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Trying to convey feelings of safety while living in a state or perpetual dread.

Chris909

Chris909

New Member
Apologies up front for how long this is. So I must convey feelings of safety to the brain. I try to tell myself life is good and I have nothing to worry about. I am safe. No one is coming to hunt me down. In a fundamental way, I actually am safe. Better off than most by basic living metrics.
I can tell myself this, but do I really believe it?
I actually walk around with fear every minute every day. "Who is going to try and screw me over next?" I have developed this mindset unfortunately over the last 5 years or so, where so many bad things have happened that I have come to expect bad things to happen at every turn. I walk around fully expecting the next crisis in my life at any moment.

I feel I have been conditioned to expect bad news at any given moment.
These may be ordinary life events that everyone must deal with from time to time. But what they do is *add up* and chip away at your trust of anyone or anything in the world.
"Who is going to try and screw me over next?"
"What is going to go wrong next?"
It's a way of actually preparing myself so I am not as shocked when it happens. Always being prepared for potentially bad news. Some call it being a "realist."

How can I convey feelings of safety when I walk around with a boilerplate dread every day?
 
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Read any book by Claire Weekes. You can train yourself to spot this kind of mindset thinking and redirect yourself, she can tell you how. These are symptoms of anxiety, you'll need to accept that you are anxious, and not focus or worry about the anxiety or these thoughts. That is just another TMS disception to get your mind of how you REALLY think and FEEL about these things.

So, what does it feel like to think that you are constantly gonna be screwed over?
Journal about your feelings around this.

Meditate (or do things that separate you from these thoughts, your favorite sport, walks in nature, yoga, qui gong....)

Ultimately, it's not that you don't trust *anyone* it's that you need to learn to trust yourself.
 
To which I will add that our propensity to adopt a negative mindset is actually a survival technique that is hard-wired into our brains. An individual's particular and unique way of adopting and living with this propensity is developed in childhood.

It might be helpful if you can see this mindset as a separate thing which acts on you like a trigger for your anger and insecurity and lack of self worth. It is not a thing that you need to keep in your psyche, although "breaking up" with it won't be easy. To get rid of it you need to have something more constructive to take its place.

Significant self-reflection and emotional vulnerability are required to drill down and start exploring the roots of behaviors which are not serving you. With that in mind, how is the SEP going?
 
JanAtheCPA said:
To which I will add that our propensity to adopt a negative mindset is actually a survival technique that is hard-wired into our brains. An individual's particular and unique way of adopting and living with this propensity is developed in childhood.

It might be helpful if you can see this mindset as a separate thing which acts on you like a trigger for your anger and insecurity and lack of self worth. It is not a thing that you need to keep in your psyche, although "breaking up" with it won't be easy. To get rid of it you need to have something more constructive to take its place.

Significant self-reflection and emotional vulnerability are required to drill down and start exploring the roots of behaviors which are not serving you. With that in mind, how is the SEP going?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the comments. An important point you make, something must be ready to take the place of this fear or negativity mindset. It settles in at the expense of any other mindset. And it's hard to push away if there is nothing to take its place. None of this happens sitting on your butt. I think a lot of life revolves around action. So the challenge is how to get up and fill your life with more positive influences, trying to see the good more commonly over the bad. I can definitely relate to this because I have noticed this. Right now I have nothing to take the place of this negativity mindset. It's like a gradual work in progress though, it probably takes a while.
 
Chris909 said:
Thanks for the comments. An important point you make, something must be ready to take the place of this fear or negativity mindset. It settles in at the expense of any other mindset. And it's hard to push away if there is nothing to take its place. None of this happens sitting on your butt. I think a lot of life revolves around action. So the challenge is how to get up and fill your life with more positive influences, trying to see the good more commonly over the bad. I can definitely relate to this because I have noticed this. Right now I have nothing to take the place of this negativity mindset. It's like a gradual work in progress though, it probably takes a while.
Click to expand...

What do you love, or what did you love before you felt overwhelmed?
Favorite hobbies, favorite places to eat, favorite people?
Interests...

I had to force myself to get back into doing things and some I never thought I'd do again, and here I am doing them. For me, it took awhile to get my interest back - my mind was so hyper focused on anxiety, depression and TMS sensations that where hyper sensitized. It didn't take too long to really want to start to do things though, once I got started. Initially I had to push myself into doing things - it's part of breaking depression.
 
Cactusflower said:
What do you love, or what did you love before you felt overwhelmed?
Favorite hobbies, favorite places to eat, favorite people?
Interests...

I had to force myself to get back into doing things and some I never thought I'd do again, and here I am doing them. For me, it took awhile to get my interest back - my mind was so hyper focused on anxiety, depression and TMS sensations that where hyper sensitized. It didn't take too long to really want to start to do things though, once I got started. Initially I had to push myself into doing things - it's part of breaking depression.
Click to expand...

This was definitely my experience with depression and to get out of it I needed to make myself do the things I used to enjoy again even if I didn't want to. The anhedonia is very freaky. The more I did things, little by little the dark cloud began to lift.
 
Chris909 said:
I have nothing to take the place of this negativity mindset. It's like a gradual work in progress though, it probably takes a while.
Click to expand...
Baby steps!

An important point is to notice that I use the word constructive rather than positive. When it comes to "being positive" , there is a risk of engaging in false "happy face" positivity. Which is basically just another way to engage in emotional repression.

Taking constructive steps is about forcing yourself, as both @Cactusflower and @HealingMe have described, to engage in activities, physical, mental, and emotional, which allow you to gradually make progress towards a different reality. There will be setbacks, but every setback is an opportunity to decide that tomorrow can be better.

Nicole Sachs often speaks to the truth about reality, which is that there will be pain in life, both physical and emotional. The choice we get to make is between what hurts and what hurts worse. Emotional vulnerability is terrifying for most of us but it is the key to eventual freedom.
 
HealingMe said:
This was definitely my experience with depression and to get out of it I needed to make myself do the things I used to enjoy again even if I didn't want to. The anhedonia is very freaky. The more I did things, little by little the dark cloud began to lift.
Click to expand...
I've never even heard of anhedonia until right now. But wow that is exactly what I am experiencing. And it is also evident the only way out is to simply start doing things. I just have absolutely zero interest in socializing with people. Small talk never bothered me my whole life. But unless there is some deep personal connection going on, I simply have no interest in trying to entertain people. No interest in committing to activities or anything.
Glad to hear you found some hope in just finally taking action and gettin out there. Thank you for your comments, I just learned something new.
 
"I just have absolutely zero interest in socializing with people"

Nobody mentioned socializing.
Have you ever enjoyed painting or art or design, listening or making music, poetry, going out for walks, video games, swimming, knitting, surfing, sun bathing, gardening...you get the picture ... anything that interests you.
When we are in a funk, it's hard to remember what we liked to do. I looked around me and realized I was surrounded by the things I love to do. And eventually I started to walk a few miles to a local eatery once a week where I eat by myself, then I started to get back to doing many things I enjoy even if it was just cooking a little something up. Eventually I also started to do things I don't like so much but that need to be done, acknowledging the fact that it probably pisses my subconscious off to no end that I'm the one who has to do these things, and that feeling was perfectly OK. So don't forget to acknowledge to yourself how challenging this is, and how much effort it might take to overcome it and congratulate yourself for just doing it.
 
I was informed recently in this Forum about Dan Buglio's video on Afformations. I've inserted the link below.

Rather than trying to correct a negative headspace by reciting positive affirmations that never feel true; Dan suggests that we, instead, ask better questions. Rather than our usual questions of "what's wrong with my life (body, job, spouse)?" (which reflects the negativity bias our primitive brain embraces to keep us safe), we ask instead questions like "what's good in my life?", "what am I doing that's going well?", etc. I find it helpful to write down at night the things I come up with during the day, as a way to reinforce them. This is similar to keeping a Gratitude Journal, which research has shown is effective in combating depression.

 
Indeed - I often forget to mention that for every journaling session, I make myself write down at least one thing for which I am grateful that day, and/or something I appreciate about myself. It doesn't have to be significant. There are days when the only thing I can come up with is something I cooked that was really tasty, and sometimes all I can do is just look at my cat and appreciate the simplicity of his contentment when he gets a belly rub.
 
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