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Searching for anxious feelings

Lauriem
Community Member
Hi Everyone, I have lived with anxiety for years now, recently I have weaned off medication and started CBT with a therapist. I’m feeling about 50% better however I have these weird nagging thoughts which are like a feeling that I should be anxious. For example something will happen that would have triggered me in the past, I won’t react and then 5-10 minutes later I reflect and start to feel strange and like I should be feeling negative feelings which then in turn makes me feel negative again. Is this normal? Does anyone else have experience with a similar thing? Any tips on how to cope with this would be great too. Thank you!
3 Replies 3

20girl101
Community Member
This happens to me as well, I am suffering from relationship anxiety and when I am okay and content I feel like something is wrong so my brain makes me thing of thoughts that make me anxious and upset. It's so crazy and so hard to deal with. It's really frustrating me.

White_Rose
Champion Alumni
Champion Alumni

Hello Lauriem

Welcome to the forum. Good to have you here.

I wonder if this feeling of non-anxiety is because you have become accustomed to these feelings when certain topics or triggers crop up in your life. It's almost like a security blanket. You know where you are and that it is normal, or at least normal for you. Instead of being able to rejoice in the freedom of not being anxious, the lack of anxiety almost becomes an anxiety mechanism of its own.

When you battled anxiety for many years it does become familiar. To give a different example, I lost a huge amount of weight a while ago. My clothes no longer fitted and as a friend said, "You look as though you are wearing big sister's clothes". The clothes were familiar because I always wore them. It took ages for me to start to buy new clothes and when I realised how much my clothes size had changed I was gobsmacked.

Until then I found it difficult to see myself as a much slimmer person, it was this (to me) amazing difference that suddenly changed my perception of myself. I could accept I had a normal weight. There were many spin-offs from this such as being able to physically do many things that were out of my reach previously.

I wonder if this is similar process for you. With greatly reduced anxiety you do not need to make allowances to recover from thoughts that were distressing etc. In fact your life has changed. You would think we would be only too happy to embrace this but we humans do need time to recognise these sorts of changes and accept they belong to us. I think when you become accustomed to these changes there will be no holding you back.

Many congratulations.

Mary

Emmen
Champion Alumni
Champion Alumni

Hello Lauriem,

Welcome to the forums.

I completely agree with what Mary has said. Just wanted to add on something my GP told me years back. When we're constantly in an anxious state, that begins to feel "normal" to us. We stop noticing when we're anxious because the worries and tenseness we feel is what we're used to. It's a matter of orienting ourselves back to a non-anxious "normal" state and that'll happen with time. The important thing is to know that not feeling anxious/noticing the absence of anxiety is a good thing.

I went through that same feelings of confusion and strangeness when I started addressing my anxiety. I had to constantly reassure myself that what I was feeling (for me, it was feeling mentally lighter/less burdened) was the right thing to feel.

Take care!

- M