For the ladies that have mentioned intrusive/negative thoughts etc, have any of you ever tried mindfulness.
I do suffer from anxiety but it comes and goes but mid 2015 it got particularly bad (there was a trigger, but my reaction was out of proportion) and I sought some help.
I was referred to a therapist where I got to discuss how I was feeling and to make sense of things etc, but with regards to the thoughts, we did a little work on mindfulness and I attended a night class on it and found it a massive help.
For those of you that might not be familiar with it, it was all about focussing on the present, anything that has happened in the past is in the past, all the thinking about it in the world isnt going to change it. As for thinking about the future, especially negatively, it makes you see how it is simply a narrative that you are creating, one that may or may not happen, but if you think it, then your body also experiences it, as well as the sadness, worry, despair etc.
I hope what I have written above doesnt sound patronising because I know first hand how difficult it can be but mindfulness really did help me see things more clearly and gave me techniques for recognising the negative and intrusive thoughts and stop them before they developed. It gave my thinking something to anchor to to bring me out of the past/future and into the here and now.
The mindfulness coach told us that Mark Twain said something along the lines of "my life was filled with tragedies, and half of them actually happened".