Not sure what I should be looking for
Can therapy help you with negative (intrusive?) thoughts and stress of accidents?
I’ve always been pretty anxious and overthink stuff. As a teenager it was just wondering if someone was upset because their tone or behavior seemed off, feeling like my friends didn’t actually like me for no real reason, things like that.
Now I have two children. I had pretty overwhelming negative thoughts with both. Worried about sids, if their chin was tucked too far into their chest when other people were holding them, never let my husband wake up with them at night because I felt like if I wasn’t in the same room as them and watching them at all times, something bad would happen.
They are 7 and 3 now and the thoughts haven’t gone away, if anything they’ve gotten worse. It doesn’t help that my oldest has autism and sometimes it almost feels like he’s actively seeking out dangerous situations.
I have this “gift” of looking at a situation, and can almost visualize a list in my mind of all the potential hazards and worst possible outcomes of each hazard. Where I feel like most people would look at walking down a sidewalk with their kids and feel pretty safe just holding their hand, I think “what if they tripped too close to the curb and fell into an oncoming car” “what if they aren’t being held firmly enough and pull their hand out and run” “what if a driver wasn’t paying attention and swerved towards us?” Then it will pivot to “could I position my own body in front of them to keep them safe” “would I be able to grab them in time” etc.
It consumes me. The thoughts/“what ifs” that pop into my mind are horrible at times. It keeps me up at night, scenarios will pop into my head no matter how relevant they currently are and I can’t stop stressing over it. Right now it’s 3:30am and I’ve been up for hours dreading a bowling party for my oldest in a few days. This is specifically regarding my youngest. She has been bowling with us a few times, but the second to last time we went last year, we were nearing the end of the game and she decided to suddenly run down the lane following her ball. Both my mom and husband were right there next to her, she just bolted. My husband ran down the carpeted strip on the side and grabbed her. According to him, she didn’t get very far, but to me, it felt like she got at least halfway down the lane if not further. When I saw her run and him chase after her I froze and felt nothing but dread that she was about to be crushed by the pinsetter right in front of me. I barely slept that night and it bothered me for a long time.
Maybe 6 months later we went bowling again and I was spending the nights leading up to the day looking up the dangers, reading about close calls people have witnessed, seeing how normal it actually is for little kids to try running down lanes. I refused to let anyone but me take her up for her turns. I carried her up, had my arm wrapped around her back with my hand holding her waist/belly so she could not get away from me. We had no incidents and she didn’t even try to run again.
Now, about a year later, she’s so excited to go bowling for brother’s birthday and I find myself reading the same posts I read before. Looking up the same things. Having all the same fears. I do think she would understand being told to stay behind the line because the lane is slippery, but it’s like my mind can’t reason with itself. All I can think about is if she got by us again, and ran all the way down the lane…and then my mind forces me through the steps that would occur between her crossing the sensor that would trigger everything to come down…and again the fact that we would all have no choice to watch/hear the horrible things that would happen if that were to ever occur.
It’s not okay. I know that, I hate it, I feel like something is seriously wrong with me. I feel disgusted with myself for having such detailed, horrible thoughts. I don’t even want to. Is this something that can be fixed?