How can you best describe the feeling of “impending doom” & what can ya do about it?
This post was motivated by a comment a follower @uzpskaysen made about our 9/11 post. She said: after experiencing the earthquake in Istanbul shortly before, & then the events of 9/11/01, NOWHERE in the world felt safe. It was like anything could happen to you at any moment, out of your control.
I told her how that comment resonated so much w me bc, in the throes of anxiety brought abt from the PTSD I fought, when it was at its worst, my MIND created that same feeling of impending doom, that she had felt from outside factors like the earthquake & terror attacks. Isn’t it fascinating how powerful our minds are?
“The next shoe could drop at any moment.” That’s what you see in the pic here…but let me go further. When anxiety is so bad, that it creates a feeling of impending doom, here’s a more accurate description than shoes dropping on you: Imagine being in a carnival cage with a lion tamer. The only thing keeping you safe is the tamer & his relationship w these ferocious animals (3rd slide).
Now imagine the lion tamer was struck by one of the animals you thought he was in control of, & he was left for dead. Here you’d be, in a locked in a cage, w enormous animals you can’t control yourself, as you back yourself to the walls of the cage, knowing that w each step, your fate is closer & closer to being sealed.
May sound hyperbolic, but THIS is how the impending doom of major anxiety feels. The amazing thing is, there are NO outside factors like natural disasters or attacks that are causing these feelings. However your mind can’t help but feel it’s being attacked, & this will not end well.
So how do you fight the impending doom feeling? This is the hardest part abt dealing w MH, I had to learn the hard way: you fight by not fighting at all. Our brains are wired so that the more we stress abt it & the more we try to fight, the worse that feeling of doom gets. The only way it slows down, naturally, & works out of our system, is to say to ourselves – this is a phase. It’s just a feeling. The feeling is in me or above me now, but it’s NOT a PART of me. What do we know about phases? They pass. And this too…this feeling of doom, it too will pass.
Just make sure as you slow your mind down, you are also practicing stress and trauma release and rewiring activities like meditation and yoga :).