Is this intrusive thoughts?

[AnxietBeGone]

I've had on and off anxiety since DC1 was born. It got triggered badly again after DC2, had CBT and felt so much better.

Recently I feel awful again. What happens is I get an idea in my head and then I will Google it and look for clues until I am utterly convinced it will happen. I always jump to the absolute worst case scenario where it won't be fixable, my life will be ruined and most of all I will have failed my DC massively. (Sometimes they are relatively trivial things that still feel like the end of the world, sometimes they're really bad things like a brain tumour)

They used to last a few days until I got tired of worrying and moved on or got distracted enough by life or replaced it with a new worry. This latest one has been going on a few weeks though and I feel worse everyday. I am sure we are days away from disaster. I'm starting to feel physically symptoms that confirm my fear.

Are they intrusive thoughts? How can I stop them?

I know exactly what you mean. Every time little one would nap, I wouldn't even let myself make a cup of coffee because I felt like I needed to spend every second 'researching' which just sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. I too would try and reason with myself about how it would make me feel better, I would only do it for a few minutes, just one search etc but I can recognise now that it will not help.

I'm not entirely sure what the difference is if I'm honest. When I had my initial assessment the lady talked about there being different 'steps' of treatment and she felt I would be better suited to step 3 this time with a high intensity therapist. I think I am right in saying she works with more severe/recurrent anxiety. I would definitely recommend asking if you could have some more sessions, I think as baby is under 1, they will still fast track you.

I'm so pleased you feel like things might be on the up though!

Wow, I think I'm going through the same thing.

There are so many similarities with the obsession with Googling and I too tell myself it's for reassurance but then get worked up terribly when I see things that are worrying. Like you, I will fixate on them and pretty much filter any reassuring information out.

I guess I've always been anxious but it ramped up significantly when DS1 was born. I was initially cautious of taking him out in case someone threw acid on us (there had been a number of acid attacks in the local news tbf), I was also worried he might have cystic fibrosis, then epilepsy, then coeliac disease, then asthma, then autism. He's 4 now and does not appear to have any of these things.

It's now ramped up big time with DS2. I was wary fir a while of taking him out in case we got attacked. I was also convinced (now still abit worried), he has some kind of rare symdrome because (to me) he has some odd features. I've mentioned it to HVs, doctors and 2 paediatricians. All have said he looks normal. Each visit has allayed my fears for 48hours max, then I'm back to being hypervigilant again. Now I'm also wary he might be autistic because he's not that interested in his reflection and flexes his fingers quite a lot and has a kind of T rex resting position of his arms quite alot (guess what Google told me that could mean?) Despite him having great eye contact, shared attention, eating well, babbling, etc.I can't shake my concerns and completely catastrophise the outcomes.

I struggle with what's reality and what's in my head. Is it mother's intuition or am I terribly anxious?

It's been nice to read your thread and know I'm not alone. Misery loves company, after all🙃

Sorry you're suffering @ItsAllABitMuch but yes it is really nice to hear you are not alone. Especially in the early days of anxiety, I was anxious about the anxiety itself and wondering if it meant I would slowly go crazy, I'm more at ease with it all now, knowing it can be common.

I was also always a worrier, but I feel like it turned into actual anxiety after DC1 was born. Perhaps it's natural to become more alert/vigilant after having babies, that's what we are programmed to do to make sure we keep our babies safe, but for us this mechanism is just in overdrive?

Totally relate to not knowing if its mother's intuition or just anxiety.

Have you had CBT? It's not a quick fix but it does help. I now know what to do when I have these thoughts (e.g. not Google), but implementing it when I am in the thick of it is still really hard.

I've also been worrying about DC2 and autism lately, since watching a documentary about it. It's now given my brain way too many ideas of things to look out for and interpret. It's exhausting!

Yes an excellent book!

OCD and health anxiety are very often hand in hand. @AnxietBeGone I would return to your CBT and I would also recommend a CBT based book called Break Free from OCD by Fiona Challcombe, Professor Paul Salkovskis et al. This will remind you that thoughts are not facts! Everyone has intrusive thoughts, it’s very human BUT it’s what you do with them, how much you believe them to be fact that makes the difference. It’s not unusual for someone previously untroubled by anxiety to have gone through a period of stress or a particular event and begun to respond to intrusive thoughts in a way they wouldn’t have done before. It’s not unusual in new mothers with all the changes and the sense of responsibility to have their first thoughts about harm and be unable to dismiss those constant and reoccurring thoughts.

As you know, as soon as you engage with the thoughts and feel responsible for managing the content of those thoughts by carrying out an action to manage the distress, whether that’s checking, washing or something internal like thought stopping or thinking a “good’ thought to override “bad”, then that increases the anxiety and the more you carry out the action to try and calm the thoughts the less chance you have to disprove the threat.

Perhaps during CBT (not in the early sessions) you had exposure response prevention (ERP). This approach is structured and gets you to expose yourself to the threat and sit with the discomfort of not responding, your anxiety goes right up, stays up then starts to drop, next time you’re exposed to the same “threat” anxiety raises and drops perhaps quicker and in time anxiety doesn’t rise so steeply and falls more quickly without having to carry out a compulsion (which only serves to increase anxiety even if it feels helpful in the short term).

If you do return to CBT outside NHS and want to see someone face to face privately make sure that therapist is specifically accredited by BABCP (see their website) then you will know their core training and supervision is specifically CBT and they haven’t just done a weekend course or something!). Why not go back to the beginning of CBT, before you got to the ERP bit and examine what the problem is (Theory A Theory B - I’m just trying to remind you here of things you might have looked at early on!). I really recommend the Break Free book - start on page one and work though it systematically.

Just to answer your question: a high intensity therapist is a fully accredited CBT therapist. Often (but not always) people see a Psychological Well-being Practitioner first and then if they don’t recover they are “stepped up” to a high intensity therapist who has more training to work with more complex or enduring problems. There are some great PWPs and HI therapists in the NHS but the system is deluged and waitlists can be long.

I really wish you the best in getting on top of your anxiety (and everyone else here who is struggling). It’s tough but you CAN get on top of it 💐

@AnxietBeGone No, I haven't had CBT yet. I was referred for talking therapy so I'm having that. It helps a little but. I really want to try CBT but I'm goving the talking therapy a go first.

I am exactly the same with having always been a worrier and it turning into full blown anxiety since becoming a mother. The anxiety faded once DS got to about 2.5 so I'm hoping this happens with DS2.

I have a terrible Google addiction too, which feeds the anxiety tremendously. I've been trying to accept the anxious thoughts and rationalise them, as I've been advised to do. When that doesn't work I play Words with Friends on my phone!

@YouOKHun thank you so much for the thoughtful response and recommendations. I'm going to get one of these books, just need to decide which. When I had CBT they said I had generalised anxiety and I never scored high enough on the OCD questionnaires interestingly. So I wonder if the Happiness Trap might be better for me than the Break Free from OCD one. I'll look into it.

The ERP stuff is so interesting, I don't remember having that.

@ItsAllABitMuch I hope the talking therapy goes well. I also remember my anxiety fading as DC1 got older so fingers crossed it happens again this time. I just hate thinking I'm wasting so much of this precious time away in my own head.

I have the issue with Google but also with social media in general. Like.on this site I'll go to the health sections and then read about all sorts of issues I'd not thought about before and feed my brain. I need to be more disciplined and stop doing that!

Yes, I'm the same with the health section. I'll also go to the parenting section and behaviour/development section. It's like I will subconsciously search and search until I find something to wind myself up. It really is very tiring indeed!