Anxiety and thoughts

Yes it can be very normal. I have thoughts that turn to terror.anxiety and panic disorder is mostly to do with over thinking. If you think of something bad then that bad thought will make your anxiety and panic trigger. When you think happy thoughts yr panic goes away to an extent. Its all in yr mind. Just distract yr mind when you get a bad thought just call a friend or do a bit of coloring in a book or something like that. Yr mind is yr own worst enemy and it is hard to distract yr mind from sheer panic but try never the less. Hope you can learn to control the over thinking.

Intrusive thoughts / irrational thoughts are a side effect of high anxiety. Your brain is completely over stressed do to the amount of stress pressure the anxiety has placed upon you. The thoughts come in many forms but the way to stop them or at the very east limit their effectiveness is the same.

The bottomline is your brain is hurt and can't handle the massive amount of stress its forced to deal with ( anxiety + thoughts / irrational thoughts ) so what you need to do is find ways to calm yourself. It'll seem impossible at times do to you not feeling motivated to do much if anything at all but you NEED to force yourself to get calm. Exercise is a great way to help with this. Shoveling snow or simply going to the gym or even just walking around your block a few times really helps with this problem.

Anxiety creates a level of adrenaline your body simply can't handle and it overloads and goes into panic mode ( aka anxiety / panic attacks ). If you can find ways to calm yourself and workout or exercise, you'll begin to improve.

Lastly....you're not going mad. These thoughts are NOT something you'll act upon. What its doing is driving up your anxiety to the point you don't think clearly and you start fearing what wont actually happen.

When you can, go see a doctor and get some professional advice but if going to a doctor is not a possibility then just consider what I suggested and it should help to a point. Just remember that anxiety and those thoughts have their good days where you can barely notice it and its bad days when its almost impossible to deal with. If you try to stay positive and keep moving forward those bad days will become few and far between.

Best of luck friend

Hi Jodie , Yes I agree with the 2 previous comments from Steven & John .

Having bad thoughts and overthinking makes anxiety worse .

Then distracting helps . For me walking , and colouring helps a lot ! 

All the best . Donna 

Yes it's very common, I suffered from high anxiety issues from over a decade and believe me there were times when I thought I am going crazy black black..

But it's not true, it's just your anxious IND playing trick on you...

Best is to learn coping mechanism when you are at your low....For me excersice and breathing excersice helps a lot.

Try it

Hi Jodie - your experiencing a lot of noise, your brain is on overdrive of all the things that are going to go wrong in the future, you can't sleep because it won't shut up.

Try this it takes 5 mins 

lie down and put your hands on your heart, for 1 min just focus on breathing deep into your heart - breath through your nose for 4 secs, hold for 4 secs and out through your mouth for 4 secs - focus on breathing through your heart.

Next begin to flood your heart with thoughts about all the things in your life where you are blessed, grateful and appeciative.  Think of time when you were truly happy, picture it, was it a movie, colour, black and white, what did it sound and smell like? Relive that moment and make it brighter - imagine how you felt at that time.

Next continue to throw another one in on top of the previous until you have 3 or 4 great memories.

When you do this your focus has shifted and it's impossible to be anxious, fearful or angry whenever you change your state to being grateful and blessed.

Practice this everyday - Everyday 5mins uninterrupted .

Initially the thoughts may come back you need to interrupt the pattern with a random thought like "bananas are blue"

Ask yourself the following questions and focus on what you are excited about right now, who are proud of, who loves you and who do you love, what are you grateful for. If you can't find anything ask yourself what could you proud of,excited about,love etc. when you get your answers to each question, ask yourself what is that makes you feel that way.

How do I know it works - I've been there.  Gratitude and blessings through your heart will blow them away.

do this everyday - take charge and control the way you feel.

Hi Jodie - yes absolutely... i have GAD and am as of now suffering serious helath anxiety ... at the start of the winter this year as the days started getting shorter I had panic attacks and I thought i was loosing my balance ... i thought i was going lune ... i am M 33

Hello jodie, yes, I do fear going mad and sometimes when things are tough I believe I really am mad (but then later I reason to myself I'm not.) I spend most of my time alone, overwhelmed or at a loss, (coping really) and I wonder if the mind has a limit to how much aloneness or worry it can take. But at the same I just try to make sure I'm as ethically sound as I can be in my life, which gives me my sense of sanity. So far so good in that respect. I have intense social anxiety. I find it hard to understand or 'accept' to be honest.