Constant sense of dread

I'm with Drew22 on this one.  You are describing "Catastrophising" in my opinion and it is commonly associated with autistic folk and amongst other contextual groupings of people - such as alcoholics.

I have just checked and found 237 references to this topic in the search bar.  So if you are looking for methodologies to control or moderate your own experience of it, take a trawl through the archive.  (Please note, it is interchangeably spelt with either an S or Z so do your searching under both spellings.)

Personally, I was delighted some months back when someone introduced me to a couple of approaches to managing my own catastrophising.  I find that "overloading" my brain with MORE consonant beliefs is an effective way of diminishing the dissonant thoughts that can lead to catastrophising.  However, I need to do this whilst also allowing myself to consciously acknowledge the catastrophising thoughts - accepting them - but then purposefully putting them down so I don't need to revisit them again.

This might all sound like mumbo jumbo to you......but I hope it will give you somewhere to look and keep hopeful about your own situation and thinking.

Best regards

You’re welcome.

Thank you very much for the help. 

Ditto: the only bothersome thing real is not my death but my sense of fear in a moment of life.

Steven said:

It's the same thing as your earthquake, in a way.

It is, and that's partly why I decided to write about it. A way of expressing solidarity, I guess. 

I've not switched on my phone for nearly a fortnight, basically because I once received bad news by phone several years ago. I go through this fear-filled ritual every few weeks more-or-less. It's incredibly rare that I get a phone call anyway.

It's the same thing as your earthquake, in a way.

What I'm about to say is not something that applies to me now, but it used to...

Approximately 20 years ago, I happened to be in my kitchen when I heard and felt a rumbling. It was not something I had ever experienced before, and it turned out to be an earthquake measuring a magnitude of 4.8. The tremor lasted for 20 seconds, but to me, it seemed like it could have easily been 20 minutes. I later discovered that the epicentre was a handful of miles away from where I lived. Anyway, I was completely freaked out by having felt the ground quite literally move. A most unnerving experience, to say the least.

The earthquake happened shortly before 1am on a Monday morning. For a good many weeks afterwards, I avoided being in my kitchen around 1am on a Monday because in addition to it triggering the unpleasant memories of that earthquake, I had also convinced myself there would be another one.

Now, I consider the sense of foreboding and dread I felt to be quite ridiculous. The notion that because an earthquake had occurred at approximately 1am on a Monday morning, the same thing would happen at the same time the following week, and the week after that, etc. Earthquakes don't work like that, and whilst I knew that all those years ago, it was as though my ability to think rationally had ceased to exist. 

I always jump to worst-case-scenarios, due to looking after my paranoid grandmother until her death. Whenever my mum drove her places, she had a lot of accidents. Gran automatically assumed I would make the same mistakes as Mum. 

I'm inclined to agree with you.

Youve certainly got into an unhealthy thought process with the phone/doorbell thingy. You’ll need to unlearn that. You need to be able to see that The actual doorbell/phone is not the problem. The way you were contacted  ‘out of the blue’ instance was the trigger, because it was something you couldn’t possibly have planned for. It was a shock. CBT might be helpful for this. 

Eek! In that case, please accept my apologies. I trust that the toilet-roll-length of possibilities has not now extended to a jumbo-sized toilet roll.  

Oh hell, now there's even more doubts to add to my toilet-roll-length list of possible thoughts...

I think you have excelled at expressing what The Process can be like, here in the forums.

The only major fear I tend to have regarding the forums is that I might say something that might be misinterpreted and cause offence.

A lesser fear is when I'm asked to explain something I've said, and I just cannot seem to find the words to re-phrase what I've said in a way that makes it easier for the other person to understand.

A much-shortened version of The Process:

*thinks*

'Should I respond to their post? Or a different post? Or none?'

'If I respond, will it do any good at all?'

'I'd like to help, but I am hopeless.'

'Should I offer any advice?'

'What if my advice turns out bad for them? Oh my god, no...'

'What if it turns out well? People might expect good advice in future; I'm not capable. Everybody says so. Well, nobody says so...but they probably think it. In fact, I'm certain they do...even if they don't.'

'Will I appear over-familiar or too self-confident or falsely competent or idiotic or vain or...' 

'I am ruining my life by over-thinking. It spoils my communication with people. I'll have to think more deeply about that, and all the probable and improbable implications and solutions...'

I'm afraid I cannot offer you any practical advice, but I can attempt to offer some reassurance that you are not alone.

During my teens (before the days of mobile phones), if my parents had gone out for the day to visit non-local friends or relatives, I would worry that something terrible might have happened if they hadn't returned home when I had anticipated they would. I would find myself conjuring up the worst-case scenario, such as a fatal car crash on the motorway. After worrying myself silly and getting into a right old state, I would then end up phoning the home of whoever they had been visiting to ask if my parents were still there. If they had already set off, then I would then be asking how long it had been since they had left. 

I now have an adult son that lives with me, and experience similar feelings of dread on the rare occasions that he has a night out, especially when the plans he's made with friends could be subject to change, and he's unsure what time he's likely to return home. Admittedly, I think that this can be a fairly common thing with mothers, as no matter how old our children are, we still worry about them in one way or another.

My brain works in an extremely similar way. I immediately analyse every possible outcome and then get stuck on and overwhelmed by the negative ones. Your reply definitely helps though! I usually just fall deeper and deeper into my worries when I start thinking like this but maybe reminding myself that I don't have enough information to come to any conclusion might be helpful in the future so thank you.

Hi, I can relate to this and I think it is related to overthinking and trying to go through as many hypothetical scenarios as possible (eg. to be prepared). It’s not always a bad thing to think ahead but for me it gets excessive and I end up worrying about possible things that could happen that I have no control over anyways or I worry about events that are too far in future for me to even make a reliable prediction or come up with a plan if it did happen (as there are too many what ifs and too much information still lacking). I haven’t figured out yet how to deal with this stress best but I try to stop myself from worrying about things I have no control over anyways (as it’s not going to help) and in terms of coming up with plans for what i would do if xxx happened I try to draw the line at some point if it’s too far in future or I am lacking information and I tell myself that I am lacking info and cannot possibly think of all possible outcomes so I need to wait and see. Not sure if any of this helps - it’s super stressful when worries take overhand and it’s hard to switch it off. 

It's okay, I was struggling to put what I was experiencing into the right words and your reply has already helped with that, and it's also one of those situations where it's helpful just to know I'm not alone.

I am very sorry that I don't have any helpful, practical advice at present, as it's an ongoing problem for me too.