I think I've started worrying excessively about my daughter's behaviour but I was hoping for some outside perspective. She's 17, pretty studious and generally a lovely kid (by all accounts).
A couple of examples would be
- I ended up with 2 tickets to see Phoebe Bridgers at 2 different venues and she asked me if I actually cared about seeing her twice. If not, one of her friends would be interested in buying my ticket. I then started to get anxious thoughts about whether she was trying 'to manipulate me' or make me feel guilty on purpose.
- I had to get some money from her towards her new iphone and did some calculations with her to work out how much it would be. I then realised I'd undercharged her by £10, let her know and told her not to worry about it. But then I started having thoughts about her noticing the difference and deliberately trying to 'cheat me' or 'steal the money'.
For context, I suffer with anxiety and ocd. I'm really good at hiding it luckily and, as far as my daughter's concerned, nothing is wrong and it's business as usual. My sensible side is trying to rationalise that, even if she was trying it on a bit in both cases, neither things are anything too serious or anything to worry about, she's generally an honest, caring kid. I'm also trying to tell myself that my daughter is allowed to be a bit selfish/naughty/even a bit bad sometimes, just like we all are as human beings (but thinking this way is an exposure which can be quite fear provoking. And the anxiety keeps telling me that I need to address a real problem.....
It would be really useful to hear a range of grounded perspectives here from people who aren't anxious! I've had therapy in the past and currently on meds - I function very well but am still finding that the thoughts are getting the better of me sometimes, it's particularly distressing when it's about the kids 😓
Writing this all down has felt quite helpful actually