Catastrophic thinking

Ya so this has been a fun one.

Here is how my psychologist explained it to me. You have so much capacity in your brain.  You use that capacity for everything from remembering to breathe and eat to dealing with stresses that come your way. As you go through traumatic events, the space available to "cope" with things gets smaller.  It takes more of your energy to remember to put one foot in front of the other, so you have less ability to deal with any added stress. So when you hear people say they get overwhelmed easily, one of the reasons is this capacity is on the full side.

For me, I feel like my capacity has been sitting in full for years. I always say I have too many tabs open in  my brain when I'm getting overwhelmed and I usually have to walk away from whatever the tipping point was. Its either too much, or too many things at once. Like being in the kitchen with the TV on, trying to follow a recipe, having someone asking me a question and the phone rings. For me, immediate freak out. Simply too many things in the background taking up attention space. Bizarre cause I was always rejuvenated by lots going on. So that was a change.

But here was the biggest one. When I'm in flight mode, I cannot reasonably wonder about things without it going pretty dark. Example - my daughter who is away at school messages me. I message her back and it goes unanswered. I try to call and it goes to voicemail. I message again and no response. "Normally" my thought would be she must be in class. When I'm overwhelmed it goes like this - she isn't answering so she must not have access to her phone. Which is weird cause she always has her phone. Which means she must have been taken by someone and couldn't grab her phone. Which means she was kidnapped and is now on her way to be sex trafficked. And I panic.

Or hubby is in a bad mood. Well he must be mad at me for putting him through all my stuff the last few years. And if he is mad at me he might leave. If he leaves I am lost. And I panic.

Take whatever situation you want: I'm a bad friend cause I don't socialize as much as I used to so all my friends must hate me; I don't check in on family as much as I should; the guy in the car behind me is going to crash into me cause I'm not going fast enough. The list goes on. And I panic.

When I tell you its not fun, it is an understatement. And I work really hard to catch it before it goes into full blown panic mode. But it isn't easy, especially when I'm tired. When I'm tired I don't have the energy to fight off the catastrophe that is only in my head. I know I'm not the only one, but it's exhausting.

I've found a few things that help snap me out of it. Breathing deep breaths, tapping my head, going for a walk, talking to my husband. I try to do any or all of those before I get too far down the rabbit hole (I tend to get a tingling in my shoulders and hands as I fall into a spiral so now I can catch it more), and most days now I can catch it (thank  God). On the days I can't, I try really hard to remind myself that what is in my head isn't real. Then I call hubby and he just talks literally about anything. The sound of his voice brings me out of the panic attack.

Not saying that the worries don't come - they do. I'm just learning that I can control them and, if I need to, deal with them. Even if dealing is calling my kid until she messages me to tell me she is in class.

J