Illness

[RabidBadger]

Hi all

At the risk of sounding like a complete weirdo... I have had a cold this week and I find that that my anxiety diminishes when I do actually feel ill.

I don't know if it's because I no longer feel guilty and useless for feeling crap because I have a valid reason.

Can anyone else relate to this?

Chris x

[Robbed]

Perhaps when you have something like a cold, it takes your mind off of anxiety. Your mind is taken off of this horrible thing that seems quite hopeless and unsolvable, and is transferred to something that, while not exactly pleasant, is MUCH more familiar and MUCH less scary. I find that real-world stress can actually make me feel better at times because it is better than anxiety disorder.

[RabidBadger]

I agree with you but I also feel like a sense of guilt has been lifted from me when I have a "real" grievance.

[Robbed]

I agree with you but I also feel like a sense of guilt has been lifted from me when I have a "real" grievance.

Then again, that's not the way I see things. If anything, I consider anxiety to be more of a 'real' grievance than a cold. We all know that, despite any unpleasantness, that a cold will be gone in a week or two with absolutely no expenditure of effort on our part. The same can certainly not be said about anxiety disorder. Under the best of circumstances, anxiety disorder is probably going to last at least several months. And getting over it often requires LOTS of effort. So anxiety is MUCH less trivial than a cold. Mabe people who have never had this problem might think otherwise. But you certainly know better.

[RabidBadger]

That's interesting.

A cold is a virus - a pathological illness that we have no control over.

Anxiety is in no way pathological, it's an emotion and we have complete control over it - if not on a conscious level.

Chris

[Robbed]

We may have no control over it. BUT, we know from experience that it will cease to bother us in relatively short order. After all, our body is quite good at dealing with this with no visible effort on our part We may have more actual control over anxiety than a virus, BUT we know that ridding ourselves of it will take considerable time and effort, AND worry considerably whether we actually have what it takes to overcome it (which prolongs the condition). Furthermore, we have to deal with people like doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists who tell us that we will NEVER be rid of the horror. I think that you will find that, given the choice, most people would take the first. I don't know about you, but I would MUCH rather have some physical ailment that will just bother me for a short time, and which I know will just go away.

[RabidBadger]

But is anxiety perpetuated by the fact that we feel the need to put so much effort into overcoming it?

[Robbed]

Perhaps. Then again, there are problems here. First of all, when we have anxiety, we really DON'T know what it takes to make it go away. All we know is that we feel awful. And if you are suffering from the kind of anxiety that I am (ie KNOW it is anxiety and not, say, a heart attack, stroke, etc), the whole idea that you are suffering from anxiety is in and of itself fearsome. After all, we can come here to this board and see ten gazillion people who have been dealing with anxiety for 10+ years. And this REALLY scares people like me. It makes me feel like it takes something REALLY heroic to overcome anxiety (if it is even 'possible'). Couple this with the fact that many of those same 'professionals' tell you that you must make a great 'effort' to overcome anxiety. As an example, if you go to, say, anxietycentre.com for instance, you will hear about the importance of 'deep relaxation' (ie meditation) as a means to overcome anxiety and remain anxiety condition free. This causes MUCH worry since meditation is SO foreign to 99.99999999% of people - we just don't know if we can pull it off. Furthermore, the feeling that this is going to be MANDATORY is discomforting, since it will make people like me feel that we have this obligation to do this because we are not 'normal'. See what I am saying here? Overcoming anxiety has itself been made out to be a monster. And until we can prove to ourselves otherwise, we just don't know if NOT making the effort is going to make this thing go away.

[RabidBadger]

Robbed

You are not stupid, I gather that from your posts.

The only thing it takes to get rid of anxiety is to stop being anxious. I'm not suggeting for one moment that it is easy but it is the same as every other habit we form in life.

I wake up every morning saying to myself " I am not going to drink today; I am not going to smoke today" but by the evening I am doing both. Why do I do this? Because habitual behaviour is much stronger than willpower.

The only thing that keeps you and I from being "normal" is the fact that we've formed habits based around anxiety. Giving up worrying is as hard as giving up smoking because we come to depend on it.

It has been a pleasure talking to you tonight; I'm off to bed now but mail me tomorrow - [email protected] - if you wanna talk.

Take care

Chris

[Velrose]

A little late on replying to this, but strangely, I sort of had the same thing happen a few days ago for me. I got a bad cold from my husband, and as I was laying on the couch all day long, I began to realize that none of my obsessive thoughts were popping into my mind. It was strangely nice, because the last few days they had been plaguing me pretty badly again.

Honestly for me though, I think it was the distraction of feeling so terrible physically that anything that could pop into my head paled in comparison.

[Robbed]

I think that this all boils down to distraction. If you have anxiety, but are not agoraphobic, you probably have noticed that if you actually goout and do things, you feel better. Not only do you feel less anxiety. But the other effects of the anxiety state, like depression and obsessions, are also reduced. When you are not doing much, you feel worse because you tend to ruminate about how bad you feel. Also, testing and monitoring for symptoms, like obsessions, is more likely to happen. And if you go looking for obsessive thoughts, you are virtualy guaranteed to find them.

[richick]

Most (possibly all) of my phobias are a result of health concerns / worries. When I actually DO get sick, the anxiety stops because I don't have to worry about getting sick anymore - I already am!

How sick is that!?