intrusive_thoughts ovenbird I've convinced myself that I have toxic shock syndrome and am about to die of kidney failure despite having almost none of the symptoms. 250809 ... raze everything i love dies with its eyes wide open, and i am powerless to intervene. 250809 ... ovenbird My mind insists that the headache starting behind my eyes is the result of a brain eating parasite. 250812 ... epitome of incomprehensibility "I'm trying to do everything." I'm not trying to do literally everything. "I'm such a failure." No, because not everything falls easily into the categories of "failure" or "success." As for the things you *can* put in those boxes, a person's life will include multiple successes and failures. You cannot *be* a failure. Or a success. (I can logic these thoughts into submission, yes, but my feelings don't always care about the facts. Oftentimes, I'll still feel like a failure or like I have too much to do.) 250812 ... ovenbird I find the same thing about intrusive thoughts, eoi. I can logically reject them but it often does nothing to make them go away. I have better luck with letting them have their say and then returning to the truth that they don't define me. They are a weather system and I am the sky. They are passing through. 250812 ... ovenbird Over breakfast we recount our dreams and then the images that plague our minds. My daughter's friend admits that thoughts often get lodged in her brain, insisting she take irrational and repetitive actions. “Oh!” my daughter says, “I have intrusive thoughts too! When I'm standing on something high I always think about throwing myself off. But I never do it.” We all share our most frequent intrusive thoughts, normalizing this thing that could, if allowed to get a toehold, make us all feel like there's something wrong with us. The girls, having established this way that they are the same, snuggle under a blanket and watch a movie. My friend looks at her daughter wrapped up with mine and tears up. “This is how it should always be,” she says and I nod. We should be shown that we all have a dark voice in our heads. We should never be made to feel alone in our fear. This is how we find the strength to resist. This is how we learn that even when the voices are loud, we don't have to listen. 250823 ... ovenbird I convince myself I've been poisoned and will likely die after eating a wild blackberry that doesn't taste right. 250826 ... Jus I had a headache yesterday and thought “how sad for my son to grow up without a mother”…since I was clearly having a brain aneurysm. 250826 ... ovenbird After two days spent almost entirely outside breathing in the wildfire haze I developed a slight cough and sore lungs. I then convinced myself I probably have lung cancer. (After one night back at home with my air purifier running I'm totally fine...) 250831 ... ovenbird There's nothing that I won't lose, in some way or another. Every joy is only borrowed. 250901 ... ovenbird I have to take a new medication and I'm struggling to do so because my brain has decided it will likely kill me or at least cause very unpleasant side effects. 250902 ... e_o_i Sometimes it's about catastrophic thinking or overgeneralization, but sometimes it's being bothered by little things that don't normally worry me. This morning while getting dressed, I saw my reflection in the shelf with glass doors and thought, anxious and mournful for a second, "My hair isn't getting any longer!" (The hair might very well have reached a point where it's not getting longer because the longest hairs fall out or break, but since when do I CARE about that??) 250902 ... ovenbird I convince myself that the fish my neighbour caught himself and gave to me, that I cooked and ate and fed to my children, was likely full of never before seen parasites and we're probably all going to die (or at least get horrible food poisoning). Spoiler alert: we're all still alive and no one is sick. 250903 ... raze the tightness i feel in my chest when i open my eyes after a few hours of broken sleep is a symptom of cardiovascular disease, which will kill me before my next birthday. 250904 what's it to you? who go blather from