Frequent and Unpleasant Thoughts

[bearwithme]

I did not get to delve deeply into this curious issue of mine in my therapy sessions but I'm still struggling and thought I'd throw it out there to see what you all have to say.

I often have thoughts of impending doom.  I sometimes think of horrific situations in life and what I would do.  Then these thoughts eventually carry on by themselves as if I have no control over them and quickly tun into a nightmare of a (fake) situation that leaves me anxious and scared.  These thoughts have escalated since the birth of my daughter who is now 2.

For example:  I was lying in bed with her because she was crying and restless the other night.  We were all comfy and cozy but then my thoughts jumped to a scenario of the house burning down and would if I couldn't save her because she was on fire?  What if I slept through her dying from smoke inhalation?  What would I do and how would I continue living? My thoughts then rambled on and on about how I would never forgive myself for losing her and that it would be all my fault so I would probably kill myself.  I actually pictured myself carrying my child's lifeless body to the other room to try and resuscitate her but to no avail and then I would scream in horrific terror, etc....

I also often think of other tragedies, i.e., what if my husband dies driving on that mountain road that he has to drive everyday to work?  Then my thoughts go as far as what happened to him, was he decapitate?  Was he flung from the car?  How could I live knowing he died such a horrific death and how would I tell my daughter?

These thoughts are menacing and they come at quiet times of the day. I notice that they flood my mind like when I use the restroom in the middle of the night and I'm awake for a few minutes, or when I'm just sitting, or bored waiting at the doctor's office, etc.

When this happens, I get so anxious and actually tell myself outloud "Stop!" because they can go on and on and get extremely disturbing.  I'm often depressed after.

I hate them and fear that my brain has a chemical imbalance of some sort because I don't ever hear of anyone else thinking such horrible things.

As a child, I wanted to kill myself because of my NM's verbal abuse.  I used to conjure up ways to die in my sleep or just "fade away" in life so that the pain would finally stop.  These thoughts were also morbid in nature and I remember them like yesterday.

Any advice as to where they come from and how to turn them into more positive thoughts would be helpful.

Bear

[Sealynx]

Hi Bear,
While its not the total answer to your issues, I have known quite a few people with children who have dreams that are similar to your fantasy scenarios and they occur at times when the child is ready for greater autonomy from the parent. In other words, the child is no longer being carried around and can now do things on its own that could result in injury. It seems to be part of the separation process for some people. It can also spin off into other areas like worry about your husband.

[JudyK]

 Dear Bear,
    I hear you, I hear you, I hear you! I am 60 years, and have had these same such "scenarios" going on inside my head for many years. For me, only time has helped, a bit. I have come to realize these are just my own, worrisome thoughts and worry does not do anything but make my stress level rise. In my family, worry runs amok. I have tried, very hard, to temper it thru the years, with some success. But, occasionally, if I can't get a hold of one of my kids (especially the youngest, recently divorced, and living on her own), those pesky scenarios start raging in my head, and I have all I can do, as not to call every hospital in the area!
   Once, about 8 or 9 months ago, I couldn't reach her for the whole day. Normally she returns calls, texts, etc promptly, but not this time. I got in the car and drove the 1/2 hour to her condo. All the way there, these HORRIBLE scenarios went thru my mind (suffice to say, it had everything to do with her being young, vulnerable, and alone). She was not home. I was a wreck. I must have left 5 or more messages on her cell. FINALLY, when I was on my cell, telling my husband I was going to call the police, she called. Boy, was she upset! Thought someone in the family had died.  I am determined not to repeat this, as I am so afraid of driving a wedge between my self and my kids.
    I am not sure my story helps you, but I just weant you to know you are not alone.  Hugs, Judy

[Ami]

Just my laymans point of view but I think we WERE terrorized as children and so we retain the terror. I know that *I* do--Lord Help me. I am a nervous mess!           xxoo  Ami

[Logy]

Hi Bear,
Yes, you are not alone.  I used to often envision terrible events in my mind.  My biggest issue was whenever I was going on vacation.  I suffered terrible images of car crashes, planes exploding, drowning at sea, and never coming home again.  Days before leaving on each vacation I contemplated cancelling - this was a premonition!  It took all the strength I had to go on that vacation.  The only reason I went was the fear that people would think I was crazy because of my fears.  As I am now 53 obviously nothing happened on those vacations.  It took many vacations to realize that these fears were controlling me.  And I learned that the people I was going on vacation with did not have any of these fears.  So I figured it was a problem with me and when those fears came up, I literally said "NO, you are wrong!"  But it took me a long time to really believe it.

I have analyzed it as being something my NM taught me.  She was afraid and is still afraid of everything.  Driving, flying, pain, being alone, water, death.  Generally anything she does not have absolute and ultimate control over.  My GC brother is the same way.

Once I understood that I was able to release alot of that fear.  But sometimes it rears its ugly head.

Logy

[bearwithme]

Logy, Ami, JudyK, Seal:  Thank you, thank you!  I feel a bit less weird.  I feel a bit less afraid of the thoughts as they may be tied to my upbringing and how my NM was always so dramatic and everything was frightening and dreadful.  I realize that she was always telling me that "something is bound to go wrong no matter what you do so be prepared."  OMG, just writing that sentence was a piece to my puzzle.

JudyK wrote: 

I have come to realize these are just my own, worrisome thoughts and worry does not do anything but make my stress level rise. In my family, worry runs amok.

I know about the stress level!  Worries always make me so unfocused and I expend so much energy that I can actually feel it.  My NM instilled worry in our family as she was raised with nothing but worry.  I need to break that FOO chain.

Ami: I do believe we were terrorized!  When you said that, I had a flood of images of my NM laughing at me when I cried.  She would laugh when I was hurt....I was ALWAYS scared as a child thinking someone was always after me our wanted to kidnap me, etc.

Logy:  I just got back from vacation and imagined all sorts of stuff as well!  Terrible images of the plane crashing, freezing to death in the cold weather, getting in a car accident, etc.  I take a small dose of anti-anxiety medication when I fly and it's a godsend, let me tell ya!

Sealynx:  You bring up an interesting point.  I'm beginning to wonder now.....

I wonder if the N parent can manage to destroy our sense of "safety" and that either our health or our well being is always being threatened by whatever comes our way? 

Also, I wonder if the N parent can permanently damage your Psyche as to make you feel you are unworthy of "good things" that if you get "good things" in life, i.e., a baby, good husband, great job, money, etc., that you will ultimately loose them because you didn't really deserve them to begin with??  This may only be self-esteem but I feel that the issue goes deeper than just self-esteem.  Like being punished...that God is a punishing God and he always punishes you.  I was raised this way to believe this about God.  It's hard to shake.

Bear

[Ami]

I have to struggle not to push away good things. I have to consciously embrace beauty in my life and tell myself i am worth it. I don't feel it ,often.
 I think that *I* want to feel badly cuz then I don't have to face HOW horrible my NM really is. It is so ,so ,so bad that I really can't wrap my mind around it. If *I* am bad and punish myself, I don't have to face the truth about HER.
 I bet that is part of your problem((((Bear)))).     xxoo Ami

[Sealynx]

Bear,
The God issue is one I struggled with a great deal as a child. I tried to be so good and yet God never seemed to bring good things to me. Then I studied Buddhism and learned about Karma. What if I had been a really bad person in another life and would now have to pay? I tried even harder to remove every selfish need or want.

Unfortunately, anytime we wanted anything or became upset, my father, who was always on edge from dealing with my mother, would call us selfish! That just made me feel worse. He was my father and even he saw how selfish I was , I must not be good enough yet. I used my "badness" and fear of my mother's rage toward other children I had disagreements ( which might as well have been with her) as a reason to never stand up to anyone who hurt me.  Of course, I didn't see that I was doing this because I was still focused on being good so some form of deity would see I'd paid my debt and make the world treat me right.

As you and others have mentioned there was also the highly dramatic examples given by our mothers of what would happen if we did not do what she wanted. Since N's have no empathy, there is nothing inside them to quantify the amount of fear they are instilling with their stories. Children quickly fill up with these tales. So we God doesn't love us and even if he looks away, the world isn't safe.

I doubt I truly saw this behavior for what it was until I read some of the work of a social psychologist by the name of William B Swan. His first book, Self Traps: The Elusive Quest for Self Esteem (now out of print) and later, "Resilient Identities", both explored how we form and affirm our identities and how hard it is to change them.   As Swann might say, we begin to selectively see and hear only things that support a dangerous world. That affirms our childhood identity of being helpless, vulnerable and unloved, perhaps even by God. This leave absolutely no one to save us if we choose to do something risky. This causes us to back away from many experiences and view even relatively fun events that "could have been dangerous" as stressful, leaving us with no positive experiences to support future explorations and new endeavors.

[Twoapenny]

Bear,

Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this, I had no idea anyone else ever experienced this I can't tell you what a revelation this post has been for me.  I've only skimmed through it because it's really hit me that others FEEL THE SAME AS I DO!!!!!  So I will write back properly when I've calmed down and read it through again, but I personally think I have such an inbuilt level of terror inside me that it's almost like an outlet?  Like making it into a scenario I can play through in my mind over and over?  My most usual one is my son being kidnapped or dying, but I also do house fires (I know an escape route from each room in the house), car crashes, me dying and my boy being left, social services taking him away and even really bizarre ones like being on holiday and being in a tsunami or hurricane or being kidnapped by rebel fighters or something (completely bizarre because we go on holiday in a caravan in the west country so absolutely no chance of rebel fighters there!).  Like I say, will write again when I've read it properly but thank you so much for being brave enough to start this thread up.

[nolongeraslave]

NM kept reiterating how the world was an awful place, and how I will get raped/robbed/beaten up if I do anything that didn't involve her. Of course, this influenced me to create the worst scenarios in my head in daily life.  I frequently worry about people abusing me again, if that makes sense.   In therapy, I learned to slowly challenge it, BUT it's tough. Thought-stopping sometimes doesn't work. 

While "normals" may say, "Aww, your mom is just worried about your safety," she has put me in dangerous situations for her own gain.  She doesn't care about safety. She just wanted to control me iand sabotage my ability to thrive socially/emotionally, so she tried to scare me. 

[bearwithme]

NLAS wrote:

I frequently worry about people abusing me again, if that makes sense.   In therapy, I learned to slowly challenge it, BUT it's tough. Thought-stopping sometimes doesn't work. 

Makes complete sense to me, my goodness it does.  The thought stopping process is a "skill" and one I am yet to obtain on this level.  My T has helped me gather some tools to quell the bad thoughts but I know that understanding what they are and where they come from  really comes first.  So when I'm thinking these horrible things, I shake and say, "OMG, NO!  This would never happen! Stop, Bear, Stop it..."

Sealynx wrote:

As Swann might say, we begin to selectively see and hear only things that support a dangerous world. That affirms our childhood identity of being helpless, vulnerable and unloved, perhaps even by God. This leave absolutely no one to save us if we choose to do something risky. This causes us to back away from many experiences and view even relatively fun events that "could have been dangerous" as stressful, leaving us with no positive experiences to support future explorations and new endeavors.

What a trap for the N parent to leave us in!!!    My NM warned me of the dangers of the world in such a way that I feared any man, even my own father!  She instilled guilt and prejudice and fear of anything different smarter or nicer...it was alway creepy and shady.  Seal, I agree that we were left with "no positive experiences to support future explorations and endeavors."  You said it all here, in a nutshell!!  Thank you.

Twoapenny wrote:

Bear,

....... but I personally think I have such an inbuilt level of terror inside me that it's almost like an outlet?  Like making it into a scenario I can play through in my mind over and over?  My most usual one is my son being kidnapped or dying, but I also do house fires (I know an escape route from each room in the house), car crashes, me dying and my boy being left, social services taking him away and even really bizarre ones like being on holiday and being in a tsunami or hurricane or being kidnapped by rebel fighters or something (completely bizarre because we go on holiday in a caravan in the west country so absolutely no chance of rebel fighters there!).  Like I say, will write again when I've read it properly but thank you so much for being brave enough to start this thread up.

 

TAP: I can go on and on with the horrific scenarios like yours.  Sometimes they are so disturbing, I feel like someone should diagnose me as mentally disturbed.  But at the end of the day, I am only thankful that those things DON'T HAPPEN in reality.  It's weird.  Maybe our "inbuilt level of terror" like you said, is higher than other people's level of terror and if we told them our thoughts, then they would think we were absolutely nutso-crazy.  They could not possibly relate to our world and that's okay. I await your response to this subject

I'm striving for a resolution here.  I think just knowing that other victims of N parents have similar thoughts, I can loosen up the noose around my neck and breathe.  I knew in my gut that these "impending doom" thoughts had to come from somewhere and something.  What does abuse do to the developing brain???? What does verbal abuse do?  What does physical abuse do?  What does neglect do?  It all does something....

Once I go back to my T, I am going to address these issues because I now feel they carry a significant message.  How can they not?

Bear.

[Twoapenny]

Hi again Bear,

This has made me think soooo much!  It's been really good for me, so thank you 

My scenarios often involve me saving the day in some way (getting us out of the fire, for example) and me being the centre of attention (my son's been kidnapped so everyone is running around me trying to find him)  I'm not saying it's the same with everyone but with me I think it's

1 having a general level of anxiety that's been built into me by my mum and her husband criticising everything I do (ie nothing's ever good enough and so I've always had an anxiety of what's going to be wrong with what I did, and I think that is just there all the time below everything I do and everything I have in my life).

2  Having a general fear of not deserving or having a right to have a child, a job, a home, or even just an easy, uneventful life.

3  I think working through scenarios in my head (how we get out of the fire, escaping the car as it heads toward the lake, pulling my son out of the wreckage just before it blows up etc) is how I cover all the bases, which I always had to do all my life.  If anything went wrong it was my fault and I should have foreseen what was coming and done something to avoid it.

4  Being the centre of attention I think is fairly obvious with me because I never was!  So having all eyes on me gives me that focus that I never had and craved so much

5  Being in situations where I rescue my son or just generally cope with the disaster that's unfolding is, I think, my thing about having to be almost superhuman to get any kind of recognition or praise (ie if I got my son out of the fire my mum might finally have something good to say about me).

I think that's my combination of stuff that goes on at a sort of subconscious level and has these bizarre fantasies going through my head to kind of play that out.  I worry more about there being fault with how I handle the situation rather than the situation itself, if that makes sense?  My son wanted to play in the garden by himself this morning.  Our garden is perfectly safe, there's nothing he can hurt himself on and he can't get out.  So there's really no reason for him not to.  Running through my head though is, if something happens, I will be blamed for leaving him in the garden alone - it's that that I was worrying about rather than anything that could actually happen.  If I want to leave him in the bath for a minute to fetch a towel or pyjamas or something I worry about being charged with neglect if he drowns more than I do about him drowning.  I don't know why this is - some sort of reinforcement that I'm a bad mum?  This is making me think even more!

[JudyK]

Bear,
  You wrote, "I wonder if the N parent can manage to destroy our sense of "saftey"....... My T says one should be able to go home and feel protected there, by family, etc.  He says I never received that. As young as about 3 years, my mother turned me out, into the night, becasue I apparantly told her I wanted to run away. She thought "helping" me leave would make me see the light. I pounded and pounded on the front door, crying and begging to be let in. Years later, as NM gleefully retold the story, she was standing on the otherside of the door, listening to the frightened cries of her daughter, and let it continue. it was an act of punishment, and in her eyes, her 3year old child deserved it. This happened over 5 decades ago, and I still remember the terror I felt.
   That was just the beginning. Thru the years, whether it was being ridiculed at school by kids and one particular teacher, or for ANY reason I needed a kind word, a loving touch, adult arms around me, it never happened. So, for me, there was no sense of saftey to destroy. 

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Bear, I can't help but wonder if it is significant that this has gotten so much worse since the birth of your 2 yr old daughter. I think of this because the only time I have experienced uncontrollable scenarios of doom like you describe, is right after my last child who is now 12 was born. I was depressed already, then he was born early and I was afraid to let him cry at all ... my husband disagreed with me, thought I should allow him to cry a little before responding ... but I was a basketcase and could not bear him crying at all ... so I got no sleep for about 4 days after bringing him home and just about had a psychotic break. I was having doomsday scenarios flash through my mind and I had no resources to shut them out.

[Sealynx]

Judy,
You bring up some excellent points. It is not just the obvious huge abuses that form our sense of safety but every neglect that occurred when we most needed to be held and comforted. We either had life's injuries ignored, blamed on us, or we feared a response that would make the situation worse. I can remember so many of these. I could go on listing them forever.

Every time I came home having endured an insensitive remark from a teacher, another child taking something that was mine or just needing reassurance that some horrible was not going to last forever, there was no one there. And there was also the daily insistence of a kind of "midpoint" for feelings. When I was sad I was told to get happy. When I was happy I was told not to expect to much from whatever I was happy about.