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A Few Things That Make You Doubt Your Sanity

But Are Actually Really Common (Though Not Always Healthy)

By Holly PainePublished 5 years ago 6 min read
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Niklas Hamann, Unsplash

Imagining Tragic Scenarios

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Do you ever find yourself lying in bed at night, trying to fall asleep only to dive down the rabbit hole of ‘what ifs’ in the worst possible ways imaginable? Maybe you find yourself playing through your own death, the death of a loved one, or some horrible, terrifying thing like being kidnapped and tortured? Perhaps it’s something bigger scale, something doomsday in nature? Possibly your tragic scenarios are more focused on the darkness that dwells within you, imagining the day you finally crack and go on a murder spree?

Good news, you’re not alone, and it doesn’t mean you’re crazy.

To one degree or another, almost all of us have experienced or will experience something like this at some point in our lives. In some ways, it can be healthy because it can help us to prepare for stressful events, but often times these sorts of catastrophic, intrusive thoughts can be incredibly distressing. They become especially problematic when we can’t seem to make them stop and they begin to interfere with our ability to deal with things in our day to day lives.

If you find they are causing you significant distress and interfering with life, consider attending therapy. This is a very common problem with anxiety and depressive disorders, but you can learn to control these thoughts. I promise you, therapists hear about this sort of thing all the time.

Otherwise, some things that might help are deliberately shifting your focus to something else, if you can. Think about something with positive, calming emotions attached to it, such as cuddling with your pet or hanging out with a good friend. Remind yourself that this is normal. Sometimes just knowing that what we’re experiencing is something others deal with as well can be enough to take the bite out of the beast.

L’Appel du Vide—The Call of the Void

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Have you ever been up somewhere high, like a bridge or a tall building, and looked down over the edge? Did you suddenly feel the inexplicable urge to jump? Driving down the freeway, have you have had the thought that you could pull the steering wheel and move into oncoming traffic? Jump in front of a train? Cut yourself while chopping vegetables? The French call this “l’appel du vide”—the call of the void—and it’s so incredibly common that there have been numerous studies on the phenomenon.

No, it doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It doesn’t mean you’re suicidal. It just means you’re human.

Science and medical research indicates the call of the void is, perhaps surprisingly, tied to our survival instinct. By being aware of the dangers around us, we’re easier able to avoid them. By thinking about jumping, we are, in effect, reminding ourselves that the height poses a threat. Chances are, right after experiencing the call of the void—in one form or another—you became more vigilant, took a step back from the edge or the train’s platform, paid closer attention to your driving or the placement of your fingers while using a knife.

Being Angry at a Loved One for Dying

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You’re not the first, and you most certainly won’t be the last, person to feel anger towards a loved one when they die. You might’ve heard about the five stages of grief theorized by Kübler-Ross, in which anger is considered the second stage. The thing is, people don’t always move through the stages in a linear fashion. Some people skip over stages completely, some do them out of order, and some move forward only to return to a previously experienced stage again. This is all normal and healthy.

The anger you are experiencing might be at the unfairness of life in general, other people who you feel may have caused the death, yourself, God or even the person who died. And this is okay. Sometimes we’re angry at the deceased for things they did while they were alive, and sometimes we’re angry because of the ways their death affects our lives. We may feel abandoned by the deceased; especially if the death was a suicide or something they could have prevented if they’d just listened to their doctors or were more careful.

Anger is a valid emotion, but it’s considered to be a secondary emotion stemming from either hurt or disappointment. If you’re angry, there are reasons for that anger. How you handle the anger is what matters. Explore those reasons. Talk through them with someone who you feel can listen, without judgment, to what you have to say.

Feeling Relieved When a Loved One Dies

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Maybe you’re not feeling angry, but relieved. If so, there’s a good chance you think it makes you a bad person. It doesn’t. You might think it makes you selfish. It doesn’t. Relief, just like anger or any other emotion, is real, valid, and healthy. What’s more, you can be both relieved and sad or angry that the person died. Humans are complex creatures, more than capable of experiencing multiple emotions at once, including conflicting emotions.

People who have witnessed a slow, painful decline in the health or mental acuity of a loved one before their eventual death quite often feel relieved once the individual has passed. This is increasingly likely if you were a caregiver for the deceased. Relief may come with knowing that the loved one is no longer suffering, or it may come because you no longer have to bear witness to the suffering. Relief may stem from being unburdened by physical, mental, emotional, time, and financial strains created by caring for someone terminally ill.

It’s okay to feel relieved, don’t let yourself become consumed by guilt.

Wishing Your Kids Were Never Born

Photo by Rene Bernal on Unsplash

Have you ever felt so pushed to the edge by your kids that for a fleeting second or two you wished your children were never born? I think the vast majority of parents have felt that a time or two while dealing with a kid in the midst of yet another meltdown. And yeah, we usually feel pretty guilty about it soon after.

But what about when you’re not feeling especially near your snapping point? What about when you see your childless friends or coworkers going out on Friday nights? Or watching them get a promotion because they don’t have to take time off to deal with a sick kid? Maybe it occurs to you that if you’d never had children, you might have those same things, too. It might even be a pervading sense of regret for the things you gave up and missed out on to start a family that are now well beyond your reach.

Wishing your kids were never born doesn’t make you a bad parent, it’s actually pretty normal. It’s really all about how you deal with those feelings that matters in the end. You can have these feelings and still love your children, take care of them, and be there for them. It’s important to accept those feelings as they come, grieve the things you’ve lost to parenthood, and move on. Don’t let those thoughts and feelings eat away at you and drive you to resent your kids.

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About the Creator

Holly Paine

I'm a 38-year-old Licensed Professional Counselor. I'm happily divorced, and the mother of a daughter on the autism spectrum. Writing keeps me sane.

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