Is there an anxwer for this?

[Charmbracelet81]

Ok, everyone knows I am in CBT and it's working and all, but ever since (like a month ago) I had a terrifying, debilitating thought that I wasn't breathing and was slwoly dying, I feel like I am going waaaay backward,.
I will ask my therapist on Friday, but I am wondering why I switched from being literally obsessed with my heart to now being obsessed how my lungs are working.
It is hard to live like this every single day.

:(

[forwells]

Howdy

I think there is a good chance that you wont like what i am going to say but here it goes .

If your therapist is doing their job right then you should not be thinking like this after being with them for so long . CBT works on changing your thoughts in relation to something . That something with you now is symptoms . There is no point changing your reaction to each and every symptom. All you will do is move from one to the next for example you worry about your heart and you move past this and now it is the next thing . What will happen is you will then get use to this one and then it will move onto another one .

Your therapist should be using CBT to teach you how to react to this symptoms as part of anxiety and not as a separate thing . You should be being taught that anxiety is the cause behind it all and that when you get a symptom you then learn to say to yourself . Oh its just anxiety and then move on from that .

The reason that you have trouble moving on and become obsessed is because you focus on the symptom and not the overall problem .

In order to get past anxiety you cant focus on the symptoms because they will never end while you are worrying about them . They will just move onto another when you get use to the one you had . As with anything in life you go for the cause and fix that . The symptoms are just that symptoms and nothing more.

I will give you something that helped me and you can chose what you want to think about it .

You are a christian right . Do you think god wants you to live like this ? God shows us things in our life and i believe that anxiety is god's way that he build in our body of telling us that our life is not working and that we need to change things . It is as simply as that . If i get symptoms now i look at them not as symptoms but as signs that i am stressed and there is something in my life that i need to change . Then i go out and find how to change it.

See you have this as a tag .

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.

But are you really doing it . Are you really putting your trust in him . Remember that he will not fix you but he will show you the way , you have to be open to seeing that way though .

cheers and god bless Kev

[jj1983]

Kev very well said. I am speaking only for myself here but I also could use this advice and plan to refer back to this post as motivation or inspiration, or both

[Charmbracelet81]

Thankyou, Kev.
I got all emotional. I love your reply. Opened my eyes.
I'm not saying I have the worst life in the world, I actually am blessed, but I do have so much stress and have had to grow up very fast, had 2 stepkids at the age of 18, (they are almost raised now and I am only 29) having my own kids, struggling with eprfectionism, working,e ct. I AM very stressed and I do need to sit down and think about things I can do to help myself...to be sympathetic to myself I guess you could say. :oops:

[forwells]

Howdy Charmbracelet81

Glad it helped

I have to say something again you may not like but i think you will see . I think you play the victim a lot .


have had to grow up very fast, had 2 step kids at the age of 18

You talk about the past a lot and you are holding onto it and this is keeping you stuck in it . Dont get me wrong i think we might all do this . I have never every been like this and i grew up really fast and was working and supporting myself from 15 onwards with no help .

But i spoke to my therapist and within one talk i found out that i was holding onto the doctors and what they did to me when i started with stress . I never saw that holding onto that and it shocked me to think that much of my stress was being caused because of the way i felt about it . I was living so much in the past and are now working on were i want to go and not what happened in the past .

I think sitting down and having a think is a good idea and something i do often , The only thing you should do is don't do it when you feel down as it feeds the little bugger . You have to learn i guess when to get up and go do something .

I don't know you well but i am guessing there is problems there and i don't know if you are working on the problems . See anxiety is crap . The fear from it sucks but there is always something behind it in our thinking that is feeding the stress that is causing it .

Its not easy , i have worked on many things in the last two years but am glad that i have and i still have a few to go .

If you need anything drop me a bell .

Oh and another thing . They say a good therapist can stop panics in about 12 lessons . Remember that panic is not about the symptoms but all about the reaction to those symptom . You can and i still do get some of those symptoms but i do not react to them and they are slowly going .

cheers kev :D

[Robbed]

Ok, everyone knows I am in CBT and it's working and all, but ever since (like a month ago) I had a terrifying, debilitating thought that I wasn't breathing and was slwoly dying, I feel like I am going waaaay backward,.
I will ask my therapist on Friday, but I am wondering why I switched from being literally obsessed with my heart to now being obsessed how my lungs are working.
It is hard to live like this every single day.

:(

I should also mention that a good part of the 'anxiety trap' is wondering WHY. In this case, feeling and giving in to the desperate need to know WHY your symptoms switched from worry about your heart to worry about your lungs. The truth is that there is no good reason why this happened. Nor is it even important to know why it happened. It just did because that is the way anxiety disorder is. Symptoms can change at random at ANY time. Nothing needs to happen to cause this. And it is best to simply accept them rather than questioning why the change occurred.


They say a good therapist can stop panics in about 12 lessons .

When it comes to recovering from anxiety disorder, time frames are a DANGEROUS thing. The reason is that everybody recovers on their own schedule. NOT some general guidelines. Actually, it is not very realistic to expect complete recovery in 12 weeks regardless of what you do. And trying to recover this quick will only cause stress, both in terms of worrying about whether you will meet the 'deadline' AND worrying that you will NEVER recover if/when the deadline passes. Remeber that you will recover on your body's own terms.

[forwells]

Robbed


When it comes to recovering from anxiety disorder, time frames are a DANGEROUS thing. The reason is that everybody recovers on their own schedule. NOT some general guidelines. Actually, it is not very realistic to expect complete recovery in 12 weeks regardless of what you do. And trying to recover this quick will only cause stress, both in terms of worrying about whether you will meet the 'deadline' AND worrying that you will NEVER recover if/when the deadline passes. Remember that you will recover on your body's own terms

I didn't say that you will recovery in 12 easy steps . I said that a therapist can stop panics in about 12 lessons. It is only when you stop the panic and as you said in the first bit stop the reaction to the symptoms do you even start to recover. If you are still getting panics in any situation at all then you have not started to accept anxiety or panic and this in itself is feeding it . I guess its like trying to walk up a hill in a 100 mile a hour head wind . You are not going to get to the top , all you are doing is wearing yourself out .

It doesn't matter what your body throws at you or for how long if you can get that good therapist or learn it yourself that it is nothing but stress and it will not hurt you and if you just let it flow it will past and it will settle little by little over what ever amount of time it takes to settle .

cheers kev

[Charmbracelet81]

Thanks guys for the awesome posts.
I do beleive I need to sit down and think alone and mayeb even write things out that have effected me in the past and somehow accept them and begin to move on.
I used to think about time frames and yesterday even asked my therapist about how long I have been in CBT and she simpky said, "Time just depends on the individual." ..so that helped me not feel so pressured to "hurry this process up."
Thanks, again. :D

[forwells]

Howdy Charm

I have been reading a interesting book the last few days about people that have recovered from anxiety and depression . A few of them have said that writing things down was a great help .

One lady said that she would write things down to give her therapist , she said that it was like when she wrote it was from the heart and also if she had to speak to someone about it she would chose what she said because she would feel like she was being judged . All makes sence to me . I did this at some stages .

cheers kev