Originally Posted by
RoadToRecovery
Hi Self. Sorry to hear about your struggles with anxiety. Creative people like you and I tend to be more likely to suffer from anxiety disorder because we can tend to get too creative with our thinking, and it works against us. Speaking for myself, I used to nearly always imagine the worst case scenario and take the most cynical views to nearly every aspect of life. Common everyday thoughts were things such as "what if I fail? What if I have an incurable disease and will either die or live a bad quality of life? What if my wife, friends, and family abandon me? What if I lose my job?" And so in and so on.
What you need to know is that our thoughts can either positively or negatively impact our body. Our body responds when we think in fearful and negative ways. I have used this example on another thread before: Say you are at a monster truck ralley and a field worker, unbeknownst to him, walks out on the field while one of the trucks is doing a test run. All of a sudden, the truck comes flying around the corner, spinning out of control and headed right towards the back of the field worker. The worker has his back facing the truck and doesn't know it is getting ready to strike him and severely hurt him or kill him. Many fans in the stands jump up and yell. Their hearts start beating faster, some start sweating, their muscles tense, a feeling of doom floods their minds, etc. however, the field worker remains perfectly calm and cheerful. He doesn't experience any of the symptoms the fans in the stands experience. Why? The people in the stands were THINKING fearful thoughts, while the worker wasn't.
Another example - Say a man is at home and exhausted. He feels like he has no energy whatsoever. All of a sudden, he receives a phone call from his wife stating she just won the lottery! The man immediately jumps up and starts screaming with joy. His heart rate increases and becomes filled with energy. Why? The man was THINKING thoughts such as "oh my gosh! We're rich! I don't have to work this crappy job anymore! I'm so happy!"
These are two examples of how our thoughts directly afffect our body. The two are closely linked.
People with anxiety disorder think apprehensively too often and oftentimes, more fearfully than the average person. Our bodies respond to these thoughts and produce a stress response in our bodies that causes a litany of physiological, psychological, and emotional symptoms. If this goes on for too long, our bodies accept that as the new normal and we begin to experience symptoms even when we aren't thinking apprehensively.
The way to recover from an anxiety disorder is to calm your body down and identify and resolve your underlying unhealthy thinking patterns. For relaxing your body, I recommend light to moderate exercise daily for at least 20 minutes and meditation foe two 20 minute sessions. It can be as simple as deep breathing and focusing on a few different objects in your mind with some relaxing music or nature sounds in the background. In time, your body will calm and your physiological, psychological, and emotional symptoms will diminish and you can return to normal health.
You talk a lot about the struggles with your parents. Has this been going on for awhile? Please understand that most of our personalities are very developed by the time we are eight years old. What we learn in our childhood typically shapes our systems of beliefs and our thinking patterns unless we work to change them. Perhaps there are some underlying unhealthy belief systems you have learned from your parents. oftentimes, these beliefs are so ingrained, they seen instinctual, and we don't usually even consciously think about them. That's where counseling can help you to identify your unhealthy Thinking patterns.