How to stop intrusive / catastrophic thoughts

[BrainMog]

Without medication? I have suffered from these very badly since having children. Most of it is about risk to them. But to give an example: I saw a tv clip yesterday about a child that died young of an illness. Now I can't get it out of my head and I worry that this will happen to my children. And then I worry that I might make it happen by thinking about it. It sounds silly, but I'm sat here now and my day is given over to this. I can't concentrate on anything else without it coming back in. It's hard to be happy when all you see and feel is danger or harm coming to people that you love :-(

I just wonder if anybody has any idea how to handle these feelings or stop them in their tracks. Thank you

@TheBoarRushedDownhill was that the Mel Robbins podcast? I listened to and I do try this: it has definitely helped sometimes.

Thank you everyone for being so kind

@BrainMog yes, it was an episode from her ‘Here’s exactly what to do’ podcast on audible
https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B09NB1PBRN?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=podcast_show_detail

Phrases to repeat definitely do help :-)

My lovely Mum died of cancer, and ever since, if DH gets so much of a twinge, I suspect he has cancer too. I spend too much time trying to plan strategies for how I would manage without him, which is horrible.

I've had counselling, I was given some great techniques, down the lines of "what if it all works out" but it doesn't stop the thoughts coming in the first place. I would prefer not to try medication.

Another vote for sertraline. It stops the voices completely for me. If I miss it for a few days I feel them coming back.

@PinkEasterbunny I'm so sorry about your mum. Your reaction seems perfectly logical to me.

We want this stuff to go away but it's not just in our heads is it? It's real life. How do we cope with real life and all its awful possibilities? Some people can focus on the happiness and positives instead of the bad.
And I guess that's the trick, but I don't know how

My brain has decided that if I dare stop worrying, I'm somehow taking my eye off the ball/sticking my head in the sand, and therefore a disaster is more likely. So in some weird way I've decided that worrying will make a bad outcome less likely

I look at other people, and wonder if they're also terrified something may happen to their loved ones, I suppose we all live with the same odds, but everyone else seems to cope with the risk somehow.

I'm determined to get on top of this in 2024. Keeping busy does help.

I do this.
It's like if I dare to be happy and not worry, I deserve to have something awful happen.
I know this is not logical but that doesn't help me when I wake up suddenly at 4 am wondering if, say, DS has drunk any water that day and hoping he's not going to die of dehydration. It sounds like madness in the daytime but in the early hours of the morning it's totally plausible.

Keeping busy, playing sport. Letting thoughts come and go and don't panic about it. That's the worst thing to do.

Not as extreme as you, but after having my daughter I'd for example push her pram near the river and suddenly imagine the pram going into the water and all the rest. It was so distressing and was probably as I had some form of PND or anxiety. It was my first experience of anxiety, though not of depression.

It did eventually go away on its own but what really helped me was immediately watching my brain to a task such as imagining drawing a house, a really simple child's one. So I'm walking along with the pram, my brain goes there, and I immediately switch over my brain to really imagining that house. A pencil drawing a square, then windows, then a chimney, then flowers in the garden, etc. I think it just occupied that over-imaginative bit of my brain that was obviously in overdrive.

Hope you feel better soon

Hi OP, I've also suffered from these kind of thoughts for much of my life, but it was only after having a child that it got out of control. Counselling has been enormously helpful but I wanted to mention EMDR as I don't think anyone has yet. This has been proved to be a very effective therapy for many anxiety and trauma based issues and can work sometimes work quite quickly. The evidence is building and I'm including a link that explains how it can help with intrusive thoughts caused by OCD (it doesn't have to be OCD related but I think there are similarities to the kind of catastrophic thinking you are talking about). I only heard about it a year or so ago and when I started having panic attacks after my Dad died I went for a couple of sessions and it reduced the severity of them to about a 2 where they had been at 7/8 on a scale of 1 to 10. I haven't had one at all for many months now. https://psychcentral.com/ocd/emdr-for-ocd

I have the same sort of thoughts op. Sometimes it's the slightest thing that can trigger me.
Some days I wonder how anyone can be happy when there is so much pain and suffering happening all around us.

What i try to do is allow myself a window of time where I let these thoughts in. Then I say to myself that is enough and try to focus on something, anything positive to distract me. I feel guilty if I try to block out the thoughts completely. I'm not sure why but it's something I'm trying to work on.

@WordInYourShellLike Thank you, I was diagnosed with OCD when I was younger (a bad phase that I moved past) so it may well be a similar thing. I'll look into this

Sertraline and hypnotherapy. Had been a catastrophic-thinker all my life. Much better now. It's awful and it takes over your life; do something because you deserve to feel better.

This is ocd. Sertraline doesn’t slow your normal thoughts, but does help to quieten the catastrophic ones. Give it a go?

I was very opposed to medication for a long time, for similar reasons. But a few years ago I started on Citalopram and it has really changed my life. It didn't slow me down mentally at all. I know it's not for everyone, but maybe talk to your GP?