Doubting love - worries worries and more worries !! plz help

[kingpin]

please email me at [email protected]

 

i'm sad that you feel the same as i felt (still feel sometimes) I would recommend councelling, it;s doing great for me....but please send me your address so we can chat - hopefully we can help each other.

 

I personally feel that i am freeing myself from this trouble and am getting on with my life and relationship at the moment but there is a fear that it will all come back.

 

I would liek to chat about how things are going for you - as it seems that you are in the exact same boat as i was (am) in

 

David )

[meanon]

David, I'm glad the counselling is helping and that you are doing so well

 

Gnote:

I'd like it if Kingpin and the others who have posted in this thread could comment on my situation.

gaia and I read your post and independently reached similar conclusions. You could be suffering from the same kind of intrusive thought problem that kingpin had but there's a significant difference that makes me think that it may be something else. Your intrusive thoughts only started when your girlfriend went away. It may be that, whilst you want the relationship to continue as a long distance one, you are finding it hard to cope with and so you are emotionally distancing yourself from her.

 

If you are unsure about whether you have unnaturally strong intrusive thoughts then you should get assessed by a psychologist as there is treatment available.

[spanishlover]

Yes, those symptoms should be taken very seriously. These can indeed be symptoms of bipolar disorder, e.g "obsessive compulsive disorder", OCD. But the usual medication treatment for OCD (as opposed to the psychotherapy approach called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)), is antidepressants. And antidepressants can make bipolar disorder worse. But "mood stabilizers", So most mood expert psychiatrists I think would start by treating the bipolar side of things first and hope that got the whole collection of symptoms, which in my experience is clearly possible much of the time. You need to hook up with a doc who knows about the role of mood stabilizers and their combinations and see if that's the right thing to do now.

[Gnote]

gaia and I read your post and independently reached similar conclusions. You could be suffering from the same kind of intrusive thought problem that kingpin had but there's a significant difference that makes me think that it may be something else. Your intrusive thoughts only started when your girlfriend went away. It may be that, whilst you want the relationship to continue as a long distance one, you are finding it hard to cope with and so you are emotionally distancing yourself from her.

 

That could be what triggered them in the first place, but I think I may not have been totally clear in my original post. She went away last fall, at the beginning of september. She always came back for weekends, and she was SUPER stressed out. A teaching internship is not a stressless undertaking. I think the sudden change with her leaving (as you say), her stress, and my stress of starting a new year of school all combined to place a heavy weight on my shoulders, as well as her's. What I don't believe i made clear originally is that she returned in December, after completing her internship. So since last December (2003), she has been back in the city.

 

My anxious feelings come and they go. Like I said originally, they seem to crop up and worsen when I am stressed, and to a lesser extent when she is stressed. For instance, this past summer was very good in this regard. Due to a lack of stress, I was able to focus on the good parts of the relationship. I'd be lying, however, if I said that there was not usually the thought in the back of my mind; the worry that the anxiety might return, as well as this constant "you can't be totally happy because you have this hanging over your head."

 

Sometimes I get so run down and consumed by it that I feel like breaking up with her would just make everything easier. I desparately DO NOT want to break up with this girl. She is beautiful, she understands me, and I would be losing so very much if I did.

 

This is not the first relationship that these anxious feelings have overcome me, but it is the first relationship that I've felt strongly enough like I should fight the temptation to end it. Never before have I dated a girl so compatible with me. In the past the relationships were more like teenage relationships and such, that I knew would eventually end. It seems though, that when they began to get serious, this anxiety kicked in; an anxiety that was beyond what would probably be considered normal.

 

I can definitely see myself with this current girl in many years. All I want is to get rid of this "reminder" that pops up and ruins it whenever I feel completely content.

 

I'd like any help you can offer.

[meanon]

I think the fact that you have had this problem in previous relationships may be significant.

 

You should certainly be assessed by a psychologist or psychiatrist. It may be that you are suffering from obsessional thoughts in which case it would be worth being checked out for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). One of gaia's earlier posts best describes the nature of such thoughts and how to begin tackling them:

 

Does the rational part of you know that there is nothing to worry about, but that little "voice" just keeps on coming back? Do you just wish it would go away and stop bugging you? Does it make you anxious and upset? Is it better while your mind is occupied but as soon as you try to relax, back it comes? Do you feel you have to try to answer this nagging doubt by constantly thinking about whether you love her or not, but however much you try to work it out it just keeps coming back even more?

 

If this sounds like you, then you are experiencing obsessional thoughts. I have had them lots of times about lots of things. I'll tell you what worked for me. Firstly, the thought that popped into your head out of nowhere was normal. Everyone gets random thoughts. For some reason, this one struck a chord with you and you started worrying about why you'd had it. The more you thought about it, the more it kept coming back. It has assumed a lot of power - it has the power to make you anxious and drive yourself crazy thinking through the same things over and over again.

 

To fight it, you need to take its power away. When it comes into your head and you think you have to go through every detail of your relationship to analyse whether or not you love her,you need to stop yourself. Tell yourself it is a stupid thought, that everyone has stupid thoughts and that it means absolutely nothing about the state of your relationship.

 

Initially, it is going to be very hard to resist the temptation to "just think it through one more time" but it will get easier and the anxiety you feel will wear off. Every time you think through the relationship, the thought is gaining more control over you.

 

It's difficult from your posts so far to know exactly what you are experiencing, so it may be that this doesn't feel like it's you at all. If so, feel free to ignore everything I said!!! If it does feel like you, you may also want to check out some threads by Thinkalot, which contain lots of people's ideas on how to deal with this kind of problem.

 

My understanding is that OCD is different from bipolar disorder (manic depression) or unipolar disorder (depression). There are a lot of techniques you can learn to overcome the thoughts (many are described in thinkalot's threads) and this best done during cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which has a high success rate when combined with meds.

 

It's very common for problems of this type to worsen under stress and it may be that your girlfriend deals with it less well when she is under stress and so that makes the situation worse too.

 

If you do have obsessional thoughts the first thing is to recognise that the worry is not real and so you should not act on it, inparticular do not engage your girlfriend in discussion about it. Secondly you need to recognise that rumminating on the thought does not get rid of it but makes it worse and so you need techniques to help you avoid rumminations. Thirdly, when you are more confident in your ability to dispel the thoughts, you need to learn to detach yourself from them. No longer will you need to employ strategies to get rid of them, you'll be able to notice them arrive and leave without undue anxiety. As you can see, this is a process. The condition is caused by an imbalance in a brain chemical, serotonin, which is why it's much easier to resolve with meds.

 

Do have a look at Thinkalot's early threads which contain much of the detail of the techniques she learned in therapy and those that others suggested too. Let us know how you get on. If I can find any of them I'll post a link.

 

The first step is an accurate diagnosis. If you do have OCD, remember that many people have successfully overcome this condition, there's no reason why you can't be one of them

[Papillon]

Originally posted by moimeme

Turn off your brain.

 

Easier sed than done, moimeme. We don't all have your level of practise

 

 

(Just kidding)

[meanon]

Here are a few of those threads I mentioned:

 

http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t31412/

http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t34075/

http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t36232/

http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t35488/