advise on anxiety, please
I Just wanted to see if anyone has any advise, my anxiety levels at the moment are really bad,some days, so bad that doing anything productive is so difficult even really simple things are hard. often for a whole day i can feel so disconnected from my body as though i am not here a feeling like i am in constant panic, as if on some sort of drugs or alcohol, a sense of unreality, i no with time this will go, but have struggled for so many years with it and for some reason over the last year if has gotten much worse. it is difficult to do little things, even be at a session when i am like this i do not actually feel as though i am there. i do not no if this makes sense to anyone but if it does and anyone has any tips please, share them as i am really struggling with this. and the worst the anxiety the more difficult it is to nourish myself which i no is much needed at the minute and vital for my recovery,
thanks
love leah x
Hi Leah,
Everything you say makes perfect sense. I get terribly anxious about things which I can control but worse I get really in a panic about things that are out of my control. I fret about anything there is to fret about. It sometimes is a little funny because I find myself worrying about Feb 25th 2013 when I have absolutely no idea where I'll be or what I'll be doing.
I know what you mean when you say it's like being on some sort of drug. I always compare it to one of those scenes you see in a movie when a child goes missing or something and the parent is trying to find the child and there are all these faces in a everywhere and it's like slow motion, you can't breathe properly and everything is confusing.
Somebody recently told me in a session to try and imagine that all that noise can be turned down with a volume button. I don't know if it's the same for you but sometimes there is simply too much swirling around in my head to the point where my head hurts. The volume button does work. If your anything like me you'll have to try it several times to make it work. I couldn't get it too work for ages but then I realised I was concentrating so hard on making it work I forgot why I was doing it in the first place-probably not the way it's supposed to work-but if it works it works.
Breathe-I hold my breath when I'm feeling very anxious-this does not help-don't know why I do it, I think my body just tenses up in a situation where I don't feel comfortable but seriously take slow deep breaths and relax it helps a little.
My last bit of advice which works really well for me is when you have loads of things that you really need to get done but you get into a state about having to do them and get nothing done is-make a list. On the list put the first thing as the one which you must absolutely get done, the next something of less priority and last the things that could wait if needed. Tick them off as you get them done-just seems to take away that feeling of being overwhelmed with so much to do and you feel better as you tick them off.
Hope that helps, went off on one a bit.
Andrea.xx
Dear beautiful Leah,
Like Andreas said, your post makes total sense. I remember the feeling you are talking about well. I felt like on high alert all the time. Some weird feeling in the pit of the stomach that just wouldn't go away, high alert waves even shooting into my finger tips...
And I remember the day when I first became aware of the fact that, omg, days had past since I had felt like that last..then weeks, now it is many months... and wherever I get this sensation, it is a real signal of my body or a gut feeling that is making itself heard.
The physical sensations that you have with your anxiety are caused by a constant level of adrenaline. You are feeling as if you were on the run, in a fight or flight situation...it is the stress hormone that causes you to feel like this. You say that for some reason your anxiety has become worse. While this feel almost like dis-improvement I would dare to say that, in reality, it is a sign of some progress. I think that in the condition we use a lot of the behaviours to numb out any feelings or emotions that are uncomfortable and stressful. So it seems only somehow logical that, with your work on recovery you are opening up your armor and allowing your beautiful self to feel more and more. So, for a while during recovery it seems that your are picking up many more signals from around you than ever before and it makes your body react with the excretion of stress hormone, adrenaline.
So: Anxiety is stress...and the good news is: Stress can be managed. This is something you can learn and train until it becomes automatic.
Stress management is a big field, not because stress is so difficult to conquer, but because we humans are all unique and not every tool works for everybody.
At some stage during my therapy my therapist began to work on deep relaxation with me. At the beginning I thought this all was just some mumbo-jumbo that didn't really work with me, would never, whatever. But I gave it a go and trusted my therapist there. I did a lot of deep relaxation, I had a cd with a 30min guided relaxation on it. And as work for recovery I had the homework to lay down every day at least once, close my eyes and listen to the cd. I really found it hard work in the beginning, but with time I noticed that I actually drifted off more and more, that I actually was able to totally relax with it.
I would strongly recommend that you work with your therapist on stress management. It really is something that you will benefit from for the rest of your life!!! I learnt techniques that I could use for exams, for deadlines...whatever, any situation in life really.
What also helped me is my mantra:
I am ok, all is well, I'm calm, I'm relaxed, I'm assertive, I'm confident, I am ok...
Andrea's tips are fantastic as well, just like she said, often you need to use them repeatedly until they slowly begin working. But it is worth it!!
Take care, lovely,
Love,
xxx Robin xxx
God i was just thinking the other day, how life has gotten so much easier since that god awful anxiety has left me. I know exactly how you are feeling, its life draining it really is, and its scary too.
So how did it go for me. It just kinda did.
I think a huge thing for me, that the anxiety for me was signalling me that i was in fear. This was my bodies fight or flight response and i was in flight. Flying and yet frozen all together driven by my thoughts which were trying to scare me. Set deadlines, time lines, what i had to do, what to eat, fearing the food etc all of that and it was ick.
So i guess when i clued into the fact that this was being caused by my thoughts trying to scare, it made me realise that i could do something about it. I could challenge it, i changed my lingo, i confronted it, and i chose to you use a more ' feck it ' attitude. I learnt to trust myself instead of listening to the fear thoughts. Then thankfully this year i got the oppourtunity to do a present moment course and thats where my answer really lay. Bringing myself back into the now and just being. Changing how i saw my to do list, distancing myself from that ego voice inside my head, doing tai chi, writing, and just being patient. All of that really helped. It didnt go away over night, but it does go.
A great book too is called ' Feel the fear and do it anyways', by Susan Jeffers, and also ' The Power of Now' by Eckart Tolle. Right now i would advise you to get onto youtube look up relaxation tunes, play it, listen and follow ur breath in and out and reassure yourself that everything is ok, you are safe and it will pass.
It will pass my dear
emerh
Oh this is just the worst feeling, I absolutely empathise with you -I felt like that for a year non-stop & felt like I was going insane. Sometimes I thought if there's any more electromagnetic charges attacking my heart I will die. It felt like a heart attack, palpitations in the extreme, sickness in my stomach, too hot, feeling like something disastrous was going to happen
At the time I kept insisting that what was bothering me couldn't be the cause of it because I never experienced it before despite far worse things happening in my life - but ya see the thing was, with those other situations I never really cared .At the core of this anxiety was an intense fear.
A feeling that I had lost something vital to my survival
No matter what I did it persisted.
What I found helped though (although I only realise looking back that this helped) was finding a life I really wanted- I know that sounds strange but I had to believe I was good enough & I had to throw myself into something that really mattered to me.
I dunno how it just seemed to disappear gradually, less & less, I still care about the thing I cared about, but it is less traumatic now with time between us
Just try to stay calm, assure yourself that you are safe,protected, that all is working out for you - try deep breathing, writing, some rescue remedy, singing, dancing, something creative to get rid of the energy
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thank you very much to all the replies that is really helpful, one that other people have suffered with this and over come it, and also all the different tips, i really appreciate your help.
leah xx