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Thoughts of Death
Hello! I am 24 and a female and I wanted to ask some questions about my mental heath. I know I am going to get some replies telling me that you aren't a doctor and that isn't what I'm looking for, I just want some friendly advice on what you think or from experience!
Last October, I saw my doctor and he had diagnosed me with obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety. He put me on 5 mg's and then went up the next time I went in for a check-up and I just had recently gotten pushed up to twenty. That is because, I am in between jobs right now and I have been off for two weeks waiting for clearances to pass so I can start my new job so I've had a lot of free time to sit and just think. I've been worrying about really silly things like out of the blue, I thought my boyfriend was mad at me or seeing someone else and I just cried to him about it because I worried so much that I couldn't stop thinking about it (yes we talked about it and we are perfectly happy and content and with all the time he spends with me, I know there is no way he is seeing someone else, even asked his mom if she thought he was different and she said no). Then I would worry about getting sick, I was going through a girl's instagram page who had gotten a spinal cord injury at 24 (my age) and I was just worrying that something like that would happen to me. So, I called my doctor and told him all of that and he upped my medicine to 20. Now, I've kind of been more in check and noticing, even very small, thoughts that come into my head. One thing I have definitely noticed is that I have been thinking about death a lot recently. I did just lose my grandpop a week ago, which could be a factor. While I'm driving, I'll think about someone running into my car. The other day I thought about how someone could be so sad that they would cut themselves to death. I often think about having a problem with my heart (how my grandpop passed) or cancer (how my pop-pop passed) or something like gastroparesis because I saw a youtube video about how that come come out of nowhere.
Now, where my question lies is in the last thing I brought up. I know before you start these medications they tell you all the risks and one for Lexapro, what I am on, is thoughts of suicide. However, I do not get the urge to run my car into traffic or harm myself in any way. When I think about it, it usually comes from an empathy thing (at least with others self harming) or it is always somebody else, like someone running into my car, crashing into me, it isn't ever me crashing into someone else, nor, like I said, do I ever have the urge to do that. I also thought I should mention that the last few days when I have been worrying a lot about the things I mentioned, I never worked myself into a panic, so I do know that my medicine is working for that. Also, I did speak with my mom about this and told her everything. She was on Lexapro when she was my age, stopped, got back on, and had awful thoughts so her doctor put her on something else. She said that she believes what I am thinking is just thoughts, since it is not urges or me feeling like I need to do something to myself, or someone else, that I do not have to worry. Mind you, I am going back to school for my master's in therapy so I am quite intrigued by the brain, mental illnesses, learning about the minds of criminal like Bundy, and why people do what they do. So my mom said with my being interested in this kind of thing, losing both of my grandfather's to tragic illnesses, and having a lot of free time to think about everything, I should not worry about thinking what I've been. I also started the whole conversation with "mom, I think it's something worth mentioning but I don't want you to worried, because I'm not worried" and I'm not. I would be if I had gotten an urge to hurt myself or others, aside from just thinking about other people that do, but, again, I have not. I am starting my new job tomorrow, also, I'm eager to see if by keeping my brain occupied and having purpose again, if this will stop.
Question being: if you have anxiety or depression or anything, do you sit and worry or think about death? Do you think it seems worrisome?
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Maybe give some free advice about: Mental health?
That’s normal. Nearly everyone is aware of their mortality when a loved one dies, and it bothers me that people don’t ask questions about it more since they’d have to prepare themselves for what could happen in the future. It’s a lot like introducing kids to the changes in puberty, since everyone is going to go through the experience eventually.
A lot of religions around the world talk about pondering on their death and so do many innovators. Steve Jobs said once that remembering his death motivated him to realize that his time on Earth was limited, and he wanted to live his legacy before it passed.
In Christianity, it is called Memento Mori, where the practice is done to be able to have a deeper gratitude for the chance to live that God has given. In Buddhism, the Buddha talks about realizing how you will lose everything material you have in death, and how love is what truly lasts.
Normal is not always good. A lot of people have to talk about it more. It’s not thinking of death that is bad, but how you deal with these questions.
Best of luck.
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There are two types of mental health Drs. One kind hears your symptoms and doles out medication. The medication is not to cure you but just suppress the issues you have and add side effects.
I have a favorite psychologist turned author and trainer for other mental health Dr.s His background is of being one of these kinds of Doctors. A collegue told him of a new method in treating patients that wasn't a prescription. He listened but kept putting them off and saying he didn't believe in it. Then one day to shut the others up, he decided to follow through with his most difficult patient. He figured she was so bad off that the new method called CBT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy would have no effect. To his surprise, she ended up cured of all her issues, simply by working on her thought life. He went on to study it more and came up with one more method He calls T.E.A.M. but I forget what it stands for. How I heard of him is through a friend who used to suffer depression and tried to kill himself while his wife was busy trying to find someone who could really help him as medications didn't help. She stumbled across a Dr. who was using CBT and told him about this method and the Dr. who was teaching other Dr.s how to use it. He went on to be a counselor in the Army. He was retired when we met and so when I left my verbally abusive husband, as a friend, he helped me to understand I still had some ways I was affected by the abuse. I would zone out while others were talking to me, an escape mechanism to not have to listen to the abusive ex. Once I understood what I was doing and how to overcome it, I changed. He gave this Drs. book to my husband whom he saw mental illness in and wanted him to go see a professional but only those who practice CBT. Such a Dr. focuses first on working with the distorted thinking. He says the majority of people on medications can be cured without medication and if CBT does not work, that's a small percent of population who actually need to take a medication. Right now the majority receive medication and that is so wrong in my opinion.
I read the book our friend gave my husband who did not apply himself and go to a Dr. who did CBT to get better. Since he can't be forced to, and most of my problems with him I now know were treatable but he would never take treatment, I divorced him.
I went on to check out some books of this Dr. from my library. He covers everything, your issues which I know to be cureable but I used to do some thing like it but it was connected to my severe social anxiety I had as a child and teen. Surprisingly, everything he wrote about how to treat anxiety is what I heard from God in prayer when I asked for help to overcome this. It was eeiry to read point by point what the Dr. said he did for people like me and it was exactly what I heard in prayer. So as far as what I had, which many people take anxiety medicine for today, was cured, long before I heard of the Dr.
His name is David D. Burns and he has a website:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location) There is a lot in there. See if you can find the section where people write in to tell him how CBT cured them. One woman had suffered all her life and was 50 or some age around there before she used CBT, whether from a Dr or one of the books, she was finally healthy.
What you suffer from is something that all humans, even the Dr. himself, has had happen to him at times in life. What it is, is having a distorted thought and what we should do is not dwell on it and try to imagine a whole terrible scenario with ourself in it. And then to keep dwelling on those thoughts over a long period of time. I''ll give an example of an easy one. You are on the freeway and traffic is slowing ahead and now you are creeping and you see the accident at the side of the road. Lets say it was raining and so roads are more slick. You see a car flipped over on the grass next to the slow lane. Everyone is staring as they go by. A healthy response would be, "I hope the driver is okay," or simply start praying for the person. Then you forget about it and stop thinking of it. A person who has distorted thinking will see the accident and think, "Oh my gosh, that could happen to me. Everyone else is able to stop quickly. Maybe he had bald tires. This thought now leads to you worrying about having bald tires. Now you imagine yourself in a turned over car because you have bald tires and went off the road. If you got trapped in there and needed help, you wonder if you can call for help but then, other motorists might report the accident which is a good thing. Then you think, but what if it happened on a secluded empty road with no one to witness it, I'd have to be able to reach my cell phone to call for help. Then you think, Oh my Gosh, what if my cell phone is out of power, or I am out of signal range to make a cell. So now you change your behavior so you never drive anywhere without getting a full charge on your phone. You might even start to figure out the areas where you won't get a signal so you start avoiding those areas. And it all started because you saw an accident and let your imagination take off because it is allowed free rein to do so. I am not saying you do this, its just an example because if I see an accident, the natural tendency of most humans is to imagine 'what if' it happened to me. However most realize the chance of it happening is so very very rare and they chuckle at their thoughts and stop dwelling on them and move on to thinking about whatever else, like the song that is playing or where you are going out for dinner that night.
When my thoughts go that way, I don't ignore them, I ask myself (actually its your subconscious you're talking to) how likely is it for me to flip my car? Then I focus on how unlikely. In my lifetime, and I am 60, I have only once seen a car flipped over. I have never had my cell phone out of energy while traveling and only when in a mountainous area once was I not able to get a signal until I d rove a bit further and that was when visiting a relative in another state, and I do not travel out of state much at all. All the things I tell myself are to negate the what if thought. I read a book once that talked about some aspects of the subconscious I hadn't known before. It is always in the background taking in everything you experience. It is like having another person inside of you, and my experience is that my subconscious is often like a child, seeing things many times not as an adult would be seeing them, so it is often shortsighted or misunderstanding. The biggest issue is things you fear or worry about, the subconscious doesn't see as bad compared to good. It assumes that what you focus on most is something that you want badly and it will do anything to help you achieve those things. So the gal who left the BF who beat her, knows its a bad situation. Her mind is still going over times with him, not the bad but the few good times and the more she thinks of him, the more she feels love for him and wants these feelings to stop. Its a matter of how often she thinks that has the subconscious believing this guy is important to her so it helps supply the love feelings, it does deal with all sorts of feelings. Thats part of how it works. The book I read was a small one written about the ancient Hawaiian beliefs called Huna in which they explained the subconscious in this way. The book is long out of print and belonged to someone I know. Don't know the title in case you wonder. But it sure made some things make sense. Like when you watch a movie, its just acting, not real but you find yourself feeling anger or sadness or fear at certain points, even if it isn't happening to you. this is how easily the subconscious gets caught up in things. So you need to speak to yourself inside your head, or out loud when no one is around to here and simply say, 'Listen here, you are going to stop thinking about that (whatever the 'that' or the 'whom' is) and give a reason why, like the likelihood of that happening is 1 in a million. The subconscious doesn't stop right away because this has become a habit for it as well. It will stop maybe for a few minutes or while your mind is occupied as you stated, with your new job. But you will have moments, like on break, at lunch, at a restroom visit when your subconscious will start spouting off all the stuff that is distorted again. I used this method once myself when a man I was in love with and him with me, had his ex wife come back to him saying she wanted to repair the marriage and get back together. He was crying but it made sense to him to go back with her as they had so much past together and two adult children so he left me. To get over him and the feeling of love and being left out, I had to squash the thoughts of him whenever they came by telling my subconscious mind, "Stop thinking about him and stop feeling the love. He choose her over me and I am never going to see him again and need to move on. So stop. Then ten minutes later, it happened again and I repeated this. In a days time it was easy to have to repeat this several dozen times. The next day was a teeny bit better but it took a full week before I might think of him but the feelings were subsiding and a month later, I was no longer focusing my thoughts on him. I know it works. You can try it yourself but since I am not a mental health Dr. this alone might help a little but you would need to find a Dr. who can work with you in constructive ways, where you really have to participate and be challenged in some cases to meet your unrealistic fears. I still suggest you looking around for Drs in your area who in their ads have the letters CBT as what they offer. Not all Dr.s do it. I am guessing yours does not. Once you locate Dr.s check with insurance if those Drs. accept your insurance or ask for mental health Drs who are trained in CBT. They may not know but once you have a name of one, have your GP write a referral to that actual Dr. not one that he/she feeds clients to, people they know that help boost a friends business by choosing only professionals in their friend network. You may have been referred to the current Dr but you need to say its not working for you and you want to try (give the Dr.s name who does CBT) I have gone through referral issues like this with my GP so this is what you do, and you don't have to go with whom your GP gives you off the top of their head as it will usually be someone who trades patients back and forth and in my case was way out of the area i live in and when I checked with insurance, they assured me of plenty who are closer. I hope this encourages you, to know that you have greater odds of becoming healthy and leaving all this behind in the past than of the chance of you suffering for real, the things you focus your thoughts on.
Good luck dear. You at least are seeking help. I have a daughter almost 10 years older than you who has mental illness and she will not go for help. She did once for depression 9 years ago but at some point stopped taking them because of the side effects and what I told her, she has not followed through on, finding a Dr. trained in CBT. If she had, she would be normal today and back in the familys life. She cut herself off from all relatives and married a man with mental illness worse than hers, from what his Mom has told me, he seems to be more sociopath like besides his regular mental illness stuff. SO if I can help steer you in the right direction, I will be very happy for you and i will have been able to help someone, even if I couldn't help my daughter.
Blessings to you dear.
If you think of it in the future, I'd like to hear how things are going for you and if you got the right help. YOu can do a search specifically for me under 'search Advice columnists' and look for Dragonflymagic.
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