New Treatment & Challenge

[Mysticsoul]

First of all let me say that I am a trained researcher, it was my occupation, and maybe my anxiety downfall!!

I have now been told this by 3 separate anxiety therapists so I am tying to wrap my mind around this "Treatment" It SCARES ME!!

Story began 30 years ago at age 19 with 4 or 5 panic attacks a day, house bound for years and going to top medical clinics . They had no idea what was wrong with me in 1977. So I started researching alternative treatments.

Over the years I tried everything. From yoga to hands on healing - acupuncture to Shamanic healing. Spent tens of thousands on naturopaths and holistic doctors. Things would seem to work then stopped - placebo effect no doubt. I have read hundreds of books on healing and most of the anxiety books ever published.

I have been in therapy for years with 7 different therapists. This new challenge started with a 94 year old psychiatrist who still treats patients every day. He is a friend of a friends father and I spoke to him on the phone. He told me to forget about anxiety and find a consuming hobby.

I wrote that off pretty fast and then a new anxiety therapist told me to burn all my self-help books and start doing something I love. OK I am sort of hearing the message now....

Then I was told by a wise spiritual teacher that what ever we feed and focus on grows....OK I here that! Then I was sent a long letter from a man who runs an anxiety recovery group ( excerpts below)

Now understand that I have been driven for the past 5 years to research this and whip the anxiety beast - I am no better!! So now I am told to stop everything I have been doing for 30 years and reverse course - SURRENDER!! What...DAMN!!!

So I am in the process of packing up hundreds of books - DVD's relaxation CD's and everything that is about anxiety/self-help/medicine and healing.

So last week I have an appointment with a new anxiety therapist as my old one retired. He looked me straight in the eye and told me: Everything you have been doing and the way you have been trying to heal has kept you sick and anxious.

He told me to read fiction, no books on how to heal or fix myself.

Could this be so - my whole paradigm was keeping me sick!! Anyone else had this told to them or realized that thinking about, focusing on and trying to fix anxiety give it fuel?????

A strange thing is happening. It has been three weeks since I stopped researching and now I cant look at an anxiety book, even packing them makes me feel sick. I don’t want to read one more book that is a task on how to fix myself. I just want to breathe, eat and be!!

Now I just want to go to the beach and feel the salt air in my face. Sit by the river with my husband and talk about nonsense, I never want another deep conversation on how to recover from anxiety and fibromyalgia. I am not there or even close but my home is getting to be less a reminder that I HAVE TO FIX MYSELF!! Will it work, well NOTHING else has, not boxes of drugs or potions, herbs or psychiatrists or the pharmacy that knew me on sight.

Here it the excerpt from the anxiety Guru's letter

So how do you stop being good at anxiety, stop practicing ... stop searching, stop looking for the answer. It is the search for the answer that keeps anxiety in the forefront of our minds, the answer to anxiety ... and I mean the real correct answer is to leave the question unanswered. It is the search for the answer that convinces our protection system (fight/flight) that there is a problem; this causes the fight/flight to kick in to protect us from that problem. Stop searching for the answer and the fight/flight will learn that the problem does not actually exist.

What occurs in an anxiety disorder is the following:
1) You search for an answer.
2) Your Limbic System has access to your senses.
3) It watches you searching for a solution to what you perceive to be a problem.
4) It concludes there must be a problem, purely by analyzing your actions/choices.
5) It initiates the fight/flight response to keep you safe.
6) You feel the fear it produces.
7) You search for an answer.

Fears stay with us as long as we succumb to our compulsion rituals.
Compulsion is not just continuously washing your hands or disinfecting doorknobs. It is reading about anxiety, it’s asking for help, it’s searching for the cure. In a nutshell, anything that we continuously do to provide temporal anxiety relief is a compulsion.

We are compelled to solve the issue because we think there is a problem, we perform ritual after ritual, we succumb to compulsion after compulsion in an attempt to alleviate the condition. Although these actions have the effect of providing temporal relief they are in essence the major artifacts that are responsible for holding back recovery.

1) Pretend everything is well, make every decision, don’t let inappropriate anxiety make even one (do your best in other words).
2) Remove all mementos of your ‘disorder’, (chat, books, charms, websites, documents, shortcuts)
3) Keep a good posture, walk confidently, chin up, smile, smile lots.
4) Fill the temporary void with busy pursuits that initiate the rest-digest response
Had you turned your attention towards outward pursuits and not the search for the meaning or cure for anxiety you could have achieved some amazing things. You can choose to do that now. Don't be critical of yourself

[JAug]

There's a lot of truth to this. Part of my inner "anger causing anxiety" is the fact alone that I have to go see a Psychologist. While the psychologist helps get to the reason behind lots of things, the fact that I have to go to one subconsciously reinforces the idea that "something is wrong".

You and I are on the same page.

[alankay]

Well I agree that pursuing treatments can feed and worsen anxiety. But in the beginning it's needed. Each patient will have their own course/severity with anxiety. No one size fits all and we have to learn facts about anxiety(what it is, it's adrenaline fueled by worry/obessing, etc, to get educated). After ones anxiety fully manifests fully you have 2 roads.
1. To confront and never avoid anxiety or anxiety provoking situations and things and in time it will fade(almost always). Some can tolerate that. Some feel less anxiety and some can tolerate anxiety better than others(like pain). If you cannot tolerate that.............many/most cannot. We all know how nasty it can feel. Nasty is an understatement.
2. Go for full treatment/education for anxiety. This is to accept your anxiety as a disease like epilepsy, diabetes, etc. Use all to manage it. That means meds(for many), relaxation, deep breathing, good diet, limiting caffeine and acohol, exercising, working with a counselor to undertand any conflicts(initially anyway), learning about common tricks anxiety plays(anticipatory anxiety, etc). Also don't beat yourself up over anxiety. Accept most people don't understand it for the most part and live life the best life you can despite it. PM me any time. Alankay

[alankay]

You know...I sure would like to talk to that doc about all the stuff he's seen during his practice. All the changes he's seen, etc. Could be interesting.:) Alankay.