Fear of harming myself

It's good that you wrote in.

Net says initial dosage of Citalopram anti-depressant is 20 mg. Is that what you're on?

Sometimes, say when I’m about to go for a walk, I think about some of the dogs on the street, and I’m not sure I want to go for a walk. And sometimes I think, what if I had one of those conditions where say I was once frightened by a thunderstorm, and after that, whenever it started clouding up, I didn’t want to go for a walk. So, have you ever been frightened by a thunderstorm or some thing like that, and your mind is hyper attuned to that happening again?

There are some sayings about this:
1. Sometimes fear is a warning. It’s like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.
(From: Anne Rice, Memnoch the Devil)

2. Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up.
– Veronica Roth, Divergent

3. At the end of the day, you’re entitled to every one of your feelings. Don’t allow anyone to belittle you for your sensitivity. Vulnerability does not make us weak; it makes us human.
— Melissa Kerman, To Anyone Who’s Afraid Of Being Vulnerable

While those are negative thoughts that the sky is going to fall, can you think positive that the sky is not going to fall? Such as, it didn't fall yesterday.

There are a a couple of other sayings:

1. “The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.”
-Hubert H. Humphrey (politician from the 1960s)

2. “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams

Thank you for your support, as always a big relief, yes so I have started on exercises to overcome it and remember that are just thoughts, today I heard of an exercise that caught my attention, not sure if you have heard it where at the end of the day I write or colored the percentage of my negative thoughts ...then I would realize out of the 60000 thoughts of the day how bad it is, the following day I will practice positive thoughts and do the same thing ...I will do it tonight and yes I actually have therapy today. I will let you know guys

Yes well my therapist thinks I might be depressed and believes I should talk to the dr. But then also knows I’m near that time of the month and can be pms ...I just really hope I can overcome this soon. It’s so frustrating

I need to practice meditation, I ve tried it but not really to the point where it becomes a habit ...seriously I don’t know what will I do without this forum it has helped me tremendously

Keep working on the meditation, you will get it. I do it to fall asleep at night usually. It works.

I hope you are feeling better. It has been a few days since you last postsed.

Hugs, Karen...

You have a list of things and they are all negative.

Have you ever thought it might be your thinking and not what's actually going on?

It’s good to hear from you.

From what you’ve been saying, it seems that some part of the problem is your sensitivity. But sensitivity is not a weakness, it’s a strength. Femininity is not a weakness, it’s a strength. And you’ve got plenty of both.

A saying I mentioned earlier in the thread is:

3. At the end of the day, you’re entitled to every one of your feelings. Don’t allow anyone to belittle you for your sensitivity. Vulnerability does not make us weak; it makes us human.
— Melissa Kerman, To Anyone Who’s Afraid Of Being Vulnerable

Two other sayings I mentioned in this thread are:

1. Sometimes fear is a warning. It’s like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.
(From: Anne Rice, Memnoch the Devil)

2. Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up.
– Veronica Roth, Divergent

So I think it’s quite natural to, “Once burned, twice cautious.” It’s human nature to run as fast away from harm as possible.

Once away from the harm we want to try and rebuild, if possible. And that’s what you’re saying you want to do. Which is good.

But then your negativity raises its head and seems to stop that, it looks to me. Negativity stopped me for many decades, also.

Negativity is also natural, for someone who has been raised in a negative environment. Were you raised in a negative environment?

These are all my opinions, based mostly on what’s happened to me after having had some negative experiences. And some positive ones which got me through much of that.

So, you say you were raised in a negative environment. I was too.

You said, “I mean things that have happened to me make me more scare of the same situations again.”

I’ve never experienced that, so I don’t know anything about it. Are you able to deal with that, or is that the main problem?

The reason I mentioned your sensitivity and femininity is that it sounds like when you get attacked, you want to hurt yourself. When guys get attacked, they want to strike out, and get angry, which is equally bad I would think.

As a fem, when you get attacked, you want to hurt yourself. But you didn’t do anything. Are you thinking it’s your fault?

As mentioned earlier here:

1. Sometimes fear is a warning. It’s like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.
(From: Anne Rice, Memnoch the Devil)

2. Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up.
– Veronica Roth, Divergent

3. At the end of the day, you’re entitled to every one of your feelings. Don’t allow anyone to belittle you for your sensitivity. Vulnerability does not make us weak; it makes us human.
— Melissa Kerman, To Anyone Who’s Afraid Of Being Vulnerable

So I think it’s quite natural to, “Once burned, twice cautious.” It’s human nature to run as fast away from harm as possible.

So, I don’t know about that part. Maybe you have some ideas.

As for my own experiences, some of them were good and some of them were bad. Some of the good ones helped me get through.

One of the good ones was, I was at an Al-Anon meeting, for friends or relatives of alcoholics. It was a small group. When it came my turn to speak, I listed my troubles in a sorrowful voice.

The woman next to be listened patiently and when I was finally finished, looked up at me and said, “Oh, you were having a Pity Party, we’ve all done that.” There is embarrassed, and then there is embarrassed to tears in front of a group.

It was embarrassing but it was true, and the woman was looking right at me. It was a strange combination of messages from her and emotions inside me.

I could tell she was trying to help, she was a female and her eyes and tone of voice conveyed sincerely wanting to help, and her words carried two messages: “You were feeling sorry for yourself” but she also said, “We’ve all done that” as in welcome to the human race.

Since she was a female, I let her meaning seep into my psychic, get past my guard. I didn’t disagree with her. I let it sink it.

Years of my mother, who was sexually abused, tying to keep me beneath her by encouraging me to be weak and feel sorry for myself, were washed away in two sentences in about two seconds.

My mother was bad luck, and she had some of her own, and this woman was good luck. After that, I never felt sorry for myself again. For every time I tried, I saw that woman’s face, and I heard her voice, and it didn’t work. My Pity Party couldn’t get started.

If you are going to do CBT, a good book to get is called Feeling Good, the new mood therapy. Though it was actually written in the 80s. The author is Dr. David Burns. I still have a copy of it. I think it would help. Talk to your therapist about it. And other good reads.

The best thing you can do right now is only go out when you have to and if you have to, wear a mask. Don't go around people that aren't wearing them. Take things one day at a time. Try to stay calm in your daughter's presence. It is hard living with anxiety and fear, but she is young and impressionable. She doesn't need to see you feeling that way. I hope you get feeling better soon. I know it isn't easy. Anxiety rears it's ugly head and it takes over. I wish you the best.

Hugs, Karen...

You said, "I went to the new therapist who recommended CBT, I have never actually tried it ..."

A form of Cerebral Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is what helped me, it was positive thinking.

You said about that, " Hi Tim tam yes my family is pretty much negative always expecting the worst and “predicting it”, I have never hear them say hey I have a feeling this is going to go well ....total
"Opposite ...so I guess learned from them"

So, that's the way I thought until I read a column on being positive, and it really helped. This column I read on being positive, reduced that to 10 paragraphs.

You said, " But my thoughts come from fear." Did you have some form of difficulty that the rest of your thinking is now based on?