My girlfriend has anxiety, depression and body issues. She sees a therapist once a week, and they’ve been working through a lot of her past trama more aggressively over the last few months. It seems to be helping, and she’s been feeling a lot better during the day.

Recently though when we’re cuddling at night she’s started getting lost in bad thoughts. She’ll suddenly jerk as if she was starting to fall asleep, but she says it’s because she was thinking about something bad, either a bad memory or a worry for the future. The bad thoughts has likely been happening for awhile, but the physical reaction to it is new.

She mentioned needing something to bring her back to the present where it’s good. That made me think of either some kind of totem like a stress ball, or some type of grounding technique. Reddit, do you have any ideas on ways to help my girlfriend break out of her bad thoughts? And does anyone else have physical reactions to bad thoughts?