Is it all "just in my mind"?

Question

I keep thinking something will mess up my happiness. No matter what I do, I always think something horrible is going to happen to take away my success, my beauty or my happiness, no matter how much work I put in & no matter how much I do what I'm supposed to do. I'm starting to think this is a "premonition" of bad things to come. Then again, I'm wondering if it's all in my mind because of the life I had. I was raised around alot of negativity, way into adulthood & have made wrong decisions due to things I've learned from my "peers" & "elders", also from my own arrogance & mainly ignorance. I've had alot of hard & painful lessons. I've been hurt alot of times. But I'm trying to get out there & make a success of my life & do the right thing & continuing to try & weed out negative people & influences in my life. However, I have this HUGE fear that I will get hurt really bad and/or something will destroy my success, beauty & happiness. Is this just in my mind because of my experiences?

Answer 1

This is a rather long-winded answer, but I hope it'll help explain what you're experiencing and offer a way to get through it. It isn't a premonition, it's just a result of your past experience that needs to be processed so that it becomes a strength rather than a disadvantage.
The sense of a foreshortened future, sometimes experienced as a pervasive sense that happiness cannot last and a feeling of "waiting for the other shoe to drop" is often a symptom of PTSD. When a person is traumatized by events in their life and has been subjected to repeatedly negative, chaotic or unpredictable environments, it can damage their sense of trust in the world and make it hard to believe they are really safe or that happiness and stability will last. As a therapist I've seen this in folks who have come from abusive backgrounds once they have achieved a degree of stability in their lives, in domestic violence survivors who are now safe and in folks who are stable but have struggled with history of mental illness.
I interpret it as a way that folks try to keep themselves prepared for a catastrophe, an attempt to insure that they never relax enough to be caught off guard-always on the alert for signs of danger. When you're in an evironment that is chaotic and unpredictable, this "hyperarousal" serves an adaptive purpose by keeping you alert, but once the environment has changed and the threat no longer exists it becomes unnecessary and disabling. The work of therapy then becomes aimed at re-establishing a sense of trust that enables the person to relax and enjoy the stability they've achieved, however the nature of the trust that needs to be built is different from that which folks who have never been traumatized would have had.
When a child grows up in a safe and nurturing environment, they develop an inherent belief in the world as a good, safe and predictable place. Trauma survivors know already that this is not true, therefore they will never be able to believe this. What they develop instead is actually a more realistic sense of trust-they develop trust in themselves to handle whatever comes by reviewing what they have already survived and dealt with rather than developing a blind trust in the world.
The best illustration I can give is what I saw in folks I worked with after 9-11. The people who were most affected by the Sept. 11 attacks were those people who had never experienced trauma in their lives. For them, 9-11 came as a complete shock and totally undermined their basic sense of trust in the world and in many ways they were vicariously traumatized and began to develop the same symptoms you described. The trauma survivors, on the other hand, were neither surprised or affected as they'd already learned that the world is unpredictable and at times unsafe and did not react with anxiety following 9-11. Their sense of safety and trust resided in their ability to cope with unforeseen events.

So, while your reaction is understandable, it is at the same time causing you distress and my suggestion to you is to review what you've experienced and how you learned to cope and thrive despite the bad things that happened. Remind yourself that you cannot control what the future holds but that you can cope with it, come what may. Trust in your own ability based on what you've already accomplished and when doubts surface, remind yourself of your capacity to survive and thrive and reassure yourself that no matter what, you'll be okay.

Answer 2

I am the very same way--I call it "a fear of the unknown" and have been haunted by this force in my life for a long time. Sometimes I just have to reach out and touch something very stable-like a piece of furniture -and talk to myself that this is real and the garbage in my head is not real.I am so afraid that something "out there" will come and take away everything I have worked and suffered so long to achieve. At times I truly believe from my past as a child and the horrors of living make me believe that I don't deserve anything but pain. This is not true--and on a good day I can dispell all of that nonsence--but it keeps popping back up--when I was taking Zoloft I did not have these thoughts and was fairly adjusted and then I couldn't afford the medicines anymore --so if u can see a doctor and maybe try an anti-depressant--this would definitely be a good thing and get rid of these horrible -untrue thoughts that haunt you.

Answer 3

It's all in your mind. And when you are just sure that something is going to ruin your happiness, then you will probably end up sabotaging your life. You'll become a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Everyone has been hurt before. It's good to get the toxic people out of your life, but you are also toxic. Surround yourself with positive people. It will rub off....just as negative people will also rub off.

Destroy your beauty? That's pretty shallow. Get that out of your mind.

Answer 4

Negative thinking can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are many tapes and books available on the power of positive thinking. One is put out by a woman named Lucinda Bassett. Perhaps you can find it online.

Answer 5

Sounds like you have shaky foundations and trust issues as a result.

Learning to let go and trust is something that must be worked on with deliberate intent. Some people have a hard time letting go of old trauma, old negative experiences and project the memories of those experiences onto the future and potentiality of what is to come.

Learn to forgive... Even those who have hurt you.
Learn to let go... With intent and purpose.
Learn to free yourself of the things that bind you by self actualization, honesty and by doing the work to realize your own triggers and habits and by knowing them, seeing them and realizing them... changing them as a result.

One of the best mental health tools is journaling...

Good luck to you.

Remember... You Hurt in life only as much as you allow yourself to. You only receive as much joy in life as you are willing to allow yourself.

No one is going to give it to you... Take it, it's yours!

Answer 6

You might be having OCD- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

It's not serious and doesn't need medical attention until it takes up more than an hour of your day.

Here is a list of symptoms. Read through them: http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic1654.htm

Answer 7

your negative thinking is due to your upbringing. try meditation, yoga, or self hypnosis to help you.if these don't help you may need anti-depressants.