Hello all,

Long story short, have been coming off meds slowly but still struggling. I have noticed that my mind is panicking, even if things aren't severely bad. If I have a depressed day, my mind literally panics and worries about the worst case scenario: self-injury, suicide, hospitalization, etc. It's not that I'm even having any dangerous thoughts, but my mind seems to be worrying in advance!

I wonder if it's because my past has included these scenarios a lot, and so I fear them the most.

I feel depressed during the day and sometimes wired in the evening until I take my medication. (FYI, it's the Seroquel XR that is currently being decreased). I worry that once I get off that medication completely...I will be wired/anxious/depressed 24/7. Why am I so pessimistic? How can I change?

[tnlibrarian]

I'm not sure what to tell you. Generally I'm an optimistic person but if a difficult situation comes up I automatically jump to the worst case scenario. If money is tight we're on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. If DH goes on a business trip and I can't immediately get in touch with him at night he's with another woman. I almost never voice this stuff to anyone and I'm always wrong (thankfully) but it drives me up the wall.

....yeah it's hectic living in the future, I find it's a very strange place to live and not just because it's not here yet but because it seems so real in my mind. It sure makes the present hectic!
most people might refer to it as worry but it's a bit different when it's impending doom panic and I wonder and expect it's this bipolar thing of being hyper alert to things that can go heaps wrong and hurt?

I know for sure that I don't cope with problems and troubles life can send my way and get triggered into a psychotic meltdown or even a melt-up and then later a meltdown....and it seems like this mental reflex to be worrying in extremes so as to avoid each and every possibility of 'losing it!'

...so it's a weird transaction...like
I exchange my overdeveloped sense of worry and any chance of true calm.... for....a life thats mentally hectic but generally free from major problems.

...this seems to be the pattern and how I'm conditioned to protect myself from me because if I'm gonna flip out I wanna get there first somehow.
it's weird because it works 95% of the time. The other 5% seems beyond my control and my manic depressive alien leaders beam me up to the mother ship no matter what I do...

[BipolaRNurse]

And I thought I was the only person in the universe who catastrophizes and thinks the worst is going to happen........whew! Glad to know I'm not alone.

[BuggsBunny]

Yeah, it's a thing I used to do, too. My T finally retrained me into "This is not going to be a disaster". Sometimes, I have to repeat it like a mantra. After a few years, I even began to believe it, and now I trust that everything that goes wrong isn't going to be a catastrophe. I know it's a borderline trait, and I'm wondering if it's one shared with bipolars.

Maybe the rubberband snap might help. Bad thought = snap = tell yourself this is not going to be a disaster.

[Anneinside]

This winter the ground was icy and as I walked from my car to my therapist's office I thought: I'll slip on the ice and hit my head and an ambulance will be called and I will be taken to the hospital where I'll be in a coma and the dogs will starve to death. Yes, a worst-case scenario. It's a wonder how our minds spin out of control.

[xraydiva09]

LOL Anne...you sound just like me....I can sit and worry worry worry, or obsess about something that hasnt even happened yet...I always have a plan B to the plan A....and a plan C for good measure in case it all goes to s$#*@!! My medication helps me with alot of it, and some of it, I have just had to pull up my big girl panties and knock it off....I realize alot of the time, I am ruining the moment I am in, in exchange for a moment thats not even here yet....
And about seeing the most catastrophic in everything? You have no idea how many times my own death has crossed my mind as Im driving down the highway lol...I was behind a logging truck this morning, so you can imagine where my thoughts were going with that one.....and finally I realized that in this new and modern age of highways, there were 3 other lanes...So why was I driving behind the logging truck and fantasizing that the chain was going to snap and a log was going to come flying out the back and thru my window? Oh right, because if I passed him on the side, the chain would snap and the logs would come rolling out sideways instead lol.....Im considering xanax on my drive to work lol...

[BlueInanna]

i think that the catastrophic thinking may be a bipolar trait, because my T and Pdoc both talk to me about that, be careful about going into catastrophic thinking. so now, i actually can sometimes notice when i'm going into it and kinda try to rethink the situation, because rationally i know i do not want a panic attack to come on. or maybe the intensity of the catastrophic thinking is a precursor to mania and depression - so if there's any way to talk yourself out of it - do it.

also - maybe you dont need to taper off the meds at such the rate, maybe they could let you take longer to taper off if that would help calm you.

[BipolaRNurse]

Originally Posted by xraydiva09

LOL Anne...you sound just like me....I can sit and worry worry worry, or obsess about something that hasnt even happened yet...I always have a plan B to the plan A....and a plan C for good measure in case it all goes to s$#*@!! My medication helps me with alot of it, and some of it, I have just had to pull up my big girl panties and knock it off....I realize alot of the time, I am ruining the moment I am in, in exchange for a moment thats not even here yet....
And about seeing the most catastrophic in everything? You have no idea how many times my own death has crossed my mind as Im driving down the highway lol...I was behind a logging truck this morning, so you can imagine where my thoughts were going with that one.....and finally I realized that in this new and modern age of highways, there were 3 other lanes...So why was I driving behind the logging truck and fantasizing that the chain was going to snap and a log was going to come flying out the back and thru my window? Oh right, because if I passed him on the side, the chain would snap and the logs would come rolling out sideways instead lol.....Im considering xanax on my drive to work lol...

Hey!! How did you come to live inside my head?? LOL!

I'm not of many words today Melissa sorry. But remember mindfulness. If you keep working at it you'll notice a change. If you stay in the now, it's hard to catastrophize ( even a word ? ) the future.

[Merlin]

My mind just does that on it's own. I try not to get caught up in the catastrophizing. Sometimes I will have gone through a whole session with heart rate up and everything and then cannot even remember what I was originally thinking about to cause it.