LJC
02-20-2011, 04:11 AM
Hi all
I thought i'd introduce myself and tell my story. It's quite long but it has a nice ending :) . I started having panic attacks back when I was 16 and am now 33. During the intervening years my anxiety would disappear for years at a time and then come back in some new guise but it was always the same fear of uncertainty and insecurity. Anyway, it was manageable until about 5 years ago when I had a serious episode. I stopped sleeping and was barely capable of functioning without crying. It was then that I started a campaign of trying to overcome anxiety once and for all. The bloody war lasted for 6 months and at the end of it I had a revelation which turned my life around.
I realised i'd tried everything, meditation, progressive relaxation, stopping caffeine, vitamin B, Kava Kava, positive thinking, writing my thoughts down, you name it - apart from medication i'd done it all. Each thing would work momentarily, i'd think I was cured, and then it seemed as though the anxiety would come back ten-fold. I was in terrible despair. Then one night at a very low point - I switched off my computer, sat in my comfy chair and read through some print-outs I had of other people's stories.
These people had found a way through this kind of hell without any techniques at all. It all started adding up in my mind. And I realized a few things. I'm not clever enough to outmaneuver my fears. Without a time machine I couldn't make an uncertain future certain. Yes I might go mad...I had no proof to the contrary. I might lose my job...I couldn't prove I wouldn't. I might never sleep again. All my worst fears might come true! I couldn't prove they wouldn't. I couldn't stop my heart rate from going mad sometimes, I couldn't stop those weird tingling sensations. I couldn't force myself to sleep. I was powerless.
And not only that but everything I did to try to soothe my fears seemed to make them worse (there was a profound lesson in that). So that night I surrendered the flag. I couldn't do a thing so that's exactly what I was going to do - nothing. I might have anxiety the rest of my life but I wasn't going to organise my life around it any more, I wasn't going to do a thing to soothe my fears. I didn't know what would happen...but I knew this felt right.
I threw out all my books on the subject, I stopped searching for cures online, I stopped obsessing about vitamins.
Gradually over the next few months I started to sleep again despite anxiety and nervousness. I did everything I wanted to do despite my fears. And eventually the physical symptoms disappeared, then the thoughts started to die off. It was, to me, nothing short of a miracle.
I now strongly believe that by giving our fears an audience we are fuelling them and prolonging the agony. Normal fears we can solve by taking steps to cover off potential issues. But the fears of an anxiety disorder have no answers to them. By trying to answer them we start to get into a never ending battle.
Now 5 years later i'm a semi-professional painter, I live in a place where I can walk the hills whenever I like. I still occasionally feel that familiar old friend under times of great stress and sometimes completely out of the blue as well. It still takes me by surprise, and I can still feel that desire to solve the unsolvable. But I remember that I can't soothe this kind of fear and it passes naturally by itself.
Everyone has their own journey with this and that was mine. I've avoided anything to do with this subject for the last 5 years, but decided that since my recovery was so indebted to other people sharing their own stories that i'd offer mine. Even if it's just as a hopeful sign that it is possible to move on.
I thought i'd introduce myself and tell my story. It's quite long but it has a nice ending :) . I started having panic attacks back when I was 16 and am now 33. During the intervening years my anxiety would disappear for years at a time and then come back in some new guise but it was always the same fear of uncertainty and insecurity. Anyway, it was manageable until about 5 years ago when I had a serious episode. I stopped sleeping and was barely capable of functioning without crying. It was then that I started a campaign of trying to overcome anxiety once and for all. The bloody war lasted for 6 months and at the end of it I had a revelation which turned my life around.
I realised i'd tried everything, meditation, progressive relaxation, stopping caffeine, vitamin B, Kava Kava, positive thinking, writing my thoughts down, you name it - apart from medication i'd done it all. Each thing would work momentarily, i'd think I was cured, and then it seemed as though the anxiety would come back ten-fold. I was in terrible despair. Then one night at a very low point - I switched off my computer, sat in my comfy chair and read through some print-outs I had of other people's stories.
These people had found a way through this kind of hell without any techniques at all. It all started adding up in my mind. And I realized a few things. I'm not clever enough to outmaneuver my fears. Without a time machine I couldn't make an uncertain future certain. Yes I might go mad...I had no proof to the contrary. I might lose my job...I couldn't prove I wouldn't. I might never sleep again. All my worst fears might come true! I couldn't prove they wouldn't. I couldn't stop my heart rate from going mad sometimes, I couldn't stop those weird tingling sensations. I couldn't force myself to sleep. I was powerless.
And not only that but everything I did to try to soothe my fears seemed to make them worse (there was a profound lesson in that). So that night I surrendered the flag. I couldn't do a thing so that's exactly what I was going to do - nothing. I might have anxiety the rest of my life but I wasn't going to organise my life around it any more, I wasn't going to do a thing to soothe my fears. I didn't know what would happen...but I knew this felt right.
I threw out all my books on the subject, I stopped searching for cures online, I stopped obsessing about vitamins.
Gradually over the next few months I started to sleep again despite anxiety and nervousness. I did everything I wanted to do despite my fears. And eventually the physical symptoms disappeared, then the thoughts started to die off. It was, to me, nothing short of a miracle.
I now strongly believe that by giving our fears an audience we are fuelling them and prolonging the agony. Normal fears we can solve by taking steps to cover off potential issues. But the fears of an anxiety disorder have no answers to them. By trying to answer them we start to get into a never ending battle.
Now 5 years later i'm a semi-professional painter, I live in a place where I can walk the hills whenever I like. I still occasionally feel that familiar old friend under times of great stress and sometimes completely out of the blue as well. It still takes me by surprise, and I can still feel that desire to solve the unsolvable. But I remember that I can't soothe this kind of fear and it passes naturally by itself.
Everyone has their own journey with this and that was mine. I've avoided anything to do with this subject for the last 5 years, but decided that since my recovery was so indebted to other people sharing their own stories that i'd offer mine. Even if it's just as a hopeful sign that it is possible to move on.