I work myself up and get really distressed thinking about my future. It’s my Achilles heel. I’ve spent the latter half of today doing it.
It’s just a feeling of being powerless mixed with a bit of catastrophic thinking.
Does this happen to anyone else? How do you cope?
I’ve had this when I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia, but what my therapist told me was to say positive predictions about the future to other people. Even if it doesn’t come true, you’ll at least have a positive goal in mind.
That happens to me a lot. I understand.
I try to focus on the now and what I have going for me. I try to count my blessings. Then I think about just a couple of things I can do to work towards my goals of the far future. Someday I’d like to own a house - so, I try to put money aside. Someday I want to have my certification - so, I try to put some time aside to study. It’s not always easy, sometimes extremely difficult even. Just take it one day at a time, then one week at a time… Soon enough, things will work out. Just try not to get overwhelmed by thinking too far into the future.
That’s all right @everhopeful. It’s in our culture to do that. As kids we learned “Cross your heart and hope to die.” Now, what kind of a philosophy is that?
I am the same, dear… We talked with you about that in the past… Its terrible, I know. But I guess its a symptom like the others, isn’t it? In fact I have this catastrophical thinking about the future since kid, so I never saw anything good in my life… Its been just the illness for all this time… Me too I wonder how we can stop this. Maybe just ignoring it?.. The others - do you think just ignoring can help us? Can you be active ever? The distraction can help too I guess. My problem is that I cant be active sometimes because of my fears or my depression… I should open a new post, but in my case I think meds put me really down too…
I can’t even predict what my life will be like 5 or 10 minutes from now let alone 5 or 10 years from now. I don’t worry about it.
You have to practice not letting it get to you. Right, hon?
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