Obsessive Thoughts

by Amy

My name is Amy and I've been diagnosed with GAD for several years. It all started with an anxiety attack which I didn't know what it was. Anyway, long story short, I've been doing really well with medication and therapy sessions. I did attend talk therapy sessions about a year until it got to a point that both me and my therapist felt that we really had nothing to discuss in our session anymore. My energy was great and my life started to get back to normal. It was a really hard journey but I am thankful I got through it.

Until last week, I've been doing great for 3 years. But I got sick before July 4th weekend and I coughed like crazy. Since my mom passed away because of lung cancer, I was really concerned that I might get the same thing because I coughed to the point that I couldn't fall asleep at night. Then all of the sudden my entire body felt so cold and I kind of knew my anxiety finally came back. I felt frustrated and angry at myself and all kinds of bad experiences, irrational thoughts and emotions ran through my body like really fast. I felt that it took me a year to get back on track, but it only took one incident to destroy all the efforts. But this time, I was more educated about the situation. I took out most of my old notes and help books, contacted my therapist and psychiatrist for advice and started the thought replacement again almost the same day it happened! Because the anxiety came so fast and strong and I haven't practiced thought replacement for a very long time, it's almost like a new thing to me. I can dispute some thoughts easily but there's one thought I just can seem to get over with. I am hoping you could give me some advice.

It's very hard to describe so please bear with my language. I was disputing some other thoughts and it got a point that I was so tired, so I told myself that I was just gonna relax and do it later. All of a sudden, I thought "what was relax, what if the real "relax" was not the one that I've been known?" Then it extended to "what if everything I've known, right or wrong, black or white, green or red is not what it really is?". So all of sudden everything seemed so unreal to me. I was so terrified that all my beliefs and fundamental understanding and recognition of this world might be wrong. The world might not be "world" in "reality". I know this thought is irrational. But I just can't seem to dispute it because it seemed that once I disputed it, another one that is similar just jumps out. I am not sure what I am really worried about. So please help anyway you can. Thank you very much.

I also wanna say: thank you so much for setting up this website. It's my first tool when I started fighting with my anxiety. Thanks!!!