Keep Having Panic Attacks...help!

[leanne1321]

what ifs are a negative thinking style.

My T keeps telling me this because I have a lot of "what ifs" but she always says "hindsight is 20/20. You couldn't have known what would happen." But I think this is part of the whole guilt aspect. You question if you did enough to stop it, if there was anything else you could've done. Looking back, I'm starting to see that I was only a 13 year old girl and I wasn't as physically strong as my abusers.

With regards to the fearlessness, I saw it as a vulnerability (I don't do vulnerable, but I'm working on it). I'm sure it was there, but I hid it well even from myself. I would constantly put myself in dangerous situations, walk home at ridiculous hours in dangerous places, hang around with the rough crowd (half of who are now in prison). When I was followed (it happened a few times) I was unbelievably calm and I'd often pick up someting heavy, like a big stick and confront them with it.

This week, I've been working on the sadness. I keep feeling lost and then I broke that down and it felt like I'd lost something, something that I need. I'm not sure, but I think its grief (I haven't lost someone or something close to me since I was 12, so I can't compare). Maybe I'm grieving because of what was taken from me back then and that ultimately changed my world.

I haven't said so before Anthony, but a huge thank you for creating these forums. I feel it really helps me to understand many of my symptoms and to know there are others out there who can truly understand me and support me. Without it, I think this journey to recovery would be much harder.

 

[anthony]

What ifs are dealt with as a process best, not so much just a statement. The process goes something like this:

• What if?
• What evidence exists to support this statement?
• What evidence exists to negate this statement?
• Which evidence is stronger?
• Apply positive outcome to every time you think about that what if.

Many don't realize initially, but when they use the process, you will quickly find there is no evidence, by definition of the word, to support a "what if". People will try and create it, but when countered to demonstrate the evidence based on the facts, further negative thinking styles, guesses, estimations, etc, are not evidence, they are more what ifs.

So a person quickly will learn for themselves, any "what if" is impossible to be true.

Use the process to discover the truth for yourself, which after a brief period of challenging your what if statements, you will then engrain not to use them, period... because you will accept there is zero evidence to support them.

That is how you remove what if thinking from your brain, outright, through good old CBT techniques.