does any of this sound familiar to anyone?

[apachetear]

Hello :)



Hi im new to the forum
as weird as it sounds ive suffered with anxiety as far back as i can remember yet never considered it to be not normal until the last year.
I have always had a huge difficulty with speaking to people i dont know and even close family members if i havent spoken to them in a while.
My heart starts to beat fast and i find myself whispering virtually or just answering yes or no to everything which i can imagine is incredibly frustrating for them.
I find myself fearing absoluetely ridiculous situations that could never occur, yet if i didnt think of these thing my brain manages to convince me its my own fault when something bad happens because i didnt take this eventuality into consideration . I know its illogical but i cant seem to take control of it.
As stupid and foolish as it sounds i was a terrible state with the japanese nuclear disaster last year and i live in the uk. I found myself getting no sleep and suddenly having a 'moment' regularly- I dont think its a panic attack, i just suddenly feel my heart beating fast and i begin to think of worse and worse situations.
Sometimes there is a trigger or event that makes me anxious sometimes it comes from no where.
I always thought that tis was just me and i would eventually be 'normal'.
I realised recently that i have to do something about it, its had me in its grip 20 years, my whole life. I went to the dr an have been prescribed counselling.
I cant keep eye contact with people and i cant speak on the phone. I wish someone had noticed it before me and ad told me i should see a dr, surely a teacher should have noticed my distress at havin to speak in front of a class, almost breaking down in tears.
I shouldnt blame other people. But to me its always been 'me' just a nervous wreck who jumps out of her skin when she hears the slightest noise and fears the worst constantly. At one point my nerves were fried evrytime i heard a plane, thinking it was goig t crash land or bomb me, id like to say thats not there now but planes flying over still leave me with an 'edgey feeling'.It all sounds overdramatic, even to me but i cant shake it.
I really hope my counselling helps, i have an assessment next friday. It shoould have been a simple over the phone one, but i cant talk over the phone for more than 2 minutes as it makes me v.anxious.
I keep birds and regularly triple check cage doors before i leave them, i remember being away from home leaving th birds in my mums care and waking up at 1 in the morning insisting she checked the birds as i ad convinced myself one had escaped. Of course ne haadnt escaped, they would have had to be houdini to after i tied the cage doors and tigtened all the bolts of the cage before i left
Im nt sure what else im to say or what im suppossed to say (not that i ever know what to say!) but ive started to ramble.
does what ive described soound familiar to anyone?? or am i alone in these thought and feelings?


(Ps. i apoloogise for any spelling mistakes, my hands arent good due to my chrnic fatigue sydrome so my hands tend to not comply and usually decide to miss out letters or make up words!)

(pps. i hope im allowed to post this here as well as the welcome area, i just wish to get a reply and can see this section is more active and worried i wouldnt get a reply in the other section )

[jessed03]

Hi Apache,

Welcome to the forum, there are some very supportive people here :)

If somebody had the power, hypothetically, to make your condition look anyway you want it to look, how would you want to see it? would it be defined, or identifiable? If you tell me how you this post makes you feel, and tell me what is your greatest fear, in a short sentence, it could help people understand what makes you tick.

I know it sounds quite perverse, it most certainly sounded that way when I heard it, but blame, anxiety, compulsion, obsessions and worry, are unconscious needs for control. Stop and think about it for a second. Science has made it harder than ever to avoid the fact that we are just this tiny little dot on the planet, within a minute solar system, in this overwhelmingly large universe. It's hard not to subciously feel like 'Poor little me', this victim, with no control, a puppet on a string, while everything could potentially hurt us. This isn't a personal comment, by any means, it's a comment that sums up most of the human race, throughout history. In the back of our minds, it's always been there in some form. Human kind has done everything in it's power over the years to ignore this fact. Everything. We've immersed ourself into religion, and it's comforted us for many years. Then, as more and more people become disillusioned in that, we've seen a huge rise in consumer spending. Nobody ever wants to think about this fact. If you mention it at a party, you get the inevitable "Dude, don't get so deep, we're trying to have a good time!"... Look around Western Culture. We're so lost inside greed and materialism, that we forget all else. We don't need to think about anything else. Our sole intention is "Buy bigger house... Buy new iPhone... Buy better car". It works for people. They don't have to deal with impermanance, as by winning their new prize, they believe they'll have cemented their place in life. "Look at me, I have all this power, all these things. I'm definetly real"

The ego constantly believes that the more it gets, the more real it is. In the case of anxiety, it is the same principle, only, we use our suffering to enhance it, our problems. These physical problems, our illness, our mistakes, they are our Gold. They are our possession, that makes us feel so permanant, we can't possibly go. How could we, if we had this control over the world that our mind keeps wishing for? The ego wants everything to go exaactly how it wants, to deceive itself. When you have everything, and no suffering, this completely self-obsessed entity can momentarily believe it's God. And it's real. But it doesn't work. We live in a world of dissatisfied people. People GET what they want, and they don't feel very different, so they believe it wasn't enough, and they need more, and they need the next new thing. They need more power, more love, more things. And so it keep's going... Our economy is built upon it! Everything, is built solely upon denying this fact. But this fact comes from the human ego. That everybody was born with. This neurotic part of the brain, that realizes it's own impermanance. That fears everything; humiliation, death, being out of control. Because this area of our brain is totally selfish, it takes over our whole brain if we let it. The best way psychology has found to tackle it, is to simply be aware of it. Recognize when it's there. Dealing with that ego in me, was one of the hardest, yet rewarding things that I did on my anxiety journey. I can post far more on it, if it's a topic you're interested in.

To me, anxiety is like a pair of goggles. If we put sunglasses on, the whole world becomes dark. If we put red lenses on, everything looks red. If we put binoculars on, or look under a microscope, it all becomeis enlarged. Of course, we know, the thing itself never changes. The world doesn't suddenly become dark just because we put shades on, and the world doesn't zoom itself because we put binoculars on. It always remains the same. It's just ur personal perception of it, that is changed. Modern science and philosophy have taught us; Life, nature, the Universe, they are all neutral. Thing's just happen. A car accident is neutral. It sounds a terrible thing to us, doesn't it, and in a human context, it is. But there is no physical change that happens with such an event, that makes it good or bad, simply the way the human mind perceives it. The car certainly doesn't sit there thinking "Wow, this is a mess..." The Sun doesn't think "Well, that was a bad one..." All that happens, is the particle arrangements have changed shape, they have taken on a slightly different vibration. Don't believe the mind determines every reaction... Imagine said car crash... really feel it... This poor man, has ploughed through a wall everything is in a right state... You feel pretty awful right? I mean, how sad... You go over to the car, and find a gun. This man was on his way to kill somebody.... Right there... That moment. That moment where you have to consciously, momentarily decide how to judge this situation. That's all I wanted to pinpoint. It's that moment where we need to decide if it's good or bad, and how we feel about it (usually it means juggling various social beliefs on the situation, until you find an outcome, or sentence that fits into them all)

*Don't worry, everybodies really fine :)*

My point here, isn't not to feel, in fact it's the opposite. My point is, no reference points exist in life. Society and other people have created some; There's social discretion, there's the laws of physciatry, there's legal law, and theres religion (if you're religious, then you can believe only to an extent.) All these thing's have determined how others, and yourself, will view the world, and react to events. Now throughout our life, lot's more are added to this. The beliefs and reactions of our parent's and relatives, the influence of our environment, friends and our teachers, our education, traumatic experiences. This is then mixed in with our past reactions to events (e.g. how we reacted to something that happened before. The opinions we heard about it on the news. The way we saw other people react etc) Over time, your mind and your nervous system, decided on a way of processing things, with the intention of causing minimal trauma, minimal disruption to set social conventions and minimal disruption to your routine.

The same way, all of those social influences have almost pre-determined our initial reaction to something like a car crash, or a tragedy, all of those influences ad more, over the course of your life (or a certain period) have contributed to your automatic perception, that an event is one that requires anxiety.

What happens in our body, is anxiety becomes present. I don't know you well enough to comment more precisely on your case, so let's call anxiety an energy. It's an energy existing within you, and it's also a habit. It's a habitual (bodily and mentally) way of processing information. It's like wearing a pair of goggles. It's a critically important point to understand in anxiety: It isn't the event that's causing anxiety. Event's are always physically neutral. So people ask; why did my body decide to take on this reaction. Well, at a period in your life, from birth to now, there were times when our mind decided on the best way to deal with things. The best way to allow it to appear in control, the best way to live up to your ethical code, and the best way to allow you to survive and avoid danger.

Often we're too young, too busy, too unaware to notice it happening. So it becomes like a pair of sunglasses. When you first put those sunglasses on, the world doesn't feel quite right. Everything feels, just a shade off, if you'll pardon my pun! But, after time, you forget you are wearing them. It's only upon seeing a reflection of yourself, that you remember they are on.

Anxiety is this way. We've worn the glasses for so long, we forget they are JUST glasses. That the world isn't darker, and that thing's aren't in a shade of grey. We forget that everything isn't a great source of danger. The same way our eyes begun to believe darkness is the default setting, our nervous system begins to believe that Fight or Flight is the default reaction. It's why people always come on here, and say... "I felt good today... So why did it make me anxious?!"... Or they say "Worried about the most stupid things, things like not putting my garbage out on time, and worried about reading books . This isn't me degrading their concerns as worthless, they are very upsetting. It's just an example of how we, as anxiety sufferers, put on those anxiety goggles. And as Shades will show you darkness, seeing out of the perception of anxiety and an inflamed nervous system, causes us to find that universal anxiety or fear in everything..

I feel any post that mentions car crashes, is a slightly dim one (albeit necessary), so I want to inspire you, and encourage you. You can re-learn it. It may take time, it may get worse for a period, it may feel very very odd, and awkward, and uncomfortable. But it can be re-learnt. It's been proven, that the brain changes neurological pathways regularly. It helps to have had periods of success, or normality, as it makes those pathways slightly easier to find, but if there hasn't been, they can be created. They can be created, only if you remain completely present, and 'in the moment'. If you aren't, the mind will simply believe it's still the past, and will therefore use the same pathways it always used. Repeating the process over, and over again. Unfortunately, first it's important to understand what's happening, before things can change. I haven't really included anything that practical in this post. I've found understanding, fully, actually solves a lot of the problem itself.

All the best!

And P.S. Don't sweat the grammar :)