Back @ Work After COVID Iso + Intrusive thoughts

[mandatory.happiness]

Hi everyone,

Newbie here & I thought I'd test the waters by making a first post to get things off my chest before I dive into the BB cafe or something else social. I'm 30, single & live at home. I do have a supportive network around me & I do realise that I am extremely lucky to be where I am. I do however have undiagnosed PTSD & severe anxiety. I battled with mental health as a teen & have had many successes & fails so far.

Though in 2016, I witnessed the physical aftermath of my father's death in a light plane crash. After that, I did see & speak to a few professionals but mainly got by with the wonderful support of my family & sheer willpower using meditation as my main means of getting by. It has plagued me ever since (flashbacks, intrusive thoughts etc). It has crept into almost every aspect of my life & at times, I find myself physically shut down to the world - I make all my life choices based on how bad or good my anxiety & PTSD is. The big factors in my life are: I have severe anxiety driving at high speeds, driving generally & driving with people in the car, driving at night, when I'm in unfamiliar environments, speaking to relatively small groups & in moderately stressful situations.

Flash forward to now, COVID has made my life a rollercoaster. At first, I was anxious about it. I am asthmatic & catch the flu easily. Then, I was oddly calm. I'd prepared for the worst in my mind & I knew I'd be able to accept anything that came my way because I'd done the mental work. Death could come swiftly. THEN, I was laid off work for over a month. It would be temporary but when I was told there was no more work, I didn't know for how long. I made huge steps to be productive at home & with my mental & physical health. I felt amazing for that period. Now that I am back at work, I feel incredibly underprepared. I miss those good feelings I had when I was on top of both of my mental & physical health. Things I had planned to do now feel too difficult to do & feel bad for it. I feel underproductive even though I am working hard on all the aspects of my life admin.

Currently, I am struggling with the return of a *lovely* symptom PSTD/anxiety... intrusive thoughts. Some of which disturb me so greatly, I cry for hours & feel physically ill. I feel like a sick, twisted person for thinking some of these things but I know that I would never, ever act on any of them. Does anyone have any tips for alleviating them? Distraction can only do so much.

Thanks guys. - MH x

[Sophie_M]

Hi MH,

Wishing you a warm welcome to the forums. It takes a lot of courage to be so open and honest with your feelings, and we are so glad that you have reached out here tonight. We can hear how overwhelming these intrusive thoughts must be, and we are so sorry to hear that you're struggling right now. But please know that you've come to a safe, non-judgemental space and our community is here to offer you as much support, advice and conversation as you need.

If you feel up to it, we'd encourage you to reach out to our Beyond Blue Support Service, which is available 24/7 by phone on 1300 22 4636 or on Webchat 3pm-12am AEST on our website: www.beyondblue.org.au/getsupport. One of our friendly counsellors will be able to talk through these feelings with you and can offer support, advice and referrals. 

You might also find our Coronavirus Mental Wellbeing Support Service to be helpful to you. This website is regularly updated with information, advice and strategies to help you manage your wellbeing and mental health during this pandemic. You can also call the dedicated support line, staffed by mental health professionals, which is available 24/7 on 1800 512 348.

You are not alone here, and we hope that you keep us updated here on your thread on how you're feeling whenever you're ready.
 

[GimZim]

Intrusive thoughts are incredibly upsetting. I think trying not to push them out of your mind and sort of letting them wash over you, telling yourself that you aren't your thoughts and that not everything you think is a reflection of you or your character but are oftentimes more about your fears. E.g. I used to have ones about accidentally or intentionally harming my younger brother but it was because I was terrified something bad would happen to him while he was in my care.

Trying to suppress your thoughts often has the opposite effect, we're not very good at choosing not to think about something and in thinking about *not* thinking about something we are still thinking about it.

If you have a google, something along the lines of "intrusive thoughts worksheet" or "thought suppression and intrusive thoughts" you should be able to find some self-help resources, I've used some myself (I don't remember the exact one, sorry) and it helped a lot. Your background in meditation will likely help as one of the things I do to manage mine is mindfulness. I went from having intrusive thoughts, daily, almost constantly for years to very rarely having them now.

Take care and good luck.

[mandatory.happiness]

Thanks Sophie. Much appreciated. x MH

[mandatory.happiness]

Hi GimZim,

Thanks so much for your reply & advice. I really struggle with trying not to let those thoughts define me. I think, 'I concocted this thought, so you *must* be this sick, twisted individual'. When really it's just the fear, as you say. I will look into a intrusive thought sheet, thank you. How did you feel after working through it after each negative thought? What were you meant to get out of it?

xx MH

[GimZim]

Sorry about how all over the place this post is, I wanted to make sure I got back to you but I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts together.

I think the fact the thoughts are upsetting is proof they aren't a reflection on you or your character. Not to get too much into the philosophical, but I think people are defined more by actions and patterns of behaviour than thoughts. Thinking bad things but not acting on them doesn't make a person bad.

If someone finds a wallet and it occurs to them they could take the money out of it but they choose not to and turn it in, I don't think that person would be bad or worse than a person that didn't occur to. It's just our brains job to come up with ideas and we can choose to act on them or not.

One thing that helped was talking to my husband who had a normal childhood, no history of mental illness. I told him about intrusive thoughts and asked if he's ever experienced that, he said he had which really surprised me. There's things like "the call of the void" where people without any suicidal tendencies or mental health problems will have the sudden thought "I could jump off" when stood on a bridge. There's lots of other examples too. These are all normal and I think when most people experience them they'll say "That's weird, I wonder why I thought that?" and dismiss it. I think the issue is when you've got anxiety or other mental health problems the thought will upset us and cause us to get angry with ourselves or feel ashamed of the thoughts, to try and suppress them and so on.

The website moodgym talks a lot about thought patterns and how to notice unhealthy ones and learn better ones. I found that a really useful resource in the past.

Sorry again for how jumbled this is, I'm sure there's a better way to word all of this but I don't want to leave you hanging while I work out whatever that is lol

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi mandatory.happiness,

Welcome to the forums and thank you for deciding to join us. I really appreciate you opening up about what you've been through and am so sorry that you had to witness the aftermath of your fathers death. I can imagine that it would be really distressing, and yet to add to that all of the COVID-19 which I think has rattled everyone. I can see you've gotten some great support from Sophie_M and GimZim.

You did mention that even though meditation seemed to be a great tool for you, you did say that you saw some professionals too. Is this something that you are opening to doing again?

Intrusive thoughts are really hard. One thing that I've learned about them though is that the reason they are intrusive is because we react to them so strongly - even with GimZim sharing the one about harming their younger brother - it becomes so intrusive because of course that's not something GimZim would do. So it almost becomes this battle - the more we resist it the more it comes back.

I hope that it's okay that I used your experience GimZim - just wanted to help echo that it's exactly your kindness and resistance that makes for such a pushback. 🙂

Meditation can be a really great tool for intrusive thoughts. For me, mindfulness has been a big one. It's about being able to ground yourself with your breath and finding ways to observe the thoughts as if they are separate. Maybe that can be something like 'there's that thought again', or seeing them as channels on tv/leaves on a stream/clouds in the sky/cars driving past - or even personalising it, like as if the thought was being said by a cartoon character.

Hopefully this gives you some suggestions! You are absolutely not a sick or twisted person for having these thoughts.

rt

[quokka]

Hi MH,

It seems you have already received some really great insight from GimZim and rt.
Something that I have found really useful for dealing with my intrusive thoughts is something called cognitive defusion. As our intrusive thoughts are generally very overwhelming and create a lot of distress we get so caught up in them and fuse ourselves to them. Defusion helps us to take a step back and decreases the power the thoughts have over us- to see our thoughts as just thoughts! They don't mean anything about us or reflect our behaviour.

There are lots of different diffusion techniques- some that I particularly like and find helpful are:
- visualising my thoughts are coming through a radio, and going up to that radio and gradually turning the sound down. You may be able to turn the volume so low that it is almost off. Sometimes the thoughts may be left as just a little background noise, but at least they are no longer blasting through the radio!
- imagining the thoughts as something floating down a river or in a lake, you can visualise yourself standing on the bank and watching the thoughts float by, or imagine you are swimming in the lake/ocean and you simply let the thoughts float around you, just letting them be.
- just notice and label your thoughts. Something I say is 'I notice I'm having the thought that ... . Hmm this seems like a junk thought. I'm gonna throw it out'. I imagine myself literally tossing the thought in the bin, or labelling it as junk mail in my inbox.

Hope this might help you to sit with the thoughts, recognise them, and know that they don't mean anything about you as a person.

Thanks for sharing with us. Wishing you all the best x