Intrusive Thoughts

Everybody will have experienced intrusive thoughts at some point in their lives. Some tiny and insignificant, some amazingly scary.

Along with everything else that I try to battle against, intrusive thoughts are the worst.

Sometimes these real life, dream like images can be something simple like 'shit, I've left my straighteners on' but then they progress;

'I definitely left them on'

'I know the bathroom is alight now'

'The whole house will be burnt down by the time I get home'

'We've lost everything'

These thoughts very quickly escalate, spiral out of control and dissolve me into a puddle of anxiety. These kind of thoughts are what stop me from doing anything with my days, but this kind of thought is not the worst.

I find myself going through strange patterns. Incredible highs, feeling so content & on top of the world until it all comes crashing down and I'm stuck in the black pit of depression, seemingly with no way of escape.

Its at these dampening lows that everything starts to jumble.

I sleep more yet am completely exhausted.

The OCD lists of daily jobs spiral to the point that I am no longer good enough to reach my own expectations.

I lose all motivation and then gain a tonne of guilt for work not done.

Intrusive thoughts become living nightmares whilst I walk, eat, sleep, breath.

Let me give you an example of something that re-occurs in my head more often than I appreciate.

My unwanted thoughts usually involve my children.

About a week ago, I was walking home from school and all of a sudden my head decided to show me my children being kidnapped.

Now this isn't just a brief flash of 'oh shit, what if that happened', it is like an incredibly vivid dream but while you're awake and based in the situation/surroundings that you are currently in.

I could look to my left on the walk home, to the road and see men pull up in a car, grabbing my children. They're screaming, I'm screaming, no one can help them, no one can help me, my 3 year old's stuffed toy rabbit is on the floor whilst the car speeds off.

It's these thoughts that make me grab both children's hands that little bit tighter, and make all of our legs work that little bit faster to get home, with tears in my eyes and lock the door.

Once a thought like this happens, it shuts me down. I feel like I can no longer function. In all honesty, I end up petrified. It's like it just happened, even looking at my children happy & safe, doesn't satisfy me ... it's like the thought was the reality and the reality isn't so.

The only way I can truly explain it is that it's like watching a movie, a movie with such incredible actors, you forget that it's just a movie, you forget that it isn't real.

You replay it over and over again and start questioning if you could handle the situation you've seen, you ask yourself what would happen after. How would my children cope, how would me and my husband cope. Would we ever find them? would they be looked after, would they be sold, would they be hurt, would they remember me ?????

This isn't the worst thought I have. I constantly live like my husband is cheating on me, I will forever be haunted by the vision of both my son's dying in front of me, my friends & family hating me, the constant anxiety around thinking people are talking about me because I swear I heard them.

If I could pick only one symptom to forever banish from me, it would be this. These thoughts that hurt me in every-way imaginable.

If I could rid myself of these, I am certain that I could manage everything else with more ease.

Maybe one day I'll find a hypnotist that can make me forget or something?!

So that's enough rambling today. This has been something I've wanted to write about for a long time and it seems I've finally done it.

Thanks for reading.

The Anxious Mother x