I’m not used to feeling full of fear. I’ve started to yesterday talking to a psych nurse about relapse. Suddenly existentially realised how terrifying relapse is over the years and it’s threat to survival.
Woke up this morning and quickly realised I am afraid of my husband - he’s a nice guy but has started to fall into moody bad habits
Don’t know how bad this sounds but I’ve been working very hard and with stress and am still busy next couple of weeks which is all difficult to avoid.
Does anyone recognise a deep sense of fear in their ‘relapse signature ?’
Nope fear seems to be a very strong emotion just prior to relapse. Last time i had a small breakdown i feared that the world is going to end and that on judgement day i will be on the evil side so to speak. and its one of the worst feelings and realizations i had. it was so bad that i couldnt focus on whats real and that is what fear most of the times. its a delusion that youre going to get hurt or punshied, then youre having the fear for your life and existence and eventually lose sight of what is real. but it cant last forever though. i would be bothered if the fear was constant.
I have a deep fear of a huge relapse… and if I dwell on that fear… I’ll actually start to loose it a bit and hit a panic mode… and almost derail myself
for me… doesn’t feel much like a symptom as much as a vicious circle trigger…
Stress and fear are very huge things… keep an eye on how your feeling… maybe journal stuff that’s going on and you might find a way to decompress the stress and feel better.
I get the impression that many psych professionals don’t grasp the level insight that people with mental illness can achieve over the years. I think many people with mental illness eventually get to a point where they know their own red flags. Knowing your own red flags, and then spotting those red flags, can also cause fear in and of itself, as well.
My relationship with my mother is one area that goes red flag central for me most of the time. When I am doing fairly okay, it is easy for me to just accept the way she is, flaws and PD dysfunctions and all, and just pay it no mind, roll it off my shoulders. On the other end of the spectrum, when I am doing very poorly, my mother seems supernaturally evil to me and I both despise and fear her greatly. So it’s like a gauge of how well I am coping with stress in general, and how my mind is reacting to it. It’s not that my mother won’t be a source of stress at times, but rather the way my brain interprets and responds to it.
This can also spill over (and often will, at some point) into my fear of even random strangers, like the gas station clerk where I buy my cigarettes, as an example. Or the transition between, “The neighbor guy is going out to his garage for some reason that is his own business,” to “The neighbor guy is trying to watch me through the windows, and he knew I would be by french doors at just this time.”
And so on and so forth. So I would agree that fear of people can be a sign for some people, since it is for me. Not that some people are not stressful or even potentially dangerous, but it’s like that transition between basic self-protective common sense, and an overwhelming feeling of being hunted.
I survived the trip to London and back which I was getting worried about
busy ish week next week medical stuff and holding a workshop
I’ve gone back to worrying rather than fear in my stomach which is quite reassuring x
As a measure of how well I’m doing… London didn’t bother me which is saying something positive …