Thoughts causing anxiety symptons

[FMB100]

I have used the techniques in this course and usually I am not as affected by scary thoughts but not always. For some reason I am now thinking of a security guard in high school who I thought used unnecessary force on me and that even kept me up for an hour in the middle of the night last night. This happened a long time ago.

Thoughts like this person should not be in the public arena, or fear this will happen again, or I deserve to be treated badly since one person did it are coming about. I know the reality is adults tend to be treated like adults and not children and I am able to control who I associate with are the reality but the anxiety symptoms, mainly in the stomach aren't going away.

Are there any ideas on how to handle a thought like this that lingers on. The thoughts seem to be mainly of fear.

Thank you very much.

[Paisleegreen]

I know these are hard to experience. I've been learning what you are working on, is to replace the thought to get rid of the anxiety symptoms. You did experience a frightening thing, something pretty traumatic in my estimation. I do believe that it can be overcome, I think challenging the thought or even putting a stop sign in front of it will change your visual focus or thinking about it.

DR David Burns has a workbook that covers this area as well to help one feel better by changing our way of thinking. The workbook is called 10 Steps to Self Esteem and really focuses on our negative thoughts and putting pencil to paper to work through them to change the thought. It helped me enough that I was able to go off of anti-depressants. Lucinda's Program helps this way as well. Paislee