Obsessive Thoughts

I never really identified with the symptom "obsessive thoughts" until the past few weeks.

I am not sure what clicked for me but I'm pretty sure things fell into place while I was tossing and turning in bed one night.

Many, many years I have struggled to fall asleep. I can usually sleep through the night but since grade school I've taken at least 45 minutes to upwards of 4 hours just to get to sleep.

It sucks.

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning was a horrendous example of my shitty sleeping. The hub and I were in bed before 9:45 pm but by 12:45 am I had not fallen asleep. I decided to grab my blanket and pillow and hit the couch but that didn't exactly solve the problem. I was able to doze for a few hours all together before the hubby coached me back to bed and left for work. I laid in bed for a couple hours but couldn't get back to sleep.

So what about those obsessive thoughts, right?

It's not just when I'm trying to sleep but that is when I first recognized my thoughts being especially problematic. When I'm trying to sleep I usually whip up a fun dream to occupy my mind until I drift off. Lately I've been noticing my thoughts interrupting my dream sequences and I cannot distract myself from the rehashing, worrying, and wondering. It seems to go right along with my shoulder tension. All those recurring thoughts get me tense, my shoulders start creeping toward my ears and I can forget about sleep.

The same thing happens during the day. I'll be going along hunky dory and then SWOOP my mind is off on an all too familiar track analyzing, fretting, and basically hijacking my day.

What are these thoughts about, you wonder? Well, there is quite a variety but the usual mix involves some variety of social/relationship anxiety with a dash of rehashing past events and a large portion of predicting the future with a sprinkling of paranoia all awash in skewed perspective.

What gets me is how sticky these thoughts are! Whether it's keeping me up all night or following me around all day they cause problems. The hubster is sick of hearing me sigh and vocalize or hum as I'm trying to get these thoughts out of my head and no matter how we work things through or chat it out, the thoughts persist.

These thoughts take up my head space, my air time, and prevent me from living my life. My brain is so overactive I can be opening the dishwasher, preparing to do dishes and then worry myself back to the couch in a few seconds on a completely unrelated matter. I get overwhelmed, panicked, and damn near delirious. Forget about leaving the apartment, too overwhelming. Forget about making plans, I can't make myself lunch.

My thoughts are dysfunctional. My thoughts are recurring. My thoughts are obsessive and my brain's brake pedal isn't working!

Calming techniques and reassuring myself seems to help. Many of the thoughts seem based in fear so I can sometimes calm myself down and sort of coddle myself back into doing something. It may take three tries to do the dishes, but maybe tomorrow it will only take two!

It's like quicksand, get caught up in the moment and you're trapped but take a few seconds to collect yourself and be calm and you just might get out.