Struggling to play nice

@Learningtoloveme2491 Good question. I am not an expert, but I don't imagine there is a quick fix that will make everything OK by January unless you can find a therapist you can really work well with. If your current therapy is not going well, perhaps it is not helpful to continue with it?

A therapist would need to understand the event that you mention, of course, and would need to understand exactly what thoughts trigger your panic attacks. I suspect this kind of in-depth work would be very challenging for any therapist to attempt online.

If you'd ever like to chat about your situation, feel free to click on my profile picture and message me, but of course chatting to a listener here is not going to be anything like real therapy.

Charlie

@Learningtoloveme2491

My advice would be get those thoughts out of your system, write them down, post them here, say them out loud, if comfortable express them to your husband. Getting them out of your head and somewhere else alone can really help short term, but they will most likely pop up again sooner or later. Additionally you can try to oppose these thoughts with believable counters, but that can be really hard when they're popping up really bad.

Dealing with intrusive thoughts really sucks, but please don't blame yourself, you're not doing anything wrong

Hope this helps a tiny bit, good luck in the near future 🙂

Hi there @Learningtoloveme2491! Welcome here. I am glad you have found our community and I hope you will feel supported here.

Personally, when I find myself having this kind of irrational thoughts I try to 'distance' myself from them. I allow them to be, but I try to kind of observe them. If you can do this, you already gain some distance that feels very useful to then challenge the thoughts.

There are different tecniques suggested by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that you could try. For instance:

1. Writing down your thoughts concisely when they occur and viewing them on paper

2. Writing them on a whiteboard and looking at them over there

3. Prefixing them with a phrase like Right now, I notice that I am thinking...

4. Referring to them in the third person, for example, Valeria is thinking..., as if youre studying the thoughts and beliefs of someone else.

If you want to challenge the thoughts, here you find a list of questions that you could try to answer.

You mention you are not sure you like therapy here. I am sorry to hear this. It may feel discouraging not to feel adequately supported in therapy. Can you tell exactly what you do not like? Is it something about your therapist or the way therapy is provided?

I hope this helps a little bit. I am here if you would like to discuss it further.

ps. I really like your nickname :)