Posted by SLS on February 13, 2009, at 7:26:49
In reply to What does it mean if you're afraid of everything e, posted by Phillipa on February 12, 2009, at 12:19:14
> Seriously afraid to go upstairs, talk on phone, be close to family, take a bath showers okay, go places alone. Getting old and dying. Anyone have any thoughts. As the last therapists kept asking what I was afraid of and I said " If I knew I wouldn't be here". And she never helped me figure it out. I know when met husband he didn't want me to shower and keep water running as it was wasteful so the bathtub became a no no. Stupid thread I know. Love Phillipa
I could be wrong about everything, but...
I'm sure you know my take on your situation. I think you have GAD and perhaps a touch of OCD. These appear to be biological illnesses that need biological interventions. However, there seems to be a lot of specific content to your fears. I agree that you might profit from psychotherapy to address this content. However, until your GAD is adequately under control, you will need to work hard to separate out the GAD from the content of your thoughts and feelings. Don't expect psychotherapy to take away your background generalized anxiety. However, I can foresee that you would be able to mitigate the specific fears themselves.
Another way of thinking about things is that you have associated a pervasive anxiety with everything in your environment. In your head, perhaps, you have developed a fear of each thing in your life that you have anxiety when you encounter it. Since you have anxiety all the time, regardless of content, you have learned to associate anxiety with fear of each of these things separately. It is a matter of classical conditioning. You have learned to have a fear reaction whenever you have anxiety. It is simple association. It is something like classical conditioning - Pavlovian. With each associative event, comes an even stronger reinforced reaction.
If I have been wrong, please, please correct me where I am wrong. It will be very instructive and a way to get to know you better.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:879643
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090129/msgs/879841.html