depression if I compare the days.
So, I am trying to feed myself positive thoughts, that perhaps I will be able to have more good days, then bad eventually. Or at least not react and get angry, frustrated, and depressed when the flares hit. Just roll along, and worry about that in my 15 mins of worry.

Today, it is snowing out, and it is dark and ugly weather. Yesterday was warm 72 degrees, and sunny, beautiful weather....not today.....so what can I do? I woke up with a headache, and figuring it will go away, I did not take my medicines at the first sign.
Now I am suffering for not taking my headache pills. But, I never know exactly when to take them and I am trying very hard not to beat myself up for avoiding the meds.
That is important too.
I am not very good at that. I am MUCH better in beating myself up, and blaming myself for things.
I will be working on helping myself to NOT do these thing. Leave them for the 15 mins.
A headache is only a headache, I have had them before, and will have them again, so just take the meds, lie down and wait for it to pass.

I hope you can apply some of the teaching of the lessons to your life, they really can help.

Thank you all. You are all godsends. It is great to know that there are people such as yourselves that are going through the same thing I am. Your words are great. Thank you. At times I feel like I am going to turn into a monster, or do something so bad I will end up in prison or something. It is deathly terrifying. I will take your advice.
Thanks again.

Willy and LD!!!

I am with you guys on this. I was actually doing really well there for awhile. I decided to take a break from all of the worry and scary thoughts and I did just that, it was great. I thought I can do this, just keep this thought pattern and you'll be on the right track.

.......Well, needless to say, the thoughts and worries came back about 4 days ago and I cant seem to get rid of the fears and feelings no matter what I do.

I don't worry really anymore about hurting any one. I do what everyone says to do, I just don't attach any feeling to the thought, or if I have a bad thought after seeing an object I will put it out of sight.

My big thing right now is; after five years of being with my fiance I now am considerably freaked out about staying with him. Which to me, is just absolutly nuts. He his great, handsome, we laugh and I enjoy being with him. I keep thinking & feeling like I need to run, get away, but there is no where to go, and doing so doesn't even make sense. I worry, like when we go out of town that I will freak out and say I don't know you, who are you, and he won't be able to make me feel better, he'll only contribute to the fear.

I built this life, I worked hard to creat the beautiful home I have now, so why do I fear it so, why can I not be happy with what used to be my whole life.

I worry that because of my anxiety I should get out now before it gets worse and I let him down because I am ruined by this crazy mind.

I don't want to think this way anymore, but I almost believe that there is no getting better, only worse.

NO, you WILL get better.
Think about the 4 days of good days. Did you feel the same way about your fiance on those days?
You were thinking more clearly then.

Don't do anything you will regret when you are not thinking clearly. If you are calm, and feeling ok, then is the time to question or make decisions. Do not make them when your mind is clouded.

Remember, if you have had good days, try to figure out why, and try to repeat it. It can happen. It has happened, and will happen again.
Running away will not help your problems.

I also agree with bek. I will keep everyones posts in my prayers. God Bless

Willy, I get those kinds of headaches. It's kind of like a pressure in the head, sometimes I feel like my head is going to pop clear off my body. Geez! That even sounds weird, but it feels like it. I usually get that feeling at work, but I'm not sure what it is. All I can think is that it must be stress. Sometimes my neck and upper back hurt too, along with the headaches. That would be tension, and boy do I have a lot of that. Try the relaxation techniques, that helps sometimes.