I don't know how to calm my thoughts

[mailime]

No matter what I do I cannot stop myself from thinking about things I'm worrying about. I go for walks often, I try deep breathing, I try watching Rv and movies, I try music and I also try studying. Nothing works. No matter what I do I cannot stop thinking about the bad things even if I am doing something else. What should I do? I am not on any medications because the last time I went to the doctor they said I'm too young to go on anxiety medication (I'm 17). Does anxiety medicine even help? Sometimes I think my anxiety and heart pain is entirely situational, but everyone around me tells me I'm too sensitive.

[Beevee]

Hi. You're trying too hard to stop yourself feeling all the symptoms of anxiety which include all those bad thoughts. That is why they keep on coming. Everyone has bad thoughts, it's normal. The only difference is that your anxiety attaches a false importance to that thought which makes you think it's real and feel fearful. Your reaction to this feeling is the key to recovery. You can either react to that thought by adding more fear by trying to reject it, trying to fight it, trying to reason with it, trying to ignore it OR you can learn to accept the thoughts without putting up any resistance and just going with the flow. Trying to do anything to stop yourself feeling anxiety has the opposite effect. The symptoms you want to get rid of stick around. If you change your attitude towards the symptoms and willingly go towards those feelings instead of trying to get rid of them, they will go.

You probably won't realise it but the key to recovery is contained in your post. Nothing works. Doing nothing works. What I mean by that is if you do absolutely nothing about the symptoms and learn to accept that what is happening to your mind and body is all anxiety and completely harmless and live your life taking the anxiety with you, you will recover. I know exactly how hard this might seem but everyone has it in them to accept and recover.

I've posted lots of information on here which might help to explain things in more detail. Anyone who preaches acceptance ito recover from anxiety and any other anxiety related disorder (OCD, panic attacks, health anxiety etc) is worth listening to because it works. Once you know how to recover the right way by acceptance, it stays with you.

[mailime in reply to Beevee]

Thank you for the advice

[Beevee in reply to Beevee]

If you continue to add fear to the fearful thought, you stay stuck in the anxiety cycle. To break that cycle, learn to make friends with the symptoms and develop a "I don't care, it's only anxiety " attitude towards the symptoms. The more you are willing to feel everything anxiety throws at you and carry on wiith your day, the easier it will get. Don't get me wrong, the road to recovery can be very bumpy and take time and there will be times that you feel that you have not made any progress or gone backwards but this is completely normal. It is only your mind and body hitting the reset button which it may do many times but just accept it all. Every time you go through a setback, you are a step closer to recovery. When you are accepting, you are literally stepping out of the way of yourself and letting Mother Nature do her job in healing your nerves which have become overly sensitive through constant worry and stressing over how you feel and the reason why you feel fearful all the time. Fighting and trying to do things to not feel anxiety just gets in the way of this natural healing process which is why allowing yourself to feel terrible and not adding more fear (e.g. OMG!!! 😱😱😱😱 what is this new symptom??? Aargh 😱😱😱) will eventually lead you to recovery.