Sense of Impending Doom

[Lonewolf86]

I've been on a healing journey all my life, except for most of it, I didn't know exactly what it was I was healing from. 

I just knew I was broken.  I'm going to digress a little here too.. and say that so often, I run into this idea of "hey, you were abused. you're not broken."  And people are like "yay, joy! I'm not actually broken.." except I AM broken.  It's the history.  You can't undo that damage.  You can only learn to live with it, in spite of it.  Anyway...  I am damaged and that damage results in me often feeling a sense of "impending doom" (catastrophizing) mostly around my work/career/income and winding up on the street.  See, I have no backup and nobody is ever going to help me if I get in trouble.  If I get sick or hurt and I can't work I'm in big trouble. When I can't work anymore I will be in trouble.. I haven't got myself into a place where I can live off a nest egg or whatever.  So what I've done is to "face my fears" and I've imagined 'ok so I'm homeless here's what life would be like...'  That helped a little I guess, but really I just would like to feel safe.  I would like to feel secure.  I would like to feel confident that I will be okay and that I can get by.

The thing is now... I can't feel that way. If I lose my income I'm screwed.  So, I'm working on trying to re-imagine my life.  A life doing the things I want to do (instead of what I have to do). I want to derive my income from something that flows naturally from who I am and my strengths (those things nobody can take away from me) except right now I don't know what that's going to be. I'm working on it.   One of my healing goals is to eliminate or greatly reduce this sense of impending doom.  If anyone can relate or has some ideas of things that might help I would like to hear them.  Thanks for reading.

[Papa Coco]

Lonewolf,

Great post. Great question. It really resonates with me. I just hope now that my response isn't too "out there." I'll try to make as much sense as possible:

I know that feeling well. I catastrophize a lot. I always have.

Up until today I called this a trust issue. I didn't trust the world, or the Universe, or my country or my employer or anyone else to always be there for me. Today, in my morning meditation, trust came up and I realized there's no such thing as a trust issue. It's a knowing issue. I don't need to force myself to trust that the sun will come up again tomorrow morning, because I know it will. Trust isn't an issue.

The reason I could always trust a sunrise, but could never trust my employers, or my country, or my FOO, or my neighbors, was because I KNEW they could turn on me in an instant. I knew this because my FOO turned on me every time they had a bad day. My employer nearly laid me off 7 times and finally did after I'd been with them for 42 years. They laid me off. During the 42 years I worked there, I watched them lay off hundreds of my friends who needed jobs. So, my inability to trust my employer caused me to catastrophize about employment all the time. It was due to the fact that, through witnessing it happen 7 times, I KNEW they were capable of getting rid of me at any moment.  I knew the sun would rise tomorrow but I knew my employer was not so predictable. So I didn't worry about the sunrise, but I did worry incessantly about my employment.

I catastrophize because I've seen how the world works. So for me to begin trusting in "God" or "Fate" or "luck" or even my own ability to earn a living and trust my friends, means I need to ask myself why I know what I know. There are people who know their family will support them in any pickle they can get into. They don't have trust issues; therefore they don't catastrophize.

There's no simple answer to this, but the complicated answer is that I have to challenge what I know and why I know it. If I KNOW someone can hurt me, I assume they will. I imagine it. I watch for it. I expect it. I plan for it. I worry myself sick over it. So, I call that catastrophizing.

I remember when I KNEW my wife would leave me if I lost my job. I told my therapist about it. He shook his head and said, "No way do I believe Coco would ever leave you for any reason, especially for losing your job." I was 44 at the time.  His words were the first words I'd ever heard that challenged what I thought I knew. I walked into his office knowing my wife would leave me if I lost my job. An hour later I walked out of his office knowing that she wouldn't. It changed my ability to trust her. And I stopped catastrophizing about her leaving me. I've never believed she'd ever leave me since. That was 20 years ago.

What I know in my gut is what I believe to be true. I catastrophized about being left by the love of my life because I know from experience that family will abuse their own child and throw me out if I don't "behave" and take care of them.

But once I got away from anyone who is prone to turn on me, I began to know I had some good friends who would support without insulting me. That's when I stopped catastrophizing my relationships.  What I know becomes what I believe which drives my fears and my expectations. If I know someone can hurt me, I worry about it. If I know they won't, I'm free to worry about other things. LOL.

[dollyvee]

Hi Lonewolf,

I read Healing Developmental Trauma this year and he uses the exact phrase, "impending doom" to discuss the feeling that a lot of preverbal trauma survivors have because they likely expereinced something at a young age which did threaten their survival, and give them this feeling. So, it's a matter of looking out for, and trying to protect yourself against something, which has likely already happened. You probably know the feeling, but it's coming from an age when you're too young to cognitively remember. Rather, it shows up in the body as this feeling. It's also so threatening and close to annhilation that that's what gives people that feeling of being snuffed out, or a threat to your existence because that's how babies would have experienced the threat at that time.

I found the book to be helpful in understanding myself and the need to intellectualize things for example. Something I can do endlessly, but also doesn't necessarily get to the root of how my internal world is organized.

Sending you support,
dolly

[Lonewolf86]

Hi Dollyvee thanks for the support. I think you're right about the early pre-verbal/pre-cognitive experiences.  I was definitely not treated well as an infant and toddler.  I will check out Healing Developmental Trauma. Thanks for the rec!  Have a great day!

[Lonewolf86]

Hi Papa Coco

I so appreciate your thoughtful response to my questions and the stuff you have shared about your own struggle with this sort of issue and work career.  I found it helpful to read about your technique of challenging beliefs.  It reminds me of the idea of "reframing" It reminds me of the idea that "the mind is the enemy" and in the case of catastrophizing that is definitely true.  The other thing that your post brought up for me is the idea of faith.  Faith is really how I get through these challenging times when I'm struggling.  I have faith in God and that his plans for me are good like it says in the Bible.  And I also have evidence in my life that this is true.  I have ways I am dealing with this struggle but I just wish I could put my energy into something else besides struggling   Thanks for your comment sir!

Lonewolf,

Great post. Great question. It really resonates with me. I just hope now that my response isn't too "out there." I'll try to make as much sense as possible:

I know that feeling well. I catastrophize a lot. I always have.

Up until today I called this a trust issue. I didn't trust the world, or the Universe, or my country or my employer or anyone else to always be there for me. Today, in my morning meditation, trust came up and I realized there's no such thing as a trust issue. It's a knowing issue. I don't need to force myself to trust that the sun will come up again tomorrow morning, because I know it will. Trust isn't an issue.

The reason I could always trust a sunrise, but could never trust my employers, or my country, or my FOO, or my neighbors, was because I KNEW they could turn on me in an instant. I knew this because my FOO turned on me every time they had a bad day. My employer nearly laid me off 7 times and finally did after I'd been with them for 42 years. They laid me off. During the 42 years I worked there, I watched them lay off hundreds of my friends who needed jobs. So, my inability to trust my employer caused me to catastrophize about employment all the time. It was due to the fact that, through witnessing it happen 7 times, I KNEW they were capable of getting rid of me at any moment.  I knew the sun would rise tomorrow but I knew my employer was not so predictable. So I didn't worry about the sunrise, but I did worry incessantly about my employment.

I catastrophize because I've seen how the world works. So for me to begin trusting in "God" or "Fate" or "luck" or even my own ability to earn a living and trust my friends, means I need to ask myself why I know what I know. There are people who know their family will support them in any pickle they can get into. They don't have trust issues; therefore they don't catastrophize.

There's no simple answer to this, but the complicated answer is that I have to challenge what I know and why I know it. If I KNOW someone can hurt me, I assume they will. I imagine it. I watch for it. I expect it. I plan for it. I worry myself sick over it. So, I call that catastrophizing.

I remember when I KNEW my wife would leave me if I lost my job. I told my therapist about it. He shook his head and said, "No way do I believe Coco would ever leave you for any reason, especially for losing your job." I was 44 at the time.  His words were the first words I'd ever heard that challenged what I thought I knew. I walked into his office knowing my wife would leave me if I lost my job. An hour later I walked out of his office knowing that she wouldn't. It changed my ability to trust her. And I stopped catastrophizing about her leaving me. I've never believed she'd ever leave me since. That was 20 years ago.

What I know in my gut is what I believe to be true. I catastrophized about being left by the love of my life because I know from experience that family will abuse their own child and throw me out if I don't "behave" and take care of them.

But once I got away from anyone who is prone to turn on me, I began to know I had some good friends who would support without insulting me. That's when I stopped catastrophizing my relationships.  What I know becomes what I believe which drives my fears and my expectations. If I know someone can hurt me, I worry about it. If I know they won't, I'm free to worry about other things. LOL.

[Beijaflor57]

Hi Lonewolf...I can definitely relate to that feeling of a sense of impending doom. I struggle with it often. For me, although I do, thankfully, currently still have a few family members who I know would support me if something should happen to me, two are my parents, who are getting up in age, and most of my siblings have made it clear that I'm pretty much on my own (I'm the scapegoat). After putting myself through post-graduate school, and working my butt off in recent years, I've finally secured a good career as a teacher, but the road hasn't been easy, and I've had a lot of health issues throughout my life that have derailed me a few times in my adulthood and made it difficult/impossible for me to work. (To many of my siblings, though, these health issues are merely an 'excuse' and not legitimate.)

As a single woman who lives alone, I do worry though...I have no one to take care of me should I get ill or injured, and even with my ongoing health issues I sometimes need assistance with simple things like opening bottles or jars. So, yes, it's quite easy for me to catastrophize, especially the older I get. Due to my health struggles, and crazy job history, I don't have a nest egg either, so I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to try to work the rest of my life. Health problems or not.

So, yes, I get the impending doom feeling. For me, it also shows up whenever things start to go well in my life. Because, deep down, I don't trust success or happiness. As soon as I start to feel good, or things are going well, a feeling of dread fills me. Which sometimes leads me to sabotage myself.

Hi Papa Coco

I so appreciate your thoughtful response to my questions and the stuff you have shared about your own struggle with this sort of issue and work career.  I found it helpful to read about your technique of challenging beliefs.  It reminds me of the idea of "reframing" It reminds me of the idea that "the mind is the enemy" and in the case of catastrophizing that is definitely true.  The other thing that your post brought up for me is the idea of faith.  Faith is really how I get through these challenging times when I'm struggling.  I have faith in God and that his plans for me are good like it says in the Bible.  And I also have evidence in my life that this is true.  I have ways I am dealing with this struggle but I just wish I could put my energy into something else besides struggling   Thanks for your comment sir!

Faith is what I cling to as well, Lonewolf. It's all I've got! And you're right about the mind being our enemy. It's far easier to give in to fear than to hold on to hope and faith.

But here's what I've learned--am still learning: even though, like you, I wish I didn't have to feel like I'm constantly struggling, and it seems unfair that some of us have been dealt harsher blows in life than others, I'd still rather have my struggles and pain than none at all. For it's in the struggles we have the chance to grow and overcome. All of us on the forum, who, as you said, feel 'damaged' and 'broken,' are far stronger than we give ourselves credit for. We may feel weak...but we've survived. We're here. And that's something. It's an age-old analogy, but the caterpillar doesn't become the butterfly without intense struggle first. In the midst of my struggles, I hang onto that analogy.

[Desert Flower]

There's so much I wanna respond to in these posts. Very important stuff. Many of these things resonate a lot for me too.

Impending doom, catastrophizing. It's a feeling I know so well. And I never wanted to feel it. That's why I used to get ill all the time. I couldn't actually feel it, but now that I am aware of it, I cannot seem to lose it. I became aware of it through an online trauma course I did awhile ago, in which the first question they asked was: where do you feel safe? And I thought, well, actually, there's not so many places at all where I do feel safe. I feel something bad is about to happen most of the time. Even if I do have a job, a house, a great husband etc. These things don't make it go away, this sense of doom.

For me, this impending doom is not so much associated with other people that cannot be trusted, even though yes, they did hurt me and they did abandon me and they did abuse me. But I always felt it was not other people that caused it, it was me. I must have done something wrong, done something not perfectly, to upset them and to cause them to behave that way. I will lose everything, they will abandon me because I did something wrong. I now know this is not true of course but this sense of things being my fault is very strong. So that's my doom. It is indeed preverbal trauma that causes this sense of impending doom. It's not something I did.

For me, this sense of doom is not so much associated with outer circumstances, it's almost like it's innate. But I know it's not innate. Because I had two times in my life, over the last year, when I did not feel this doom hanging around. Instead, I felt truly at ease, not worried about anything, my feet heavy on the ground, me inside my body, my mind quiet. I really didn't care what would happen, everything would be okay. It really exists apparently, this feeling that 'normal' people supposedly have all the time. It was so strange and revealing to me. And then it was gone again and doom was back. And at first I didn't know what brought the doom back. It was a big impetus for me to start searching for that sense of ease again. I recently found how I lost my ease though, some big triggers happened in my life, I now learned how this works a little bit. So now I'm hoping, if I take good care of myself, learn to recognize these triggers, I may be able to avert some of them or deal with them in a healthier way.

And then there's this issue of being damaged or not. Difficult one. At some level, yes, I'm starting to believe I am in fact damaged. My nervous system does not respond the way a healthy system would. The stress button is touched way to soon and way to hard whenever something little happens. And at the same time, I know deep down we're not broken. Yes, we carry with us this garbage of what happened to us and what makes us react the way we do. But at our core we are whole, compassionate, wise and aware. And everything that we learned gives us such a big emotional intelligence, I really do feel it might be a silver lining.

And I'm so glad that we're together on this forum, sharing what we can and giving us a chance to grow and help eachother. Thank you everyone

[Lonewolf86]

Hi Beijaflor57,

Thanks for responding and sharing something of your own experience.  While I'm glad on the one hand that I'm not the only one who struggles with this (I guess misery loves company) I'm also sorry that you have to struggle with it because I know how difficult it is.  I think you're right that it goes back to pre-verbal stuff.  I know, for example, that I was neglected and abused when I was an infant and a toddler and I know that my mother tried to end her pregnancy and tried to starve herself. She said she drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and (that cigg smoking was a huge part of the child abuse btw).  I know you're right about how this has a silver lining. It definitely does.  We can be the "cycle breakers" we can create a new legacy for our family and that is good. It's not all about us and our short time here..  Check out this article: https://familyscapegoathealing.substack.com/p/beautiful-scars-what-the-art-of-kintsugi-can-teach-us-about-healing-from-family-scapegoating-abuse-fsa?utm_source=publication-search

There's a lot here to respond to.  Look forward chatting some more

[Lonewolf86]

Hi Desert Flower,

I'm hoping the same as you, that if I take care of myself and learn the triggers and how to notice when I'm in what Pete Walker calls a "flashback" that I can reduce this awful feeling.  It's so cool that you had those couple instances of not being troubled.  If you're willing I'd be curious to hear more about those experiences.  I get what you're saying about how at our core we're not damaged and we're whole, compassionate, wise and aware and I agree with this but for me an idea that's been evolving is "who the heck am i really?"  and the answer is I am a person who had this background. That is an integral part of who I am and denying it is denying the truth of me.  I endured certain hardships which left their mark on me and those marks are scars that will never go away, so like the Kintsugi art of the Japanese mentioned in my previous post, what hurt us is the same thing that makes us unique and special.  All this doesn't help me though when it comes to flashbacks, catastrophizing, abusing myself, abandoning myself.  I still do those things and I'm hoping that some more healing under my belt things will start to feel a little better.  I hope the same for you.

Thanks for reading and replying

[Beijaflor57]

Hi Beijaflor57,

Thanks for responding and sharing something of your own experience.  While I'm glad on the one hand that I'm not the only one who struggles with this (I guess misery loves company) I'm also sorry that you have to struggle with it because I know how difficult it is.  I think you're right that it goes back to pre-verbal stuff.  I know, for example, that I was neglected and abused when I was an infant and a toddler and I know that my mother tried to end her pregnancy and tried to starve herself. She said she drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and (that cigg smoking was a huge part of the child abuse btw).  I know you're right about how this has a silver lining. It definitely does.  We can be the "cycle breakers" we can create a new legacy for our family and that is good. It's not all about us and our short time here..  Check out this article: https://familyscapegoathealing.substack.com/p/beautiful-scars-what-the-art-of-kintsugi-can-teach-us-about-healing-from-family-scapegoating-abuse-fsa?utm_source=publication-search

There's a lot here to respond to.  Look forward chatting some more

I'm actually a subscriber to that substack and am very familiar with Rebecca Mandeville's work and what she's shared about kintsugi. (Love, love Rebecca Mandeville, btw, and highly recommend her book Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed to anyone who's endured scapegoating abuse in their families. Her book and articles helped open my eyes to the fact that I was the scapegoat in my family.) But thank you for sharing her article, and I hope others will check it out. I love the kintsugi analogy and it gives me hope that something beautiful can still be made from my broken life. As you pointed out, we have the chance to be cycle breakers. Which is a wonderful legacy we can leave behind. While the abuse and neglect we suffered was devastating and undeserved (I'm so sorry you endured what you did as an infant and toddler), we've gained more insight and empathy from our experiences that can enable us to be agents of change for the good of others.