I’m not sure how to explain this clearly, but I’ll try.
For about 5 months I’ve been dealing with what feels like constant mental noise. It’s like my mind is always running, and I’m aware of my thoughts almost all the time (kind of hyperawareness).
The hardest part is this:
When I try to focus on something (work, reading, talking to someone, anything in normal life), I start having anxiety or thoughts like:
- “what if I can’t distract myself?”
- “what if I can’t get into it?”
- “what if I’ll feel bad?”
And then in the process these thoughts repeat themselves.
Of course, that makes it almost impossible to actually relax or get into a flow. It feels like I’m always half “in my head” and half in reality.
Even when I’m in a relatively good mood, these thoughts still pop up like:
“you’ll feel bad soon”. I try to ignore them, but again they repeat and repeat till I start to feel anxiety. So almost all the time I think about my anxiety and hyperwareness.
I can still function — I can talk, work, do things — but there’s always this background layer of thinking about thinking.
It’s exhausting and depressing.
Has anyone experienced something similar?
Especially the fear of not being able to distract yourself or “get into life”?