{"id":140,"date":"2015-05-17T00:42:01","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T00:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/?page_id=140"},"modified":"2018-04-01T22:34:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T22:34:48","slug":"scary-thoughts-and-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/scary-thoughts-and-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"Scary Thoughts and Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- Speed Sense for AdSense WordPress Plugin: https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/speed-sense\/ -->\n<div id=\"ssp0\" style=\"float:left;margin:10px 10px 10px 0;max-width:970px;width:100%;\">\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" id=\"adsgoogle0\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 100%; height: 250px\"  data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5877597362749779\" data-ad-slot=\"2816458245\"><\/ins><script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>Whether you experience scary thoughts and anxiety, bad thoughts and anxiety or crazy thoughts and anxiety, this is worth reading.<\/p>\n<div class=\"AW-Form-341207382\"><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">(function(d, s, id) {\n    var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\n    if (d.getElementById(id)) return;\n    js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\n    js.src = \"\/\/forms.aweber.com\/form\/82\/341207382.js\";\n    fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\n    }(document, \"script\", \"aweber-wjs-c0ty2hg9p\"));\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p>Someone submitted a detailed question to me some time ago.\u00a0 To preserve anonymity I have summarized it in a way that is not too revealing and assigned this person a name \u201cTom\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Since experiencing his first panic attack, Tom is now starting to get anxious about a variety of his thoughts.\u00a0 For example he is very fearful that he might hurt someone.\u00a0 He is also having more scary thoughts in general.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My take:<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nObviously it is important to consult a psychologist or other mental health professional if you\u2019re having such thoughts and have not seen a professional about your anxiety before.\u00a0 However one of the things that many sufferers of anxiety and panic attacks are often completely unaware of is that these types of thoughts are quite typical for sufferers of anxiety and panic attacks.\u00a0 Sufferers would not necessarily even share such thoughts with a close friend.<\/p>\n<p>These kinds of bad thoughts could be about going crazy, the fear that you\u2019re going to hurt someone or even thoughts of dying or committing suicide.<\/p>\n<p>To be clear: I&#8217;m not suggesting that you or another sufferer of panic attacks is actually going to do any of these things.\u00a0 Sufferers do not act on these thoughts &#8211; such as someone with a severe mental disorder might \u2013 they just become incredibly anxious about their thoughts.\u00a0 Such crazy thoughts are more akin to thinking something like &#8220;what if I did something bad to someone?&#8221; versus something like &#8220;I want to do something bad&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Here is an example of a scary \/ crazy \/ bad thought (however you would view it): Tom has a fear of having knives in the house, in particular that he might hurt someone with a knife.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.drmartinseif.com\/resources\/anxious-thinking.html\">Dr. Martin Seif<\/a>, Clinical Psychologist explains this very well: when you are not anxious you might have a variety of thoughts but they are very easy to distinguish from things that you would never act on.\u00a0 When you&#8217;re anxious however it is harder to distinguish these thoughts as just thoughts and it feels as though you are close to acting on them.\u00a0 Even though this is not the case.\u00a0 This process is called catastrophic thinking, another name would be catastrophizing or magnification under the cognitive behavioral therapy model.<\/p>\n<p>While our mind is a wonderful and creative instrument, the problem is that this wonderful and creative instrument is capable of having a positive or negative influence on us.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, your mind is creatively able to keep you distracted from a problem that is really bothering you.\u00a0 Often there are problems that are working in the background of your anxiety.\u00a0 For example you might be in a job that you absolutely hate or you may recently have lost your job.<br \/>\nThese things would be examples of things that you really need to deal with \u2013 as opposed to the scary thoughts that your mind is generating about actions you will never take.\u00a0 I do a whole article on the hidden emotions technique in another section of my site which you can access by clicking here (it will open in a new browser window) and coming back.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately as your thoughts become preoccupied with more scary thoughts &#8211; like I\u2019ve discussed above \u2013 you can\u2019t address these real life problems, which makes you feel even more gloomy.<\/p>\n<p>However there is much reason to have a great deal of optimism..<\/p>\n<p>The fact that you&#8217;re having these thoughts about those things which you will not do means that you can move forward by writing down some things that are really of concern to you.\u00a0 By using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) on the real issues in your life &#8211; and it&#8217;s nothing to be ashamed of because we all have them &#8211; you can work them out and feel better.\u00a0 Often then your scary, bad, or crazy thoughts (whatever you want to call them) will drop off.\u00a0 But if they don&#8217;t, you still don&#8217;t need to despair because you can do CBT on them too!<\/p>\n<p>You will be able to recognize the cognitive distortions present in all of your thinking and then generate more realistic ones that make you feel better.\u00a0 And you have addressed the problems that you really need to look at.\u00a0 Everyone has things in their lives that they need to address.\u00a0 If you want some good examples of CBT click here.<\/p>\n<p>To summarize: the good news is that whether you experience scary thoughts and anxiety, bad thoughts and anxiety or crazy thoughts and anxiety, you can tackle them with CBT, on top of dealing with the real life challenges that you and all of us face in our day-to-day lives.<\/p>\n<p>To obtain even more in depth information about a comprehensive and overall approach to anxiety, panic attacks and agoraphobia, I would encourage you to sign-up for my free newsletter below.<\/p>\n<div class=\"AW-Form-341207382\"><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">(function(d, s, id) {\n    var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\n    if (d.getElementById(id)) return;\n    js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\n    js.src = \"\/\/forms.aweber.com\/form\/82\/341207382.js\";\n    fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\n    }(document, \"script\", \"aweber-wjs-c0ty2hg9p\"));\n<\/script><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: small;\"><br \/>\n<strong>Reference (Scary Thoughts and Anxiety)<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: small;\"> M. Self. Retrieved May 8, 2012, from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.drmartinseif.com\/resources\/anxious-thinking.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.drmartinseif.com\/resources\/anxious-thinking.html<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<script src=\"https:\/\/apis.google.com\/js\/platform.js\"><\/script>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"g-ytsubscribe\" data-channelid=\"UCJfm1Oh6tZl2clckmX3pQ7w\" data-layout=\"default\" data-count=\"hidden\"><\/div>\r\n\r\n<script id=\"godaddy-security-s\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.sucuri.net\/badge\/badge.js\" data-s=\"221\" data-i=\"cfb2b3c6bbd25e7a29b59a6904ea23c6336163afd4\" data-p=\"o\" data-c=\"d\" data-t=\"g\"><\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whether you experience scary thoughts and anxiety, bad thoughts and anxiety or crazy thoughts and anxiety, this is worth reading. Someone submitted a detailed question to me some time ago.\u00a0 To preserve anonymity I have summarized it in a way that is not too revealing and assigned this person a name \u201cTom\u201d. Since experiencing his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"yst_prominent_words":[29,76,1643,1161,1644,1165,1642,106,1167,1164,1166,1156,28,1158,1157,1159,1155,1162,1160,1163],"class_list":["post-140","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1665,"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/140\/revisions\/1665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panicattackrecovery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}