Trying to convey feelings of safety while living in a state or perpetual dread.

Apologies up front for how long this is. So I must convey feelings of safety to the brain. I try to tell myself life is good and I have nothing to worry about. I am safe. No one is coming to hunt me down. In a fundamental way, I actually am safe. Better off than most by basic living metrics.
I can tell myself this, but do I really believe it?
I actually walk around with fear every minute every day. "Who is going to try and screw me over next?" I have developed this mindset unfortunately over the last 5 years or so, where so many bad things have happened that I have come to expect bad things to happen at every turn. I walk around fully expecting the next crisis in my life at any moment.

I feel I have been conditioned to expect bad news at any given moment.
These may be ordinary life events that everyone must deal with from time to time. But what they do is *add up* and chip away at your trust of anyone or anything in the world.
"Who is going to try and screw me over next?"
"What is going to go wrong next?"
It's a way of actually preparing myself so I am not as shocked when it happens. Always being prepared for potentially bad news. Some call it being a "realist."

How can I convey feelings of safety when I walk around with a boilerplate dread every day?

 

Read any book by Claire Weekes. You can train yourself to spot this kind of mindset thinking and redirect yourself, she can tell you how. These are symptoms of anxiety, you'll need to accept that you are anxious, and not focus or worry about the anxiety or these thoughts. That is just another TMS disception to get your mind of how you REALLY think and FEEL about these things.

So, what does it feel like to think that you are constantly gonna be screwed over?
Journal about your feelings around this.

Meditate (or do things that separate you from these thoughts, your favorite sport, walks in nature, yoga, qui gong....)

Ultimately, it's not that you don't trust *anyone* it's that you need to learn to trust yourself.

 

Thanks for the comments. An important point you make, something must be ready to take the place of this fear or negativity mindset. It settles in at the expense of any other mindset. And it's hard to push away if there is nothing to take its place. None of this happens sitting on your butt. I think a lot of life revolves around action. So the challenge is how to get up and fill your life with more positive influences, trying to see the good more commonly over the bad. I can definitely relate to this because I have noticed this. Right now I have nothing to take the place of this negativity mindset. It's like a gradual work in progress though, it probably takes a while.

 

10000%

 

What do you love, or what did you love before you felt overwhelmed?
Favorite hobbies, favorite places to eat, favorite people?
Interests...

I had to force myself to get back into doing things and some I never thought I'd do again, and here I am doing them. For me, it took awhile to get my interest back - my mind was so hyper focused on anxiety, depression and TMS sensations that where hyper sensitized. It didn't take too long to really want to start to do things though, once I got started. Initially I had to push myself into doing things - it's part of breaking depression.

 

Cactus,
You always give me such hope!

 

This was definitely my experience with depression and to get out of it I needed to make myself do the things I used to enjoy again even if I didn't want to. The anhedonia is very freaky. The more I did things, little by little the dark cloud began to lift.

 

I've never even heard of anhedonia until right now. But wow that is exactly what I am experiencing. And it is also evident the only way out is to simply start doing things. I just have absolutely zero interest in socializing with people. Small talk never bothered me my whole life. But unless there is some deep personal connection going on, I simply have no interest in trying to entertain people. No interest in committing to activities or anything.
Glad to hear you found some hope in just finally taking action and gettin out there. Thank you for your comments, I just learned something new.

 

"I just have absolutely zero interest in socializing with people"

Nobody mentioned socializing.
Have you ever enjoyed painting or art or design, listening or making music, poetry, going out for walks, video games, swimming, knitting, surfing, sun bathing, gardening...you get the picture ... anything that interests you.
When we are in a funk, it's hard to remember what we liked to do. I looked around me and realized I was surrounded by the things I love to do. And eventually I started to walk a few miles to a local eatery once a week where I eat by myself, then I started to get back to doing many things I enjoy even if it was just cooking a little something up. Eventually I also started to do things I don't like so much but that need to be done, acknowledging the fact that it probably pisses my subconscious off to no end that I'm the one who has to do these things, and that feeling was perfectly OK. So don't forget to acknowledge to yourself how challenging this is, and how much effort it might take to overcome it and congratulate yourself for just doing it.

 

This is important!

 

I was informed recently in this Forum about Dan Buglio's video on Afformations. I've inserted the link below.

Rather than trying to correct a negative headspace by reciting positive affirmations that never feel true; Dan suggests that we, instead, ask better questions. Rather than our usual questions of "what's wrong with my life (body, job, spouse)?" (which reflects the negativity bias our primitive brain embraces to keep us safe), we ask instead questions like "what's good in my life?", "what am I doing that's going well?", etc. I find it helpful to write down at night the things I come up with during the day, as a way to reinforce them. This is similar to keeping a Gratitude Journal, which research has shown is effective in combating depression.