We moved recently and my main worry was bad neighbours.
In my PhD I call this trait "hiD", meaning D for dissociating into a future self who is having a terrible time! I did it yesterday when I couldn't pay for a hotel room I thought I had booked. My wife said "calm down, calm down, you are not going to die"
I replied "yes, but not having anywhere to stay in the middle of London feels like death to me!"
And so it goes...
I'd never thought of it lat way but you're right. I'm not in the current moment at all while in that state. I would agree about London too, and I need a centre to inhabit, from which to make short, probing attacks when venturing out
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If the answer is no, I try to encourage myself, "Ok, then put it down. Not yours. Not in your control."
Sometimes I just start with the reminder, "Not yours. Don't pick up one more thing. Leave it on the ground."
This helps me to shift and create movement.
That's a nice way to deal with it. Visual analogies like that can help, and I'll try to remember that.
It may help with stress as well as I pick up other people's stress and then can't seem to shake it off, while they are off having fun again.
This is a constant problem for me.
The thing is, though, I'm right probably 3/4 of the time - the catastrophic events actually happen. I am pretty much a walking advertisement for Murphy's Law, because everything that can go wrong does happen, and a few more unrelated but ridiculously awful things will also be thrown in there for good measure.
I am not sure if I just have excessively bad luck, am some kind of seer who gets things stuck in my head because they're about to happen, or if I'm drawing bad things to myself because I can't get them out of my head (Law of Attraction). I've been trying to catch myself when I get fixated on something like that, and try to actively redirect my thoughts to something positive. I don't know what else to do, besides prepare for the worst and expect something crappy.
That's a very interesting point.
I don't 100% believe in the law of attraction, but there is something in it I think.
These days my catastrophising is short term, and I'm careful to meditate of do what I have to to stop it rolling on and on. Realising it's not real, and not me was a huge help, as were books like Napoleon Hill (Power of Positive thinking?).
Before that though, I used to have it run on for days and weeks, and then I used to find exactly what you say - the bad things came true.
Once I stopped though, the bad things stopped occurring in the same way. Everyone has ups and downs of course, but before I had mostly downs and I could see most people were no like that, so i concluded i was just unlucky or cursed from birth
It's been years now and those huge downs have only ever come back when I've had real deep depressions, and they tend to track upwards once the depression goes.
These down turns are always things out of my control and down to luck.
Interesting point and worthy of it's own thread maybe.