Hi all, I have been suffering from anxiety for a few years. In many respects I have improved. It is no longer constant. However, I still suffer regularly when there is something triggering it. Like an upcoming presentation or friends taking a while to respond. It consumes me and I struggle to take my mind off my anxieties. The rational side of me says not to listen to it and focus on the evidence against the anxiety, and the positives, but my anxieties then tell me "what if it's wrong? Look at this evidence for your anxiety being true!" So it feels like a constant battle between my thoughts and the anxiety is relentless. It worms its way to find new ways to make me feel bad. For instance, last Autumn I realised that I was missing friends more than I thought, but couldn't easily see them due to the restrictions and such. I gradually declined, but in December one of my friends met up with another for a walk and I wasn't asked. This saddened me and I initially went from thoughts of them being inconsiderate to thoughts of how I can't blame them for not including me when I am such a rubbish friend and who would want to be friends with me? I'm a nobody, a loser, someone fundamentally unable to like. Then I progressed to attacking myself for caring so much, saying I am not in a relationship with either of them, I shouldn't be so close. Part of me wanted to run away and sulk that day and let my feelings known, but I bottled it all up, since I didn't want to cause a fuss, I feared what would happen and I would appear badly for caring so much and getting worked up about it. I found out since that one of my friends was suffering for similar reasons at the same time and I think this was just him wanting to see my other friend to offload and such. My other friend said they wanted to bang our heads together, since we are housemates, and neither of us were going to each other for help when we could. This is just an example of my thought patterns, but it's this overwhelming of anxious explanations for things, and the inability to tune out the hypotheticals and focus on the "what ifs" which makes things so hard. Every time I try to focus on the calm, measured explanation for such things, my anxiety says I am closing my mind off to hard truths. My friends have said and done lovely things for me since I have known them, so I have no reason to think they don't value me, but it doesn't stop the anxiety. I still get worried that I am a pest, an inconvenience and no-one cares about me in any way. My anxiety says to myself that if I was to kill myself tomorrow no-one would care apart from my parents. Then I remember the nice things friends have done and I say I am being ungrateful, and attack myself over that. It's relentless when I am like this. Meditation and self-help can help keep it at bay when I am not too bad, but when I am it's hard to get away. I am fed up with it. It takes me to dark places when I am like this. I can't commit suicide, there is something within me which has hope that things will get better, but I still want to die. I fantasise about my close friends killing me. I am not going into vivid detail, but I have created imaginary stories and fantasies in my head of friends I care about strangling me, stabbing me or shrinking and swallowing me whole. It's the only thing which gives me comfort when I am like this. I thought about it honestly and said to myself that I would like this to happen. I am done with this, the low opinion I have of myself and the feelings that I am inadequate. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to stop things overwhelming me and sending me into anxiety overload. I am scared about how distressing my thoughts have become and don't know how to deal with it and what it means for me. I haven't shared this with anyone, I don't want to affect friendships with this detail, but it's eating away at me. Deep down I want to live a content life, where I am not always anxious and feeling down because I am overwhelmed. I don't know how I can deal with my darker thoughts without confronting them openly. I don't know what to do.