Bad vivid imaginations = bad anxiety = more pain = more insanity

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Tipnatee N

Very helpful member
Joined
May 8, 2017
Messages
594
Reason
DX FIBRO
Diagnosis
11/2012
Country
US
State
NY
Have anyone ever accidentally imagining them self in to the bad situation that's not yet happening or ever going to happen enough to cause you to panic or anxiety attack then it hurts all over? :???:

How often does that happen to you?

Sometime I'm watching some TV show or listening to some interesting story, and then suddenly my vivid imagination run wild on it's own and I accidentally felt like I am in that terrible situation that I was just thinking about and then anxiety / panic attack strike! :mad:

I know that it's not real! It's never gonna ever happen to me but why did my body react so violently towards it? Is this some kind of a day time vivid nightmare imagination? I can't actually control it cause it just suddenly pop up on it's own. I can only repeating to my self that it isn't real I'm just thinking crazy, but it was like my brain constantly cooking up a brand new trauma that I have never yet experience. Why do I even doing that to my self? I couldn't understand why! At first I thought maybe it just some type of worrying anxiety , but the imagination just far too off , it's not even a possible scenario to begin with!. :shock:

Like suddenly imagining of how I would feel stuck in the space station on mars? Can't be so confortable with all those people living in small space for months with my aches and fibro pains and oh no it's so claustrophobic!! :-| . Or what would my children do about college funds ? But I don't even have any kid! :roll: Or suddenly I imagining the train accident and I'm in it trying to saving my self , but do to my fatique fibro body I'm feeling guilty about not being able to saving others? Whatta heck am I even thinking these? :x

Then after all those crazy imagination my anxiety and panic hyperventilation kicked in, and suddenly my body just felt hurts all over the place to no end like I'm punishing my self for something that isn't actually happening. :evil:

I'm awake but my brain is playing tricks on me. It's traumatizing , am I loosing my marble finally? :confused:

Do I need to check my self in the nut house finally? :cry:
 
NO Tipnatee your brain is just overloaded with everything on your plate and years of trauma and playing tricks on you.

Its probably a symptom of internal high anxiety high jacking your mind that is very poorly.....brought on by the situation you find yourself in...trapped with severe fibro and all your losses and heart ache the last few years.

My mind doesnt do what your does but it does latch onto things and feel the emotions of them to extreme..i worry myself into the ground if say my lovely son has any significant worries in life ..i want to protect him so much... or my partner is not happy with me ..or my parents are telling me im not helping them enough.

I feel these emotions so intensely i feel complete panic sometimes and cant rationalise them into proportion since i got such increase in severity to my fibro these last 3 years......so no decent amount of activity possible as a mood lifter and little sense of accomplishment to keep me grounded and as a distraction.

Our minds can only take so much and our past experiences, current circumstances ..support network...financial security...living environment all play a part in handling fibro too along with the severity and how under attack we feel on a daily basis.

My mind feels a bit disconnected from reality sometimes..like i need to get back to finding myself but am trapped in a situation now where i cant get back enough of me to feel like me anymore...kind of not safe with whats on my plate.

I could overcome this feeling when my fibro was less severe and i could go for walks or out with partner and just see things..places...people ...shops .....but complete isolation and severe fibro can really mess up your mind especially when loved ones are always down on you too and you end up believing you are weak....when infact you are strong just to survive another day.

Does that make any sense? Sorry if im way off the mark.

Do you take any anti anxiety medications at the worst times?

My body also reacts with almost instant burning/throbbing pain with high anxiety..like it washes over me and then wont stop hammering my body for days.

For me anti anxiety meds dont work at all...i may as well take smarties ( UK chocolates)...my sympathetic nervous system just carries on pumping out adrenaline no medication can stop ....even carries on when im asleep or can start in my sleep......and i wake up and can still feel it hammering away through my body.

I just think maybe your brain is feeling so fragile it's conjuring up situations even from the TV that make you feel slight panic and then you are afraid of the panic and the pain you know is coming.

Look after yourself ..your not insane your just poorly.
 
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This is the true face of anxiety and endless worrying. And sadly a reality of severe fibro and the combination of all kinds of illnesses/worries/traumas we suffer from, next to our BFF fibro.

I was in a sense happy to read your post because it is exactly what I have been dealing with. It has been going on for a while and it was not until recently that I decided (!) that this was not 'normal'.

Simple examples: going down the stairs, almost every time, I see myself falling, feel the pain, the 'thud' feeling in my ears/head as I hit the floor. I see it before me. I blame my lifelong battle with anxiety & worrying, as well as trauma (my last fall was quite a traumatic experience, and years ago I feel off the stairs at work in front of hundreds of people and broke my ankle. Beyond the pain, it was also so embarrassing. The guy I had a crush on had to pick me up and bring me to the nurse's station. ahhhhh!!!)

Or like you, I can imagine being stranded on Mars (reading and watching novel/film 'the Martian' did not help!!!), or being reborn in ancient times. Or while watching a documentary about serial killers. I'll find myself in that situation, in detail, and feel everything too. Life without painkillers, life without running water, or oxygen levels running out, running but not being able to get far, the fear, the pain, the loneliness....

I have these as dreams at night as well, but they seem to happen more and more when I am awake.

They are horrible, aren't they? I also don't know how to stop them. I try to use the tools I had learned years ago from cognitive behavioural therapy, but it does not help.

So I wish I had some advice to give you. Well, I do, and that is to take real good care of yourself. Put yourself first. Stay away from anything and everything negative (hence the reason why I don't watch local news or newspapers, and why I even deactivated my facebook account)

Another thing that I will definitely try to incorporate more into my life is focusing on the now. A young doctor once gave me the best coping mechanism; sit straight up in a chair, close your eyes, feel your foot on the ground, your hands on your lap, and now what is happening? You might have some pain, you might feel tired, but it is ok because you are there and you can handle it. You are just sitting there. This basic exercise has helped me out a lot in life.

all the best!
 
Thank you Diamond for your thoughtfully replied. OMG thank you.

Yes I used to take lots of meds for it , and yep nothing works only the side effects .OMG yes and I love smarties colors so much better than M&M and I rather eat those than the meds it self , I miss smarties I used to buy lots if then when I was living in NZ .

I know these problem it's my MDD and it started 7 years ago. I completely stopped watching news and man TV channels since then too. I have to be very careful of which I'm watching to not trigger any of my depression, and I have lots of worries that give me lots of anxiety panic attcks also.

I began to have lots of phobias I never have before including Political Phobia and other social anxiety. So it's been a while with this insanity. And I've tried everyday single to get passed it. Many things weight on my mind of how people react of my situation. My love one such as my father is moving back to Thailand next year to live his remaining life with universal health care over there ( it's all free, which I wish I have it here ). I know it will be very good for him but with me unable to travel by plane to visit with all these problems with my conditions and all these new phobias, it's a good as the final goodbye. :cry: Worries about his well being , financially I probably gonna send him plenty extra for his comfort living later. It weight heavily on my consciousness. Or worry about my bf who's a lot older than me might ended up leaving me before I do. It sad and panic just comes naturally.

I thought I was good enough to controll all these worries by now, and with many of your kindness helping me so much with my other panic triggers causing by unpredictable weird fibro symptoms that I posted on here. I thought I it was all golden, and I'm now having it all under control. Till suddenly my vivid dream decided to invading my awaking hours. :shock:

To me these kind of things during sleep has became a norm , when I wake up it just a crazy vivid dream, I've now learned how to snap out of it. Horrible yes! but understandable. Wondering and worrying of what if ? As long as it's realistic situation it's also understandable . I'll breath in the paper bags, or shoved my head under the boxes ,sometime the large pastic fish bowl that some how fit over my head cause I forgot where's the paper bags are. My bf often said it's never a doll moments around me. :confused:

BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!! :mad:
 
OMG dear Vicky

Thank you , you are so on point with this. OMG the stairs!! I get so many crazy attacks remembering how manytime I almost die fallen off of it. I avoided all high stair as much as I could over the years. It made me weak in the knees just thinking about it! Or yes life with no oxygen , post apocalyptic, unable to run fleeing the bad situations, the world dried up with endless dehyderations, or Biblical drowning after cramps from long term swiming with fatigue ! :confused: I even get the magic Genie wishes granting gone wrong imaginations popping out quite often.

Negativities , well that's is hard to do isn't it? As soon as I thought I avoided it , it has it way of hitting right in the face everytime I thought everything was cool , guilt, appologies, passed mistakes. I can't allow my self to even get angry, sad or any other negative emotion any more. It's unatural to suppressing them all without the outburst in some other forms of madness.

This is insanity all the way for me. OMG yes foot on the ground method! I did too learned that from my dad's psychiatrist book I read long time ago. That's exactly what I was tring to remember but fibro fog just whist it away from my memory when I need it most. :confused: But really thank you for bringing that back to my memory again. I need to write that down on the wall. :D

I know anxiety are such a BFF with fibro. It's almost impossible to break them apart. I've tried it too many years I still don't know how to separate it completely. :confused: It took me all day yesterday to started this post cause I don't know what would I do if other people agree with me on checking my self in the nut house finally.
 
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These thoughts originate for a very good cause. To allow us to escape dangerous situations. If we can see escape routes we can survive so we developed to see them. Except in modern society, as with many features, can become overwhelmed and exaggerated.

I have both these intrusive thoughts of disaster as well as intrusive thoughts of suicide. I have aphantasia so I don't get delightful mental images from them but sometimes they are troubling. I've lived with mine for as long as I can remember so we are mostly old friends lol.

If you are familiar with CBT that might help. One thing with anxiety I've read is to spend a specific period of time each day and write down all your anxieties. In theory eventually become more desensitized to it and/or you run out of things to be anxious about.

Also learning mindfulness meditation could be helpful. I've used versions of this over the years for various things. I'm getting way more into it now though.

I've seen both of the above listed as helping deal with fibro, too, so you may already know them. Just trying to help. :)
 
Thank you Lyrin

Yeah I know , it just my fight/flight mode that kept messing with my brain. I've tried Meditation but it just like a magnet for my vivid imagination gone wild. Letting go with all thoughts, suppressing crazy emotions and clearing my mind with breathing , or trying to rid my self with all thoughts together in reality just ended up tossing me to another crazy planets. :shock:

I guess I've been trying to ground my self with reality and reasoning with everything that has been going on so much in my life in terms of fibro pains and life crisis , my brain just trying to find the outlet . I've used to using the fun imagination to escape the crazy reality. Well I guess now my crazy reality is invading my fun imagination. :roll: I need to find the another way to escaping this quick cause I don't wish to loose to more suicidal thoughts either.

Cause right now I'm haunting by the thoughts of a piano kept dropping on top of me :confused: , I kept killing my self in the cartoonish way over and over.
 
Vicky is spot on this is the true face of severe anxiety...it really knows no bounds when the mind for whatever reason has been totally overloaded and cant comfortably escape back to a place where you can let out a sigh of relief and think.... thank goodness I'm safe and I'm well..i can cope.

It's that knowing and feeling you can cope with your situation that makes people happy and relax.

I did so much better mentally and had much more resilience when my fibro was less severe and i was able to go out and about and do something nice some days.

I could accept that .....so while with much uncertainty all fibro sufferers have I felt i could cope and feel lets say half safe......lol half safe is better than feeling no peace and like i want a way out all the time.

I try too like vicky says to think im here...im in a comfy bed/chair...Im warm, I have food and i have a TV and laptop and if the pain reduces enough with my remedies to be tolerable i say to myself i can handle it.
 
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Diamond, I remember once you mentioning about feeling like a china that can easily breaking at any moment.

I sometime I do feeling that my anxiety situations is similar in someway. It took me a long time to pick my self up from minor emotional damage inflicted by others or my own crazy unpredictable mind . Yet some other time I completely feels numb about things that are much bigger problem like financial situation, housing situation, etc. Like my brain deciding to skipping the natural processing on what's matter most , then lashing out on other unnessary or unrealistically problem instead.

I guess deep down I know I'm trying my best to push through the real problems I'm having and enduring everything that reality is throwing at me. Could it be the final straw that breaking my camel's back? .. wait is it back or the toes ( brain fog I don't remember)
 
My vivid imagination has me and the tub falling through the floor when I am in the shower. I have no clue why I think of this but when my anxiety is out of control it's all I can think of while I am in the shower. The other day I got in turned on the water already feeling anxious and the tub made this kind of thump sound. Wow did I jump! I thought this is it! My irrational fear is coming true!
Turns out it was just my Labradork plopping down on the mat beside the tub. Scared the crap outta me! When my anxiety is low like right now, I can shake my head and laugh about this stuff. I just have to try to remember that in that panic moment.
It sure is comforting to know that I am not the only one who does this. I truly feel some days like I am going crazy and am afraid to say some of my symptoms out loud for fear of being judged as "not all there"
I am so glad I found this place! Hugs to all of you Fibro warriors out there. It's awesome to be able to talk to other people and not have them look like you just grew a second head! Ha ha
 
Dear Brenda K

Oh gosh the tub! yes! I just remember I had the similar thought in one if the cheap holtel I stayed by my emergency situation. Oh the horror. I looked up and saw the tiny spot of water damage on the ceiling and some cracking lines, and figured that there must be another bathtub above me do to how the building layout looks from the outside. Then suddenly panic attack thinking that what if all ceiling broke down and all the tubs just fallen all at once! I'll be squash! :shock: . Then after I managed to talking my self out of the fear, managed my panic control ... ready for a bath . I couldn't help but wearing some bathing suit cause in my brain I figure if I were to die a bathtub death, at least I'll have something to cover my self with. Not that it matter of course, but it help at least to ease my weird crazy's fear.
 
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