'clearing' the images and negative thoughts

Hi @jamesle2015

I've read your post a few times now and I don't know exactly what to reply because I don't really understand in what context your question is. I understand what it is like to have images that just pop up and I cannot forget. But are you talking in the context of work? Do you work and experience traumatic events at work? I've had a handful of incidents in my working life that I will never forget and that took me a while, as you say, "to clear the image", but I do not work in a first responder or medical environment, where you might have to do that on a daily base. My "movies" or "images" or "feelings" pop up from past trauma.

I think if you clarify that, there might be more people to help and answer your post.

Take care.

Hi @jamesle2015

I have trouble with that. I think i know what you mean. I can replay an entire day in my head with every minute detail if an event in the day is traumatic. Like a movie. Like a slide show. Unless I do something to change my thought pattern I am stuck watching the slide show with my heart beating rapidly for hours. Even if I watch TV my mind can drift back to it. I have to try and draw, write or read or do anything else to stop my mind from going back to it. Otherwise it creates anxiety. It's a weird train of thought and you have to fight to get out of it.

I am doing voluntary work, leading up to returning to work with a serious MI so I am concerned at how effectively I will be able to wind down at the end of the day, yes. I'm glad you brought it up. I was just thinking maybe you are over anxious about whether you did all your work tasks well. I re-run through my day obsessively worrying about what is done or hasn't been done or was it done right or could it or should have been done in a different way. Maybe you are re-running through the day because you are worried about what co-workers think of your performance or whether they think you have a MI. Have you disclosed your mental illness to your employer. Is that what is worrying you? Your ability to be able to disclose or fear that you might lose your job either way? If you do or don't disclose? I think it would be nice to be able to disclose, that way if you are struggling at work with concentration, memory or other symptoms of your illness then your employer will know what is going on. I'd just like a brain transplant or for them to find a cure actually.

Economically I wouldn't be looked upon as some market inefficiency that needs ridding from the equation i.e. a disabled drain on the economy. I like how they try and put the blame back on me - like i did something to make myself this way. All the lies in the world won't make the MI go away, so I don't know how productive their approach is with that. Its so EASY for them to blame it on some non-existent drug habit isn't it? I'm very ANTI drugs and have had debates with people about why they even take drugs actually. I always tell them they are an insult to a person with an intellectual handicap or a MI (that is not drug induced) like myself who would do anything for a normal brain. They just waste a perfectly good brain they got through genetics for the hell of it, when someone like me ends up with a non-curable MI through predisposition and exposure to trauma.

If you present with certain symptoms you get treated like your some crack/meth head because society is full of people who have become addicted to certain filthy things like meth/ice. I've said it for years and actually have on many occasions been tested...I'll take a random drug test any day of the week, and on any day, of any year, to prove otherwise and I also have no history of substance abuse. So unless someone can come up with a false positive reading I'll argue the point about falsely labelling all people with a MI as drug addicts. MI existed before Meth/crack/pot etc.

I'm going to start asking health professionals if they are on crack. I bet they won't like that and then i will say, "Well? How does it feel when i make that assumption about you? It doesn't feel very nice does it?". Save it for someone who does have a drug problem and stop treating me with unwarranted suspicion.

Please invest your time, your rumour spreading and the likes on someone who is or has actually been a drug addict.

What the rest of society and those around me choose to do, I cannot be held responsible for. That's their lifestyle and choices made by them. THEY ARE NOT MINE. I don't like the fact that I am falsely accused of being a drug addict because I have presented with a serious MI, that mind you I have been fighting for at least a decade. They fail to put the pieces and patterns together though. It just easier to blame it on crack or something. It is SLANDER/ILLEGAL because it isn't true. It is not past or present fact. Perhaps they need to be 'coming to terms with reality', on that issue. The rules seem to change when I am need of assistance for some reason?

Happy to talk more about it if you like.

I work in retail so I have to face people every day.....

I find it hard to 'switch' - I reckon some people are lucky they can 'switch' after work

If I make a 'mistake' I replay it over and over

I couldn't work in Aged Care...I have heard that it is hard work..

You have to do the cleaning and everything and then look after the old people...

Some of them might be angry or difficult

Then you have to get along with your colleagues...

I am grateful that I don't have workplace bullying issues to deal with...

Managers can be a bit annoying now and then but over time I get used to them..

The 'images' are because I have been doing the same job for a few years...

I reckon most people will have this problem - when you have a job where you have to face the customer...