How to break out of feeling that everything is going wrong?

[PhilHellene]

I hesitated to start this thread but I feel the need to get it all out on paper. Sorry in advance for what’s almost certainly going to be rambling (and probably a bit elliptical because I don’t want to out myself).

I had a significant bereavement a few years ago that coincided with all the Covid stuff, plus job changes for me as I approached the end of my career. I’ve come out of that having effectively been edged out at work. I’m lucky not to have to look for another job - I’ve been saving for years and have a couple of small pensions I can take now - but I enjoyed my job and it was a major source of self-esteem and companionship for me. I feel diminished now it's gone.

The bereavement knocked me totally sideways and it’s only in the last year or two that I’ve felt on a more secure keel with that, but it threw up family issues that have become long-term and intractable. Difficult to explain but the end result is that I’m waking up early every morning, head full of problems, and getting more and more exhausted as I’m not sleeping and over-thinking.

Then a series of smaller but no less worrying things seem to have kept happening. It’s just one thing after another. I won’t bother to list them but tbh I’m now at the point where I’m just waiting for the next shitty thing. It feels as though nothing good has happened for seemingly years. Things DH and I have done that have been attempts to move forwards have come back to bite us and gone wrong, costing money and effort. I feel utterly beaten down and I just have no resilience.

This morning I woke up at 6:30 again, mind racing, and just wanted to cry. I don’t even know why I’m posting, really. Has anyone been in a similar place and turned themselves round from this despairing mindset? I'm not sure how much longer I can keep going like this without giving way completely.

Once you get into a negative mindset cycle your mind (trying to be helpful!) will point out things that confirm you are right - the confirmation bias, exactly in the same way a person who’s afraid of flying will find “proof “ that it’s dangerous.

To reverse this you need to reeducate your mind. Start looking for positive news stories, active kindness - including doing good for others for the sake of it - getting out into nature. All seemingly small stuff but it will tell your Reticular Activating System (the filter between your conscious and subconscious mind) to start looking for the good stuff.

If this seems too much to do by yourself look for counseling or therapy to get you started.

I have similar and have to remember that once I notice and categorise something as "negative" I feel I list it and then sit back and watch that list grow, which enables me to take on the role of helpless victim. I did this for years and it has taken a lot of work to catch myself doing it, sometimes after I've already had a bad week. This isn't to say shit things don't happen, often in succession and a lot, but that you are the one keeping score and making it into a personal attack/reason to feel low/ the world is against me scenario. I hope I am not sounding harsh (I am working on being sensitive to criticism myself too which again is part of it).

My main daily way to help myself is walking the dog and being outside for at least an hour a day - key to this is not ruminating on my own shit but distracting my brain from it and engaging with the world. I don't like joining clubs (might work for you) so I listen to political or cultural affairs podcasts. Often anything on R4 will readjust my focus and enable me to see a more "macro" picture of the world which often helps me to slow or stop the spiral.

I like the post above mine but actually if I am honest hearing positive stuff when I feel shit makes me seethe and blocks my mind from anything other than the "why me?" type of thinking. I think it can be counter productive for some people to feel enforced joy.

I love this. It’s so true and I need to remind myself to do this! It does work.

I can kind of relate. I had CBT after a couple of bereavements in close succession and it helped but what it really did was make me think about my brain (sounds weird, I know. I decided it needed to be rewired). I thought of it as a computer that needed reprogramming. I took up a hobby that absorbed and calmed my mind. It did take time and conscious effort but it did work.

I also have learned that some decades in life are just much better than others and we have no control over that.

Thanks everyone. I know I’m doing it, which doesn’t help, but there’s a very deep part of me that reacts in an instinctive way at the next terrible thing (and just now it feels there’s inevitably going to be another terrible thing just around the corner so I’m waiting for it to happen any moment). It’s a bit like a mistreated animal expecting the next blow.

I can’t make myself feel as though there’s ever going to be any lightness or positivity in the world any more. It doesn’t much help that the news/world in general is so relentlessly awful.

I’m trying to plod ahead and get on with necessary things but I’m just so exhausted by it all.

here’s a very deep part of me that reacts in an instinctive way at the next terrible thing...it’s a bit like a mistreated animal expecting the next blow.

That 'part' is a bit of your subconscious and it's triggering this fear to try and protect you – it doesn't know what from, and it has no way of foreseeing the future but it's reacting to the events of the pass with the best strategy it has.

You're right – you can't make yourself feel better but it is possible to change this part of you. There's lots of info on my AMA about it.