Avoidance as a helpful measure?

[Shirley Moloney]

Hello everyone. I'm new here but would be grateful for advice.

I've suffered panic attacks/panic disorder for over 20 years. Although not happy I'm on little medication. In general I would be considered to be functioning. In the last few years I've avoided more and more things and now only really leave the house for work and briefly for essentials. All other things require too much planning and distress.

I went to my GP a few months ago and pleaded for help as I can't go on living like this. So he said go to this counsellor she's great for panic. So for weeks weeks I've been telling her how I have hardly any friends left and how I can't even go out for a walk near my house. We've gone through my past. Raked up stuff which I didn't need reminding of with no reasoning as to how this may help me.

Exasperated the other day I told her how I freaked out at the top of a stairs I have to go down twice a day and how I felt so stupid for having to go an alternate route (this was at work). Her reply - but what's the harm in going a different route? If you can avoid a situation then do so.

Am I over reacting? Isn't that exactly why I'm seeing her? It is because I now avoid everything that I needed help. When I said this to her she asked had my doctor ever prescribed medication for this? It was like she had missed the whole point of my attendance over the last 3 months.

Now I'm worried that if I stop seeing her my GP will think I didn't try. He may be a friend (he had her cards on his desk at the office).

Sorry for the long rant but I needed to get this off my chest. My question is - can avoidance ever be a reasonable suggestion for panic disorder?

[Im-Suffering]

Exasperated the other day I told her how I freaked out at the top of a stairs I have to go down twice a day and how I felt so stupid for having to go an alternate route (this was at work). Her reply - but what's the harm in going a different route? If you can avoid a situation then do so.

My question is - can avoidance ever be a reasonable suggestion for panic disorder?

So here's the magic key. In your quote above. Let's say she was not being flippant. But genuinely concerned and her advice was sincere.

The main difference between you and her, is she takes the alternate routes in life, and does not beat herself up, where you push yourself to do things you do not like, and beat yourself up while and after you do it. You are trying to make up for some emotional lack, some envisioned deficiency where you must unendingly test yourself against it. There is of course no test and no lack or deficiency other than what the child in you was told at some point of your growth process.

The thought or analysis of what she is doing will not be met with "I shouldn't be avoiding, I should face up, I can't stand this, I'm incapable of acting normally, im always fearful, and when I push myself I feel worse" ..This rebuke will continue for some time after you left the building and even merge with another later event, say that day at the market, where you will continue the rebuke if one line is crowded, etc.

She on the other hand will give it no notice "I am smart, I will take the second approach, or alternate route"

Now, not only did she not beat herself up for a period of time and merge these rebukes into a never ending series of daily self talks, but she considered herself "smart" for doing so. And left it at that.

Do you understand Shirley Moloney from Ireland? As a child I suspect you and your caretakers were very hard on you, to be this or that. As far as expectations go, you became hard on yourself.

This way of self rebuke and thinking is not innate now, but a conditioned learned response to stimuli both real and imagined, today and projected into future events. That projection into the future will allow you to meet experience in the same manner, with the same conditioned responses.

Now I suggest you both work together on this, and have her go with you as practical application. Instead of office visits, take road trips and have her monitor your thoughts, as you speak out loud, enabling her to show you a different way of thinking, her thought processes, and pointing to errors in your judgement, about you, and the events before you.

And remember, the stairs themselves don't have the ability to scare you, for they are concrete and rock with no vendetta. You scare yourself because you believe you are not capable, because you believe you avoid things, because you believe you are weak, because you believe you are not living up to your potential, because you believe your not good enough, and so forth as the merry go round spins.

There is no inherent test of avoidance, you see. What you avoid is personal. Some people avoid peanut butter....it is not courage, it is not fear, it is a decision..yet at this point is has led to chronic self talk about who you are...again, your conditioning as a child involved criticism, first from 'loved ones' and then ultimately and repeatedly from yourself.