I don't know what's wrong with me
Early last year I began to experience constant anxiety and overthinking. On most mornings I woke up I would lay on my bed crying. When I felt like I needed to share my feelings I did that with my family members. I told them to that I might be suffering from anxiety and overthinking. One of them said to me that I should appreciate the life that I have and many people would kill to have my privilege and another said to me that I have no reason to be anxiousan so on. I feel like these feelings are getting worse and it's taking over me and I dunno what to do
Hi @cupcakes298 👋 I know how frustrating it is not to be able to figure out why you’re experiencing anxiety. I think you’ve taken a good step in deciding to share your feelings with others. I’m sorry that you’ve discovered some of the people you’ve shared with have invalidated what you’re going through, or suggested that you shouldn’t be feeling what you’re feeling. I encourage you to keep searching for ways to explore your feelings, whether that’s through journaling, the 7 cups community, or someone else you can talk to. I hope at least by coming here you’ve felt heard ❤️
Hello, I'm very sorry to hear about the anxiety you have been going through. It really is tough. I'd recommend finding a good therapist to talk to and get a better idea of what's going on for you. That said I noticed you mentioned you feel like you are overthinking a lot. I've struggled with that too and I've tried to understand it. One thing that has taken a very long time to sink in for me is, thinking (a lot) is good and fine when we already understand the topic at hand very well. When we know things really well we can use our imagination to extrapolate out just a little bit with and usually still be okay in terms of thinking realistically. But when we don't know something very well, when we overthink we are making guesses off of guesses. We are deriving additional uncertainty from existing uncertainty. We easily wind up with a distorted view of things which can make us unnecessarily anxious. One way to fix this scenario is to stop imagining and instead seek more information or gain direct exprrience. For example, a person could be anxious about swimming. They might not even be planning to go swimming at all and are just thinking about the feelings of discomfort and anxiety they picture themselves being in. They end up feeling anxious even though they are not swimming. And they are stuck not learning anything from real life about swimming, they are just stuck in their imagination of it. But, just like riding a bike, or public speaking, or just about anything else, learning and experience correct our expectations and illuminate all the different ways we can succeed. So people often say to "live in the moment," I now think of that phrase as a way to avoid spending time unnecessarily compounding uncirtainty in the mind. So if you catch yourself overthinking, remind yourself that thinking a whole lot on something, without gathering any actual experience about it, has some serious flaws. So then try and snap out of overthinking when it happens and live a little more in the current moment. Look at the room you are in, listen to the sounds around you. Gently remove judgements from your mind and focus on here and now. It's not ignoring whatever is bothering you, it's choosing real experience over imagination. Like I said I personally have have struggled long and hard with overthinking - I hope this long post is helpful in some way to you. Wishing you lots and lots of happiness ahead.
