Want to be convinced but...bit of a rant, hope that is okay

Hey guys :)

I just wanted to say that I want to be convinced about CBT and graded exposure therapy but still am to be! I have 'mild' agoraphobia now after many many years and a specific phobia as well as health anxiety and I find that my thoughts are so deeply ingrained...don't even know what they are half the time. I also have immense difficulty in actually being able to differentiate between anxiety/panic and there being something actually wrong. I mean a woolly head and feeling light headed doesn't necessarily mean anxiety, but can then cause anxiety! I don't think it is that simple as CBT aims to be.
How can you ever lose your fear of panic? They say to gradually exposure yourself but that isn't really losing your fear of panic, more losing your fear of a bit of panic!
Plus with me, my life interferes with my whole idea of gradually exposing myself to the outside world, such as I have to take my daughter to an interview or I have an appointment or I simply have to go a certain shop(s) and so back I am again to the beginning as sometimes I feel anxious, sometimes I don't...there is no easy pattern.
Do others find this? I am trying Robin Hall's CBT but still keep discovering that it is a bit simple.
My husband says that people can't be categorised in this way and that a person needs to be treated holistically...not this one size (CBT) fits all. I am inclined to agree and would prefer to see a psychologist who is trained in CBT and exposure but also the intricacies of long term anxiety and phobias. It just aint that simple, is what I think! My counsellor just says, CBT and exposure works...just do it...and rushes me out the door. Hmmmm. What does she think I've been doing for the past twenty years?! The fact that I am even in her office shows I have been doing it as I used to be housebound.
Any thoughts appreciated. Everyone is so supportive here. I went on another site to talk about carers allowance because I care for my husband with depression and also his mother and got subjected to abuse for not working! Lovely. But here, people really do understand. Its because we've been there and really empathise.

hi Starsparkle :) What is this CBT you're doing? Is it an online or bought book/dvd kind of thing?

If so, I would probably agree with your hubby, and recommend that you ask your doctor for a 'proper' CBT therapy referral. There can't possibly be a successful 'one size fits all' form of therapy for illnesses such as anxiety/depression, as everyone is different, everyone's triggers, stories, symptoms are personal to them etc..

You're doing really well by continuing to push against your symptoms and go out, fulfil your duties outside of the house, but if you're doing it feeling ill and scared, then I do think you'd benefit from having a CBT therapist to talk to.

Hi starsparkle

You know I can kind of see where your coming from. I've been told the same thing, that CBT is the way. I really want to believe in it because I am so desperate for something to work :) So far trying to get any CBT has been a nightmare. I keep getting told I'm being referred and nothing happens. I was promised in 2009 about CBT and I am still sat here waiting.

SO whilst I sit here and wait I've tried to find books and websites. I must say I am struggling, I have as much motivation as a rock. I still think that a therapist that is trained in what I have is going to be far more benificial that me stomping around the internet trying to find something.

Having said that from reading your post, seem to have come a long way already and thats a huge acheivement

Hi Daisy

Lovely to hear from you. I was following Robin Hall's books and I also have a low intensity CBT therapist that I am receiving help from but I really don't think it is enough and holistic. They just want to jam you into this therapy almost! Think they forget that we are all unique and sometimes I feel they just want to apply a therapy regardless when occasionally perhaps more than one therapy may apply :-)

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Hi Hellan

If you can access Robin Hall's work which is on here, on the CBT section, it really is excellent. It may help you, I hope so. I just feel for me that I am so complex and it has gone on for so many years that I need proper treatment from someone a bit higher up than a low intensity psychological wellbeing practitioner that you get through iapt. Are you waiting for this? It is good to have, but sometimes we need just a little bit more :)

Starsparkle, your symptoms and experiences could have been me speaking. 20 years I have struggled, tried various things, some times bit better, sometimes plumbing real depths I didn't think I could survive mentally.
Health paranoias, agoraphobia, yet still having to do school runs, appointments, running a busy home, sometimes managing in a state of utmost fear, sometimes just cancelling and not attempting things, missing out on lots of life...
I am also doing the CBT with Robin Hall. I have been trying it for maybe 5 weeks now and whilst I am not panic free, I know I am fractionally better than I was when I ordered it.
The change in attitude and learned behaviour we are after is not easily won. If it was we and millions of others would not suffer for decades as we do. We haven't chosen to be fearful consciously.
There are tasks I have to force myself to do which I do often fail at carrying out without panic but they are actually what help me most.
The only way I can stop feeling panic about panic is to push on through it.
The other evening I had to drive further out of my comfort zone to pick somebody up. I hate driving. It was dark. I was alone. My breathing had been off all day, as I parked the car I thought I am just going to stop breathing now, I can't get any more breath in. The leg trembling panic crashed in with full force, I didn't know what to do with myself. There was no help to be found. It was my worst nightmare pretty much. And I was trapped, I had to wait there.
It was the best thing that could have happened to me.
I realised how much I think to myself I have waited the panic out now I can go home.
When I hadn't really, hadn't actually had a proper what I call 'life threatening' panic :D and remained with it, experiencing it in all it's awfulness, and waited it out until I was entirely out the other side.
What I had been doing is having low level panics and managing, as I have enabled myself to do during 20 years, but carrying on and still feeling relief as I neared home. Tricking myself that actually I had been carrying out my CBT.
Either that or when the real biggies hit I just fled and couldn't even begin to wait them out.
My thinking is slowly shifting. You must practise every bit of what Robin says, are you filling in the worksheets? You have to repeat, repeat, repeat, it is practise and repetition that will start to undermine your current thought patterns. We are creatures of habit and you are now trying to shift a very engrained way of being.
Every time you write and analyse your thoughts and achievements and experiences and prove to yourself you are still alive, it erodes the old ways of thinking ever so slightly. It is boring and tedious, it is an effort, I keep forgetting to print more sheets out, I go through so many!M! :D but it is the methodical way of doing it that will give you results. Sometimes I feel like I am back at school :D
You WILL get there, the power to change you behaviour and cognition is entirely there in your own mind.
Ask yourself honestly when the last panic was that you had, did you wait with it entirely, did you only leave the situation once you were as calm as you are sitting in your own bed? And if you honestly are doing this, are you then analysing what you are doing and thinking in these situations so to re train your thoughts and learn from each experience how wrong you were?

star2sparkle I have been trying to get on to his website etc but i'm not getting anywhere although it could be my browser.
I have had panic attacks since I was 9yrs old and I am 33 years old so yeah I know how you feel about complex. The whole you cant teach an old dog new tricks comes to my mind, and that probably isnt the right attitude lol

Starsparkle and Hellan, we all sound very similar, surely we can beat this thing? After all we are only fighting with ourselves?

I have to take my son to physio later, I hate it, I am trapped in the room for an hour, hate driving there, hate having to pretend to the world I am okay for my sons sake. But I thought last night, if the worst happens and I have a bad panic infront of the physio, I know my body will carry me through it as it did the other night. Yes I will have to explain to all what is going on, but they may actually be impressed with me that I am trying to get better and carry on despite every fibre in my body wanting to hide under the duvet.

The other night taught me I can't die from the fear. That was invaluable to me.

Am I carefree and fear free yet? No.
I would rather not have to take him to physio, I am sick of feeling anxious etc but I know each time will be a little easier.

Starsparkle have you read the setback sections?

think a lot of us on here are quite similar thats the great thing about this site. I.m just aching to be able to go on the chat room but i only joined on the 13th of feb so have a while to go yet.
i have to go to the doctors later for an ear infection that just doesnt want to budge lol
i went to greenwich mind yesterday where you can just drop in. i was so nervous at 1st and my first instinct was to get out of there. but i was with my husband and everyone was really nice and i actually enjoyed myself

We really do all sound similar don't we?! Pinktel...wow, think we are twins! Hehe. I really admire you with regards to that panic attack you explained and I think you are right too. It is coming through to the other side, sitting it out (what bravery that takes, to not run, to not distract!) and then realising you were okay in the end by NOT doing anything about it. I think the ability to do this is perhaps what helps us to realise that panic is not to be fear because we haven't avoided it at all. And I, like you, have avoided it really and exposure therapy is fine and I also agree with you about repetition and repetition but sometimes it doesn't always teach you about 'surviving' that panic attack because it is graded. I have yet to do this, and I know I will have to...
I struggle because of life getting in the way but I am still determined to do exposure therapy and to keep at it...I have many hierarchies to address! As you said Pinktel, many many years it has taken to get our minds this way so we won't be over it tomorrow but with persistence (and God, it is hard, isn't it?!) we will get there eventually. I believe so, it is just sometimes I feel that my mind is too complicated with its fears and doubts.
Hellan, can you get on the CBT part of this site? You could try contacting Robin that way. He may be away as I have not heard from him for a while. Keep trying. He is fantastic.
Pinktel, good luck for later but like you said, it will get easier and Hellan, so glad you had a good time yesterday...it helps to feel it is all worthwhile :)

Star2sparkle, put away that thought that your mind is too complicated with fears and doubts to be successful with CBT. That is the anticipatory anxiety polluting your thinking!!
We are fundamentally psychological creatures and your neural pathways are formed in no different ways to how mine are formed.
I would put good money on having the most complicated, twisted, confusing thoughts and doubts in this forum!! I bet a lot of us think we hold the championship trophy for this. I bet we would be amazed at how although our journey to panic may vary, our subsequent behaviours and thoughts are all textbook thereafter. Even our doubts.
We will never regain the nievity (spell?) we had of life before anxiety but we can sure as hell learn new thinkings and behaviours just as others have done before us. It isn't rocket science to understand, you sound to me like you have grasped all the concepts involved, it s just terrifying to keep confronting the fear. But the rewards are never ending.

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And by the way, if I hadn't been forced into that circumstance I may not have :D myself such a full blown experience! My self preservation instincts are too strong! :D

Could you get someone to abandon you somewhere!! :D:D:D