To worry it’s all just a bit too perfect? What is waiting just around the corner?

[1wokeuplikethis]

Ok, I’m scared that this is going to sound smug which is honestly not my intention.

I am a person who constantly counts my blessings and make myself aware of things to be grateful for.

I am in my 30s, absolutely in love with my husband, we have two wonderful kids. We have our own house, we both still have our parents, we both have jobs we like, we have good friends, we are the fittest we have ever been. We have holidays and when we need things we can generally just afford them. We have loving families, we have the world at our feet.

But I have a nagging feeling that I am getting off to easily in life. While I am grateful, I also feel scared not to literally list everything in my head each night that I am grateful for, for fear of something catastrophically bad happening. Almost as in, if I am thankful hard enough it might keep the bad away. I feel there is some shit tonne of hurt or heartache hanging over us, like I am being lulled into false security and recently I have found myself thinking “enjoy now because in ten years time you will wish you’d appreciated your life more now”. Which makes it hard to feel contentment because I worry the minute I just breathe and relax, something will go wrong. It’s very stressful, which sounds bloody ludicrous. But I can’t appreciate my life any more because I am obsessively and unhealthily graspingly grateful and petrified of something going wrong.

The feeling began when my best friend got terminal cancer, then my father was diagnosed with cancer shortly after. My dad is now ok but my beautiful friend didn’t see her 32nd birthday. It’s so cruel. And so disgustingly random. I feel like if it can happen to them, it will happen to me or my immediate family.

Does anyone else feel like this? And what is it? It’s like fear, anxiety, panic all wrapped in one and it creeps into me every night and then I feel so unsettled that by bedtime I’m worked up thinking my word will come crashing down tomorrow somehow. My AIBU is: am I right in thinking I have some mental health problem here?

Which, in itself is ludicrous: oh poor me feeling so worried for myself in my perfect little life ☹️

Just to add, my primal fear is death. I’m terrified someone I love will be taken away from me. I know death is inevitable, and I am scared of losing loved ones when the time comes, but my real fear is the ruthless silent creeping death that hits you out of nowhere.

Sounds like anxiety, and slightly obsessive thinking. CBT might be good to retrain your thinking. There’s literally no point in worrying about things going to shit, yes shit things will happen as you go through life, but worrying is not going to affect the outcomes of when and what happens. Life is too short.

I know exactly what you mean. I used to constantly think “how will I be tested?” or worry that because our lives are so lovely and easy, something was bound to go wrong sooner or later.
Earlier this year we did have a bit of a scare, and in a silly way it’s eased the fear because I feel like now we’ve had a fair enough share of trouble. Which is ridiculous!

I don’t worry about it’s much as it sounds like you do. However I get the whole ‘being/feeling too lucky’ and I too, worry it’s all going to come crashing down around me. I was only thinking about it this morning.

It's hard to know if you are being unreasonable or not - losing your friend must have been horrendous, it's great that everything else is good for you. We all have our challenges, some more than others. MH issues aren't confined to people who are suffering misfortune, it does sound like you may have anxiety or obsessive thoughts going on right now - might be worth a chat with your GP (& don't minimise it - a poll answered by randoms on the internet can't really help - a professional probably can..)

You lost your best friend You're bereaved Op, thats big. Have you had any support, therapy? Sorry about your dad too, I’m glad he’s ok now

I feel like if it can happen to them, it will happen to me or my immediate family.

Well, bluntly, that's basically how it works. Some people get a mix of bad and good, some people get great thing after great thing, and some people get endless horror. Random dumb luck.

Most of the time people insulate themselves from that terrifying reality by trying to build a fantasy of control and safety, i.e. By telling themselves it's not about luck, and things happen to other people because that person somehow did something to cause it (hence victim blaming of rape victims for what they wore and where they were etc)

Sounds like your close tragedies have demolished your ability to maintain that facade of safety and control over your own life. You say you count your blessings, but it actually sounds traumatic to have had those experiences.

This is a natural reaction. Normally such things get better on their own in time as your brain processes it and you come to terms, but if it's making life unbearable or you'd like support you can ask about accessing therapy of some description.

You're not mad or smug. You're human, and right now you're a human who's struggling. Try and have some compassion for yourself.

But you have had some awful things happen in your life OP. You’ve lost your friend to cancer at a really young age and your dad has been poorly too.

So time to enjoy what you have in your life now

I experienced this after going through a period of grief I hadn’t properly dealt with. Nobody on a forum can help diagnose you of course but it does sound like overly anxious thoughts - mine took the form of severe health anxiety and like you I was petrified that something was going to happen to me or my loved ones.
This was after going through a traumatic event.
I think it would be worth speaking to someone OP I’d be surprised if it wasn’t related to the loss of your friend and the scare with your dad.
You’re not being smug at all - I’m so sorry you lost your friend like that

I wasn’t expecting such warm and caring replies so thank you very much, your kindness has given me a lump in my throat. I am not downplaying losing my best friend, but I shouldn’t mope because every day that I am here is a day longer than she was ever blessed with. It’s been almost two years, no I didn’t get any help other than my immediate family who were so supportive, life was busy with my young children so I busied myself.

Every now and then I get a chokehold of grief, and I can’t bear it. I’m not strong enough and I’m ashamed to say I think I find it easier to handle by not thinking about her very much. Which is so unfair; she was so vibrant and vital, so fun and absolutely the most interesting person I have ever met, as well as kind, outrageous, blunt, optimistic, hilarious and loving. I feel sad that I can’t allow myself to think of her, when she should be celebrated. Certainly not hidden away in my head. But I don’t have time to fall apart, plus it’s a while since I lost her, my children need me at my best and I’m scared if I face my true feelings that is just a pit of despair that I’m too scared to fall down. It’s easier to put it to the back of my mind, except it’s not really, if that is the root cause of these anxieties. I don’t know.

I have exactly this and was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder. I did CBT this year and it did help. I still have the thoughts but it's easier to manage them now.

I'm really sorry about your friend, that's so so awful and would definitely make it worse. My obsessive thoughts with death became worse when my close friend lost her dad to cancer very suddenly. Just seeing how heartbroken she was sent me into a spiral of "this will happen to me soon". I often read things on the news, like that awful story of the police officer who was killed just 4 weeks after his wedding, and start to panic that something like that will happen to someone I love, because there's absolutely no reason for it to happen to others and not me. It can be so utterly draining and I completely understand what you mean when you say you struggle to feel content and just enjoy life when it's good. I got to a point where I was crying every night because I was petrified my partner was going to die suddenly with no warning and I'd go through the whole scenario in my head of how I would feel if that happened. In my head, if I imagined it and played it out in my mind it was somehow less likely to happen because I was "prepared" for it. This was, of course, pointless and just exhausted me to the point where I couldn't concentrate or enjoy anything because I was so preoccupied with mentally "preparing" for some future catastrophe.

I'd recommend going to the GP and seeing if CBT helps you

I used to feel that way too, OP. In my 30s DH and I had small kids, youngish/healthy parents, good careers, etc. (I’m way too superstitious to ever say we had “the world at our feet” but in retrospect we probably did.) And was still waiting to see what was going to go wrong. Yet when it started happening it wasn’t how or what I had worried about at all. From what I have seen anecdotally among friends and from what’s happened to me I think sadly as you get toward 40 and into your mid 40s it’s not uncommon for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Just statistically as a generation/friend group that’s when our parents were aging, we were beginning to age ourselves, our children were growing up and problems developed and were revealed, marriages strained and failed, careers had peaks and troughs. We’ve all been tested in ways most of us would have thought would have broken us if you asked 13 or 14 years ago. But speaking for my DH and me, we’re OK. We are lucky that our children are healthy and we are reasonable but healthy so we are incredibly thankful for that. And the rest just works itself out. Hi there I am

'Everybody gets something' my mum used to say. It just sometimes seems as though some get more than others. Maybe losing your friend and your dad being ill was your 'something.' Or maybe it is still to come. But you can't live your life worrying about it or you'll miss out on all the good things you have now.

Your friend sounds amazing OP Maybe some grief counselling would help. You don’t have to let it overwhelm you all the time, maybe you could access and work through your grief with a grief counsellor when it feels safe and pack it away when you need to, too.

I agree that it's likely to stem from the shock of your friend's death and dad's illness. What you have written describes how I feel almost exactly and I never felt like this until my partner died. Apparently is a pretty common reaction to a devastating life event.

Counselling is definitely helpful - do look into it won't you? Promise? I get that you're scared to let yourself feel and voice these painful emotions, but my own experience is that it's so much more cathartic than you'd believe.

I'm so sorry about your friend

I don't know if this will make you feel any better OP but my life has been fairly consistently shit and I still feel like this Any smooth periods are overshadowed by the fear that everything will go wrong, and sooner or later they generally do! So life being consistently good patently isn't what predisposes you to tragedy, and if it is then where the fuck is my nice long good spell to balance things out???

I don't mean to make light, and PP's have given good insight and advice, I just wanted you to know you're not 'tempting fate' by being happy, shit things happen when you're miserable too

I went through similar thoughts and feelings for a good ten years after i was in a serious car accident when I was a teenager and I'm lucky to be here, i changed overnight it made me appreciate absolutely everything grateful for life itself and the whole world the list was endless and before the accident I was a carefree teenager with little fear of anything after accident I worried about everything and everyone and also made me afraid of anything remotely dangerous from fair rides, crossing a bridge to swimming in the sea but of corse it was cars that really set me off it was like I could see the dangers far more clearly and it scared me so but I wouldn't let it stop me as I knew I was being ridiculous and pushed myself through these things but it all came to a head for me around a year after the accident when my little brother asked me to play on his game console with him one night and it was car racing and While playing the game I crashed I threw the controller in panic and huddled up and cried at the sight of it, it was all on screen but there I was panicking and scared so i visited the gp and was completely honest with him, he referred me to a counsellor who talked with me about all this and helped massively and thought me techniques that helped when I could feel these feelings or started having thoughts but it was a gradual process and I think I seen her for around a year with huge results but took me around ten years to get past it all completely
I'll never be the person I was that day changed me same as I'd expect most big events in peoples lives to but I'm much more relaxed and able to appreciate things in a healthy way

I lost my best friend a few years ago ( he was also a good friend of my wife too) and it was awful, we were having a night out with him 6 weeks before he died.

It certainly made me think to just enjoy life and take each day as it comes. However much you plan things (and it's good to do that), you never know what's around the corner. Enjoy yourself and your husband each day and if it makes you feel less anxious, just say a little thank you in your head each day.

I feel the same every day. My DS has just been diagnosed with a severe allergy though he is now ok.
I wasn't actually surprised but now my feeling of waiting for the axe to fall, which was bad anyway, is through the roof.

I’m terrified someone I love will be taken away from me.

And this is exactly what will happen eventually. I'm not being grim or goady, it's just the truth. All any of us can do is to live the best lives we can, share our love the most we can, and deal with the hurt that will come our way when it happens. No one is immune to the realities of living. Wasting time worrying about the inevitable is just that, wasting time.

I could have written your post. A few months ago I stopped in the kitchen whilst alone, and literally thought in this moment I'm so happy and absolutely terrified something will go wrong. A few weeks later husband diagnosed with cancer. He's fine now, we got through it (testicular cancer, one of the 'better' cancers) and I'm back to thinking how perfect things are. Life happens, something sad will occur at one point, you readjust and continue to make the most of life. You just have to x