Some of the stuff in my head...
Honestly, there have been times recently where Ive thought that I was crazy. Theres always so much rattling around in my brain and it never shuts up. This tendency has become worse as I get older. I find there is dramatically less space between my thoughts and my reactions to them, simply because I have so many thoughts. I want to capture what it feels like in my head at the beginning of this process so that later on, I can compare where I am now with where I will be in the future.
First of all, I worry about everything. Absolutely everything. Name a worry, I probably have or have had it buzzing somewhere inside me. I worry about sleeping and waking up, about school assignments and what Ill do with my free time, about the present, the past and the future...and its exhausting. I try to think positively and to reframe my thoughts, but it often feels like Im stuck in mental quicksand and cant pull myself out. Then theres the obsessions and compulsions. I didnt really realize I had these until very recently, but wow. I definitely have them. They tell me that I cant be sure if Im a good person, so I have to look up articles about horrible people and put myself inside their headspace to see if I believe what they believe. They also tell me that I cant be sure if God loves me, I cant do mindfulness because Ill focus on my breathing for the rest of the day, and I have to look away when people walk in front of me because I might be looking at their butts. Yup. Fun. I think one of my biggest worries is part anxiety and part OCD. Im a voice major in school and Im terrified that I will injure my voice. Im very scared to practice, I repeat vocal exercises over and over until the technique is right and I spend time scanning my throat for sensations that might be abnormal both during and after singing and speaking. I also research voice disorders...this whole fear takes up hours of my day. Many things came before it and many things will probably replace it, but it feels insurmountable right now. Learning that I have brain disorders that produce these patterns of thought, though, felt really liberating. I hope that Im able to get my life back from some of these fears through therapy and meds.