Annie

Although I can say that my perspective is not the same, I can understand the feelings that you have and am going through a situation with my own family where I share some of those same feelings.

The whole “getting out of my head” statement truly hit home. What I can offer is that the whole feeling of being trapped in your head is maddening, it feels all consuming, and is actually extremely unhealthy as you know.  One of the first things that I started doing when those feelings came up was to tell myself to STOP, literally saying that out loud to myself. I felt very stupid at first, but after time your brain gets the picture. I also started doing push ups when those thoughts started creeping into my head, just go until my body could not do anymore, then I would lay on my back and work my breathe back to normal.

I read somewhere, I need to find the article or Ted talk about this, it said that those thoughts are like ants walking across a picnic table. Functioning people see the ants and then continue on with life no big deal, when you get in your own head, the ants are the only thing you can focus on. You have to let your thoughts be like the ants, acknowledge them and move on. That is what I work on when I listen to my breathe. A jealous thought will pop into my head, and I will say huh look at that I hear you, and then go back to counting my breathe. It has been an interesting journey that has shown some massive flaws in my personality. It has shown me where my insecurities lie, and that my self confidence sucks. But on the positive side, it is very refreshing to know that through this hardship, I am going to come out of the otherside a more complete individual.

I look forward to hearing more

Matt