Constant Feelings of Dread: How to Cope?

I definitely feel like this sometimes! These are intrusive thoughts, and you can work on coping with them with different kinds of therapists. CBT can help. My current therapist is psychodynamic and IFS, and I have found those approaches to be more helpful for me, to uncover the origins of these thoughts and fears

Yes. I am always hyper aware of everything my body does. Left arm hurting? Heart attack. Sudden prick in my chest? Heart attack. Eye twitching? Stroke. It's never ending. All day. I will work myself up into such a state I will need to pull over while driving so I can attempt to calm down. I do not have any advice though on how to fix it or stop. Just know, you aren't alone.

I had a really nasty panic attack earlier tonight. Like. Bad. Stress induced and I felt like I was going to have to be baker acted. That was about 2-3 hours ago. I ate. And tries to lay down and then started getting sudden heart palpitations. Now my anxiety is on full blast and I'm trying to talk myself out of the idea that I'm about to die. And now I'm afraid to lay down cause I have the idea that my heart will stop. It's now going on 1am. I'm so exhausted feeling this way all the time. 😥

This!!!! I have had a problem with this for a long time now as well. Some things I have found helpful are sleep meditations because it focuses my mind on something else that is meant to relax me. I have been dealing with it really bad lately and actually just started taking Ativan at night to get to sleep. Maybe you could also try melatonin? I know the feeling of feeling just so hopeless because you can’t stop your mind from racing, It’s so tough not being able to sleep from anxiety because it only makes anxiety worse the next day.

Yup! I will suddenly be convinced that someone broke in and I'm gonna die. Keeping a small light on, or playing a YouTube video while a fall asleep helps keep those thoughts at bay.

I'm constantly worrying about possible situations. Like "what if one of my family members dies in their sleep" or "what will happen to my husband and kids if I die" "do I have something wrong with me and I'm gonna die?" These thoughts too are almost constant and keep me up at night. Or I'll wake up and can't go back to sleep and these kinds of thoughts will come. So you're not alone! I don't really know how to deal with them so I'm sorry but I just wanted to say I'm experiencing them too.

God I feel this. Something a counselor told me that helped me a bit with this was that my brain was operating at a 9/10 anxiety wise practically all the time. And that for some reason, finding something to blame that on rather than it just being my constant state of being was subconsciously preferable. It helped me to visualize it like that, that I wasn't dying because I thought I heard an arhythmia in my heartbeat or because my left hand felt numb. It was just my brain being incredibly overactive trying to find ANYTHING to blame my heightened state on. Nights like those are incredibly hard tho. I hope it will get easier for you. ❤️