uncontroled thoughts that lead to anxiety and depression

Welcome to the forum =)

It can be very difficult to "let it pass." Meditation may help, if you've ever tried it...mindfulness meditation helps you to focus on the moment, and while these thoughts may still come to mind, you learn to merely "notice" them, but not think too deeply about them.

Sometimes what I do is try to over-analyze my thoughts until I can remove the emotion from them. For example, if I start to worry about something I may think, "Why am I worried about this? So what if it happens? What consequences will there be if it happens? Do those consequences really matter? Why am I still thinking about this?" I tend to over-analyze things often, so this is a natural approach for me. But I realize it may not work for everyone.

Sometimes just writing out your worries helps. Or speaking about them with a trusted friend or counselor. Getting feedback can help to ease your worries if someone suggests something you hadn't thought of before. That's what we're here for =) Writing or talking about it can also help you to organize your thoughts because you're trying to explain them to someone (or even yourself if you keep a journal), and that can lead to some positive realizations.

Understand this, your anxiety always stems from anticipating the future. Its you thinking about something that has not yet come to pass, and in many ways something that may never come to pass. Its often a future outcome that you've created, usually a worst case scenario, that you're playing over in your head like a broken record.

Your body has the natural ability to respond to these things by creating chemicals in your brain. Its the same thing that happens when you go see a movie and something scares you, or you're watching a film of someone on a roller coaster and you feel like you're on it. Its not actually happening but your body is still responding and creating the chemical release as if it were really happening.

Using your example about something needing to be done around the house, I'm betting that at some point you're thinking about what might happen if that certain thing didn't get done. If the things you worry about seem petty or small, do you ever ask yourself what's the worst thing that could happen? Would that result be totally unacceptable, would people end up dying or being severely injured?

Try to identify how much of your anxiety is being caused by actual reasonable things to be worried about, and how much is being caused by the anxiety itself. In other words, and really think about this, how much do you worry about the fact that you feel anxiety? Most often when you ask people why they have anxiety, usually long term anxiety like yours, their response is usually something like "I don't know I just worry about all these little things", and start naming these every day things they feel like they really shouldn't be getting so worked up over. In actuality, its not really these little things that bother them, but the idea that they get so worked up over it that bothers them. They have anxiety over their anxiety.

This may be difficult to do, especially after dealing with it for so long, but contemplate the idea that there's actually nothing wrong with you at all. In other words, nothing physically wrong. Mentally and emotionally you may feel like somethings wrong, but accept the fact that for all these years you simply haven't been allowing yourself to deal with it in a natural way. Maybe you haven't "accepted" the fact that your anxiety is not really a problem that needs to be done away with, but a natural part of being human.

I think if you can accept the idea that you will feel "some" anxiety for the rest of your life and be ok with it, then it will cease to take such an active role in your life. I'm not trying to be pessimistic about it. I'm trying to illustrate the fact that if someone told me they never felt any anxiety whatsoever over anything at any part of their life, I would have to wonder if there was something chemically wrong with that person. (or think they were lying about it)

To put it in my words, "letting it pass" means not wasting my time worrying about when the next rush of anxiety or panic is going to come. I know for a fact that I will feel panic again in the future, but I don't care about when or how often. I'm ok with the fact that this is a perfectly normal part of being human, and that when it does happen it will not last long. It will always be temporary and will pass with time, and there's no need to ruthlessly fight it. When I'm in the midst of panic or anxiety, I always tell myself, "don't worry, it won't last", and it never does.

It may not be something that fixes you immediately, but it seems like every time I've had a panic attack and told myself that I'm going to give myself as much time as I need to let it go away on its own, it takes less and less time to go away. After a few months of this, the most I would get is one little rush of panic and its gone in 10 seconds rather than 10 minutes or like in the beginning, hours or days. Sometimes it may last longer, depending on how well I've been sleeping lately or how stressful work is, but the way I handle it is always the same, to give myself as long as it takes to pass naturally.