Apocalyptic Anxiety (trigger warning: space)

[qarasuv]

Hi, I'm new here.

I am terrified of asteroids, comets, and anything else space can throw at us. Currently I have been in a slow-burn freakout for weeks, checking the news every hour, feeling like I'm about to die. I've had lifelong OCD but it's only in the past month that my obsessions have become this intense and this apocalyptic, and I am really struggling and don't know what to do.

I'm in a rural area so my options are very limited. I've seen a GP who agrees I need to see a psychologist pretty urgently, but she said there is absolutely no chance of getting in to see anybody - urgently or not - for at least 6-8 weeks. These invasive thoughts are constant, unrelenting, and extremely vivid; nothing can distract me from them, and I am in lockdown, so no option of taking a day trip or seeing friends to take my mind off it.

I've been trying and trying and trying to find information online about what to do, but nothing seems applicable to my particular situation. Information on panic attacks all seems to assume that the main cause of distress is the panic attack symptoms; I don't care about my racing heart or shortness of breath, I care about what I'm scared is about to happen. Anxiety information is tailored to stuff like "what if my house gets broken into?" or "what if I say something embarrassing in public?", not obsessions on this terrifying level. Stuff online about dealing with intrusive thoughts gives me conflicting opinions - do I challenge the thought, or try to ignore it? Is it best to push it away, or it that repression that will make it come back stronger? Do I try to distract myself with mental exercises, or is that a compulsion? Breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation used to work, but they don't anymore. I exercise daily and eat well and don't drink.

Any help or support would be much appreciated. I don't think I can take 6-8 weeks more of this with no help whatsoever.

[Petal22]

Also just allow your thoughts to be there.... don’t interact with them.... let them come in and go out... it takes practice but you can learn to do this.... meditation really helps with this..... don’t put your attention on the thoughts this makes them stronger because the brain thinks they are important and they keep coming back.....

Attention training is good.... mindfulness....

Thought challenging can help or repeating the thought over and over again until it no longer bothers you... we did this in our therapy aswell... we would pick a thought we were really afraid of and made certain times of the day that we would repeat the thought..... I found I got bored of the thought after a amount of time that I repeated it 😊

[Petal22]

Hello, I was just reading some of your compulsions... checking the news... researching on the net.... try to stop doing these things they arnt helpfull... instead try to do something more positive... do you have a hobby? Or even try adult colouring in 😊 The more you stop doing these compulsions the more your ocd cycle will be interrupted... when these compulsions arise instead turn your attention to the present moment even if it is feeling your heart beating 😊

[qarasuv]

Thank you so much, both of you. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me. I wish that I wasn't having to deal with this alone, online, but for geographical reasons I had zero access to mental health services growing up and never had the opportunity to learn coping skills. And now that I'm in a place where resources exist, there's a massive global crisis on! So online it must be, at least for the next 6-8 weeks.

I just had a horrible night lying awake, checking the news, waiting to die. The good news is that the rock passed us safely by, exactly when and where NASA said it would (thank you NASA - T, that was a really good point about the bunkers!) But I never want another night like that again.

The trajectory of my fixations has been weird, because it went from "my house is going to burn down" when I was a kid, through "I'm going to stab my family to death while sleepwalking" when I was an early teen, "I'm a psychopath and also going to get naked in public and key people's cars" in late teens/early twenties, disappeared almost completely throughout my twenties, and now at thirty has made a roaring resurgence with this apocalyptic lunacy. The previous obsessions were terrible, but at least the scenarios were survivable. Now my brain has unleashed a new scenario on me that isn't. Sometimes it feels like my own neurons are laughing at me - "You thought you could handle all that other stuff we threw at you? Handle THIS!"

The biggest takeaway I'm getting from all of this is, stop checking the news. No matter how much I desperately want to know what space rocks we may or may not be in the path of, I'm better off not knowing. There's nothing I can do about it either way, and all I'm doing - even if there's no news - is triggering myself. And I think I need to stop researching too. Just leave outer space alone.

When the intrusive thoughts do start, and they get started very easily (the word "impact" is enough to set me off, even if it's used in an entirely different context), I shouldn't try to push them away? I challenge them, or just let them run while I distract myself with something else? I wish they weren't quite so horrific; the "mental video" phenomenon is really hard to deal with with the amount of detail my imagination supplies. I will try mindfulness and force myself to do stuff to get my mind off it, even when I don't want to.

Thank you again! It has been such a relief being able to talk about this with people who understand.

[qarasuv]

Reading about mindfulness and exposure/response now, I think that I should leave ERP until I have found a psychologist to help me through it. Researching my obsession in this case hasn't helped and has only made me worse (it doesn't help that most materials are written by people who are as terrified of space junk as I am - that's why they're in that career!) so it is probably best that I wait until I have some professional support. But once that happens, I may yet become an amateur astrophysicist, you never know.

[Petal22]

Happy to help you qarasuv .. sorry to hear you didn’t have a great night...

You are not alone .... many people have this condition... I did therapy with a group of people who had the same condition... I was severely affected by this condition but have now recovered... there is HOPE for you to recover aswell 😊

when you get the thoughts just allow them to be there and don’t add to them .... they will float away.... it takes practice... when they come you can turn your attention to the present moment and not the thought so if you are doing something bring your attention to what you are doing...

practice meditation

you can challenge your thoughts eg what is the evidence this thought is going to happen....., ( without researching) and what is the evidence against the thought? Or you can wait to speak to a professional if you prefer....

it’s sometimes helpful to write a list of things you want to do with your day the night before and as you do each task cross it off the list.. this will keep you busy... even if it’s things around the house...

researching online isn’t helpful and checking the news a lot isn’t helpful either so well done for trying to stop these things...

keep persevering you can learn to break free of the ocd cycle the more aware you become of the cycle the easy it will be for you to break it😄

meditation is great for becoming aware of your thoughts and just watch them as thoughts... you can learn to be the watcher of your thoughts... 😄 it takes practice

[tranzcrybe]

Hi qarasuv,

You have a great awareness of your condition and I think you manage very well to separate the two states of mind. Fears are understandable for many things we don't fully have control over but I see how your thoughts can race and snowball into vivid yet irrational manifestations.

We survived! I hope you can relax now; and I agree with Petal's techniques for future prevention.

I was happy to have at least kept you company as it is much harder alone. Maybe focus your attentions on things closer to home??

Regards,

t.

[qarasuv]

I have gone my first full day without obsessively checking the news. I keep getting flashes of dread like "What if there's something heading straight for my town and I miss my chance to escape??" but whenever the urge gets bad, I re-read this thread instead! It's reassuring and just long enough to distract me for a few minutes, enough to get my breathing under control.

Thank you so much Petal for suggesting meditation. I've been researching it online and there are so many great resources that are specifically for people whose thoughts won't leave them alone. I've tried it a few times now, building on the breathing exercises the psychologist taught me, and the effect is really noticeable.

I am so lucky to not be more severely affected by this disorder, and have so much respect now for people who are. This episode blindsided me because up until now my obsessions have always been relatively mild and easy to repress, even when they spike; now I've had a taste of how overwhelming and crippling it can be. Some people have attacks like this every single day of their lives. Anybody who lives with this thing is a hero.

[Petal22]

Well done qarasuv that’s fantastic you haven’t been obsessively checking the news 😊 keep up the good work... I’m glad our threads are helping you ......

No worries 😉 That’s great you have tried meditation.... it’s the best... keep doing it... it all takes practice but once you get the hang of it it really helps in our daily lifes...

Yes people who are severely effected by this condition can feel quite debilitated.... we are so lucky to have treatments for it 😊

keep up the great work 💪

[qarasuv]

I backslid a bit yesterday and checked the news a few times. There wasn't any news, but even so it's amazing how much it made my anxiety spike. I've been researching OCD, and apparently the way sufferers' brains work shows the most resemblance to the neural patterns of people with addiction. Instead of being addicted to external stimuli, OCD brains get addicted to the constant fear-reassurance-fear-reassurance chemical cycle. There's also a hyperactive flight/fight reflex involved. I have a particularly bad flight/fight reflex due to various life events, so it makes sense that my brain has managed to generate a scenario I can't fight or run away from in its endless quest to terrify itself.

I'm still working on just letting the thoughts go and not fighting to stop them. I try to look positively at my ceaseless "mental movies"; it took Hollywood millions of dollars and Bruce Willis to bring an impact scenario to life, but I get the blockbuster experience behind my eyelids over and over for free!

One thing I remember really disturbing me when I was a teenager and that book "The Secret" came out was when visualisation became a big thing in pop psychology. Being told over and over that if you visualise it strongly enough, it'll happen. It really didn't help a kid who had no control over what they visualised, and mostly "saw" horrific things.

Meditation is really helping. My dad - an authentic old hippie - has never taken any interest in my mental health before, but once he heard I was learning to meditate, he was right on board. Now we're talking on the phone every other day about helpful meditation tips and tricks, and assorted spiritualist stuff. Maybe we'll end up becoming a pair of monks.

[qarasuv]

Oops I Did It Again. It's really hard to resist, every single time I'm like "Surely it can't hurt just to check once" and then, oh no, spiral time.

I'm really starting to hate tabloid news outlets! They love space rocks because they're guaranteed clicks - there are a whole lot of people out there who are just as scared as I am. And they'll twist and warp the facts as much as they have to in order to make it sound like doomsday is just around the corner, with no apparent regard to how much actual terror and distress they're causing. It's so messed up. They know they're spreading lies and totally ruining the day of unfortunate people like me, and they don't even care. I wish they'd just stick to secret celebrity marriages and Princess Diana getting resurrected by ancient Egyptians or whatever the hell.