Self-help diary

Myself and Gail/Funky Chick have decided to experiment by following a programme after my therapist said that I should listen to a relaxation CD three time a day for 33 days. Today is day one and here is my first diary entry:

I'm currently listening to a Paul McKenna relaxation programme on MP3 that came free with a sunday broadsheet a little while ago. I started by listening to it on the short journey into work and whilst fighting through the kids at the school where I work to my office. I appreciate that ideally I should be in a comfortable position with my eyes closed, but there's no way that I could keep that up with my daily routine and, even if I don't get the full effect, I'm sure that I will take quite a bit of it in subconsciously and it will have atleast a mild calming effect.

This morning atleast I didn't pace up and down in my office for atleast half an hour before I started work as I have been doing recently. I didn't feel especially brilliant this morning though. I felt a bit spaced out and by lunch time I actually felt pretty ill. I put that down to tiredness from having been out every night this week, the after effects of feeling very stressed out at the start of the week, frustration that a seemingly task at work was taking me days to resolve and my body rebelling against the thought of letting my guard down.

I listened to the programme for the second time at about 1.30 while I was doing some other work and, although I was pretty tired anyway, it felt as if it almost sent me to sleep!

The third session was at around 7.00 pm and I lay down with my eyes closed and listened to it. For whatever reason, I felt most anxious listening to it at this time and I couldn't really relax and take it in.

Afterwards I went and played football and scored a goal in a 3-2 win! At half-time during the game I did feel quite anxious and overwhelmed thinking about the size of the world all around me, but I got on with the game and I felt kind of ok by the end. I went to the pub and had no problems there either.

By way of background, I've been fairly depressed and anxious all my life although for about the last 4 and a half years I've had severe GAD and depression. Being prescribed Prozac caused me to feel depersonalised and I've never quite regained by sense of self and belonging in the world. Recently, I've felt particularly agoraphobic and I didn't leave the house at all on bank holiday monday because I was worrying so much about an audit at school the following day- it lasted about 5 minutes!! I'm currently seeing a CBT therapist once a week.

Day 3: I do feel like I'm getting some benefit from the relaxation cd's. Obviously, if I take 20 minutes out three times per day to relax my muscles it is going to help.

At the moment, I tend to dread weekends because I'm kind of agoraphobic and, if i don't need to go out, I tend not to go out too much. It's doubly frustrating because everyone else looks forward to the weekend. The other thing is that, although I enjoy my job, I get quite built up about going there too. I guess the thing really is to enjoy the adrenaline rather than associating it with negative feelings and to go along with the buzz. Anyway, today rather than spending all day at home trying to urge myself to go out I've been and played tennis with a mate for a bit this morning, then played drums for a little while at work and, after abusing a couple of companies over the phone who are robbing me blind, I'm setting myself for having a big session in the gym. I don't really fancy it, but most people who don't do it much wouldn't, but whenever i have got in to it in the past I have felt so much better afterwards.

How do I think that the self-help CDs have helped me so far? I do still feel like I have a lot of tension in my body, but I haven't had as many intrusive thoughts and I haven't had a panic attack while I've been doing it. I've felt more inclined to push my comfort zone if even a little. I guess it says a lot that going to play tennis with a mate and taking a class at my local gym are outside my comfort zone!! I've always just thought "it isn't my thing" or "I'll maybe try it in the future", which has prevented me from doing so many things. If I play tennis every week then before long I'm bound to feel comfortable doing it and even enjoy it and look forward to it and any feelings of weirdness or feeling like I'm out of place will quickly disappear.

At the moment I feel mostly uncomfortable, groggy, self-conscious and awkward rather than as if the world is about to end. When I do do things like playing tennis or going to the gym I do feel like I'm trying too hard to get better rather than doing things because I enjoy them and that makes me feel a bit wierd. But, maybe I'm being hard on myself. Previously I've been to the gym and practically had a panic attack in the pool because I've had worry thoughts about my liver or kidneys. Thankfully, I'm able to get on with it at the minute without worrying to such a degree. So, I'm not doing too bad really....recovery is a process and I'm part way through that process.

Just listening to Paul Mckenna at the minute and he says that whenever you start worrying to stop and think what it is that you worry about. With me, I get overwhelmed with thoughts of the size of the world. Why should it worry me? I think about all the earth beneath my feet and, if we think of ourselves as being 'on the flat', then it's the ultimate form of vertigo. With vertigo though you worry about falling, how could i possibly fall through the earth?!! I also worry when I'm driving that I'm on the globe and driving vertically, the worry thought is that I'll fall down the planet! My therapist asked me last week when was the last time I heard of anyone doing that?!! I know it's irrational, but with severe depression, anxiety and dp you question everything and take nothing for granted. The world seems like an alien place to me and, just because these things have never happened, doesn't mean that they never could. But, yes, I admit that the earth stopping spinning and us all floating off into space really isn't something that I need to spend days, weeks and months pondering. I guess that we very often respond to our imagination...I've physically felt like I've been falling even though I've been stood still. Another thing is that with depersonalisation you don't feel that you're real or that the world is real, you start trying to reassure yourself that it is and you end up overthinking it and maybe even making it TOO real, so whereas everyone else doesn't even give it a second thought, we spend way too much time trying to understand it fully.....i do anyway! lol

I guess other people feel free to pretty much do as they please and go where they like and death isn't a priority issue for them, so they can focus on adventure, enjoyment and pleasure. Whereas, because I obsess about self-preservation, it makes me want to take very few risks. It is very hard to get my head around the fact that the things that I worry about often have a less than 1% chance of happening and, even if they do happen, I can handle it. It's hard to understand that other people have got it right and that my reactions are way out of proportion.

I knew I shouldn't have come home after playing drums. It now seems really hard to go out again. Bloody cursed illness. I think actually that my rational mind is ok with it. It must be the 'animal' brain and the stress in my body that are kicking off about facing the world.

I do wish I'd kept a diary for the entirety of my illness. I first became ill when I split up with a girl and moved home. The sort of symptoms i suffered with then were an urge to pull my eye out or to drive into oncoming traffic. I was still able to drive to London, Birmingham or Wales though without too much difficulty. I was going to the gym quite a bit and within about a year i was quite a bit brighter. I got a job in a warehouse which was fairly well paid and I was really enthusaistic about saving up and buying a sports car. I must have been ok because I didn't have any friends to speak of and I got by.

Soon after that I met another girl and I think I started going downhill pretty fast again. She also suffered panic attacks and she was very, very highly strung and very aggressive. She pushed me into getting engaged within about a month of going out with her. Before I met her I was fragile, but I think that I was on the mend. She dragged me right back down again. Being with her was a total nightmare, not least because I was building bridges with my family after pissing people off during my breakdown and they all hated her and it probably opened up a lot of the old wounds again.

Thankfully I spilt up with her about 6 months ago and we never got married. The most upsetting thing for me is that, even though I've been ill for about 4 and a half years, I've managed to get myself in a great position with a job that I love, great friends and interests but the time that I was with my fiancee caused me so much anxiety and depression (I felt very trapped) that things that I used to be able to do have become too difficult and I feel like I'm not far from being agoraphobic. I don't necessarily blame her, although she can be quite manipulative, I just wish that I'd never got together with her and that my recovery had continued as it was doing. I suppose though that, without having any friends, I would have become desperate for a girlfriend and it would be inevitable that I'd meet someone.

Now, I think the best thing for me (for the moment atleast) is to remain single. I don't want to get into a relationship for the sake of it and end up not seeing my mates because she doesn't like them and because I don't want to cause conflict. I can also be very needy and I don't want that. I want to spend time getting to know myself and trying to achieve what I want to achieve and, hopefully, I'll meet someone who can join me in that and we can live happily ever after!

Just a quick update:

I've been listening to the tracks three times a day for about 2 weeks and:

• I've been waking up feeling not especially depressed and anxious
• I've hardly used rescue remedy at all
• I've not been feeling as panicky at work and I've not been dreading going into work as much
• I've been feeling more confident. I played football on Thursday and we won 9-3, with me scoring 4 goals!!
• I've been feeling less agoraphobic

The results do seem quite subtle, but I'm obviously getting a lot of benefit from doing it- I'm getting loads of praise at work and I walked down to where I play football on Thursday and it seemed like all the players (who I've only known a couple of weeks) wanted me to be on their side! :)

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I haven't been updating my diary as much as I'd hoped to.

Well, I have had some pretty big successes over the last month: after much flapping, I went to a bbq that I was invited to where I hardly knew anyone at all and I had a great time and last week I went go-karting for a friends birthday which was a double success, as I had to go about 15 miles out of town to go there and there was the racing itself.

I'm absolutely positive that listening to Paul McKenna three times a day has helped me, as I now wake up each day with virtually no sense of dread or anxiety about my working day ahead. I used to worry so much that I would be asked to do something that I couldn't do that I'd spend around half an hour pacing the studio, trying to relax.

At the minute, I've actually got quite a large project...acoustically treating the recording studio that I work in, which is not only outside my comfort zone, but also well outside my field of expertise..it's pretty exciting because there is quite a bit of responsibility in doing it, so much to learn and, at the end of it, I can be proud that I solved a large problem for the school.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still not well. I'm still feel tense and I don't exactly jump out of bed each day singing "oh what a beautiful morning!", but I'm feeling much more human and that there is the possibility that I can recover and be happy.

I do get very jealous when friends say to me that they went abroad, had a baby, played a gig with their band or even went on a rollercoaster, because I know that they are exciting things to do but, because of how I relate to adrenaline with regards to panic, I've said to myself that I won't be able to experience those things...thus limiting the amount of enjoyment that I can experience dramatically. I'm learning that many of my friends are scared of rollercoasters...one of them, a notorious lady's man actually took himself to Alton Towers for a 'get over your fear day'!! I'm learning that atleast half the people in the football team that I manage have admitted having a panic attack at some stage. I'm learning to 'enjoy' adrenaline and feeling scared. Doing things that scare you is actually one of the biggest highs that you can achieve in life. That doesn't mean that I'm going bungee jumping any time soon, but the lesson that it has taught me means that the door isn't as closed as it once was to doing things like that.

In Paul McKenna's book 'Instant Confidence', he says that successful people do things before they're ready, they take calculated risks, as opposed to average joe, who waits and waits for everything to be exactly right before he takes action.

I'm actually learning quite a lot from his book. He talks about 'cognitive dissonance', where we hold two conflicting beliefs in our mind at the same time, which causes stress in our bodies. With me, I find it very difficult to think of the world outside my window as 'flat' and to marry that with the imagine in my mind of the globe. Thinking of the world outside my window as actually being on the globe sits very uncomfortably with me....it's like being on a giant fairground ride. I consciously think of the earth spinning in space and it makes me feel very anxious indeed. I presume though that most people think of the earth as being flat, as I used to, and that they put thoughts of the thousands of miles of planet beneath their feet and all around them out of their minds.

Another concept which I've discovered, reading 'Instant Confidence' is the assertion that inate ability doesn't exist, that nobody is born with god-given talents. He quotes Pele, Mohammed Ali and Stevie Wonder and cites the example of Andre Agassi lying in his cot with a Tennis Ball suspended above him on a piece of string as examples of how it takes hours and hours of practice to become good at anything. Just think of Leonardo Da Vinci or Einstein, they just worked and worked and worked. It certainly makes sense. Sure, we all have skills, but those skills are mainly a result of the muscles having memory of particular actions (eg. hand-eye coordination) and the fact that neural pathways in the brain are strengthened each time we so a particular action. As Mckenna says "repetition is the mother of success".

How this relates to me is that I had an Adrian Mole-esque notion as a kid that I was an "undiscovered genius". This, combined with the fact that my mum always used to say to me "when you're rich and famous....", meant that even today I put enormous pressure on myself to achieve. If I take up a new hobby I have to be brilliant at it straight away or I'm bitterly disappointed in myself. Through my late teens and early twenties I was obsessed by becoming a screenwriter and movie director...I took drugs etc to give myself material for my films...films that I would write "when the time was right". The bottom line is that I never actually wrote anything because I was scared that I would discover that I'm not actually that gifted. I've spent years beating myself up for not living up to my potential, which would mean that I would waste my life. I really led myself down the garden path with that one.

The book also says that the parameters for our emotional responses are set in the first two years of life. That is when we will learn to become as high as we can and as low as we can. Talking to my therapist about this, he said that the first born child is normally more uptight than subsequent children because the parents (especially the mother) are very anxious about what is going to happen...this would be especially so in my case as they'd had a child before me who died at birth. In the first few years of my life, I expect that my mum suffered from post-natal depression and she was certainly agoraphobic for 4 years. Contrast that with my brother, who is pretty well-adjusted. Apparently, after the first child, parents become a lot more relaxed about child-birth and so there isn't such anxiety transmitted to the infant. Fortunately, we can alter our emotional responses though according to Paul Mckenna.

Hi

Quote:

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but I'm feeling much more human and that there is the possibility that I can recover and be happy.

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Im sure you will recover and be happy too.:)

You are making some good progress, i think doing this dairy is a excellent idea , you can look back also and see all the positives thing you have achieved . WELL DONE for what you have achieved so far and keep writing so we can all see how you progress too.

Hugs
:hugs:
Andrea
xxxx

Thanks Honeybee. I remember Gary Neville saying about David Beckham after he survived the abuse that he got following his red card in the World Cup "he's had to deal with everything, what can there possibly be that he can't handle after that?!"

I think that I am starting to discover my authentic self. I spent much of my youth trying to impress my family with my achievements and then I spent my twenties half-heartedly but desperately trying to crack the media, for the most part so that I could impress people (women) when I met them and they asked what I did. By half-heartedly but desperately, I mean that if I truly wanted to do it I would have been attending courses, going out with my camera filming things etc, instead I spent that time trying to blag my way into any media-related job, even if it wasn't something that I particularly wanted to do.

Right now, I'm much more interested in what I want to achieve and what I want to experience and I do feel like a more stable person generally.

I actually just wanted to add a paragraph about another concept that has come up in the Paul McKenna book and that's 'learned helplessness'. He cites the example of a bear that was rescued after living in a small cage for years and the zoo gave it a luxury pen to live in. The bear still paced the same few steps up and down everyday that it had done for the years before. I guess, as adolescents especially, we have this learned helplessness where mum cooks our meals and washes our clothes and dad fixes our car and gives us lifts here and there. Living back at home again aged 31, I've probably regressed! lol Certainly for much of my teens and twenties I was looking for a mentor or someone to look after me very much because my dad had undermined my confidence so much by telling me how useless I am. Leaving yourself so open to other people's influence is undoubtedly a bad thing, as the people that I chose to 'look after me' were actually manipulative people who ended up making me feel even worse about myself.

The solution, according to Paul McKenna, is to take action on your goals, even if you don't feel ready.