Core beliefs

[mezzaninedoor]

My CBT was face 2 face without any booklets, I was given homework each week, things like the vicious circle and a lot of list based exercises

It was to a degree backed up with my using Mindgym an australian student CBT web site

I did then buy physically and for kindle my own books regards CBT so that I could refer back and I've been re-doing my CBT during this episode I'm experiencing

[Richard1960]

My CBT was face 2 face without any booklets, I was given homework each week, things like the vicious circle and a lot of list based exercises

It was to a degree backed up with my using Mindgym an australian student CBT web site

I did then buy physically and for kindle my own books regards CBT so that I could refer back and I've been re-doing my CBT during this episode I'm experiencing

Yes i was given the homework too i used to do the course with the booklets online one a week.

And then go back to my mentor at mind to go back through what i had learn and re-cap.

But the books were handy as it means its quite handy to have them just to look at some of the stuff.

But i am finding as i go on and my confidence is quite high i need them less and less.It is very good to go back over them when having any problems.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Is it me terry the example you have given Vicious flower is very good and looks like the vicious circle i did when doing my CBT therapy and it worked very well on my psychology,i still go back to it occasionally.

If you mean ones like these, then they are categorised in the beliefs section on the webiste I use to post tools from:

http://psychology.tools/cross-sectio...rmulation.html

http://psychology.tools/belief-driven-formulation.html

http://psychology.tools/longitudinal-formulation-2.html

They are similiar but combined it with the Virtuous Flower adds a different dimension since you are not only trying to understand your thoughts/beliefs/feelings, etc but planning against them.

Some include a bit of this too form that section, such as:

http://psychology.tools/friendly-formulation.html

http://psychology.tools/longitudinal-formulation-1.html

The website I take these from covers more than just CBT so some tools can be unfamiliar. I never had the Vicious Flower in my CBT but I have seen one member on here ask about it once from her's.

---------- Post added at 06:23 ---------- Previous post was at 06:18 ----------

Richard1960

It is similar, I created a vicious circle when doing CBT, it's in my little notebook
twas based on
Situation -> Belieifs -> Feelings ( Phys/Emo ) -> Behaviour -> Situations

It drove me understanding that my negative impression of myself was driving out a lot of negative situations and anxiety, it doesn't really improve things for me as I struggle still to break the negative

Maybe a virtuous circle/cycle would help, Ive not seen that in CBT i've done thx

Have you been shown Cognitive Distortions? That might be great help to you in understanding your negative thinking styles. The thread "Words" by Davit would be worth a look too because you want to fill your worksheets with positive language otherwise you compromise the full power of them without realising.

A flower may help and I would also suggest looking at the links for core beliefs booklets that Kimberley and I posted earlier which take you through the process of identifying, creating new ones or modifying existing ones.

I had a few weeks of homework, a few basic worksheets handed out and some booklets that were given to me in self help by the same service before they transferred me for CBT. It was all very basic stuff though and barely any tools in. I thought I had CBT and when I started with a local charity it opened my eyes and the rest was internet from there. I think my therapist was trying some ERP and Behavioural Activation as very little was explained to me about this cognitive side beyond the cycle and some whiteboard work.

[MyNameIsTerry]

One of my core belief issues that I have been trying to drill down into surrounds my fatigue. However, whilst there is physical tiredness, which I believe could be due to my unhealthy sleep routine and how that is impacting on my neurotransmitters and the SNRI I take, I can sense something deeper that is a mixture of feelings & thoughts and maybe even physical sensations.

When I spent time trying to notice this in more detail I found that it was beliefs about lack of motivation, lack of future, whats the point it's all the same anyway, etc. The feelings I have with these are of some form of discomfort in my mind whereby I feel a mixture of being under pressure to do & not to do anything (ambivalence) but also a control issue. This control issue links back to avoiding all possible stimili that came about as a result of my GAD. I hadn't noticed it to this level before because because my anxiety, it was much more subtle yet still affecting my life.

Physical feelings are a mixture of head and diagphram. My head feels like something is trying to stretch in two directions and my diagphram tenses up.

I need to do more work on this but I have managed to track it back to a specific point in my past. I was always a hard working student in school and at sixth form college but towards the end of my first year I contracted pneumonia. This put me in hospital for a week after 2 trips to A&E in an ambulance (the first the doctor missed a large shadow on the xray and discharged me). I spent about another 3 weeks recovering from this as it really affecting my asthma too which wasn't the best back then. I was about to return to college when I suddenly felt like I had no energy at all and my eyes were bloodshot. I ended up off for a further 4 weeks which turned out to be a low count of platelets in my blood. I thought I had glandular fever from knowing people at college that had had that.

After this it was very hard to catch up. But something in me seemed to change. I had started drinking before this in the city centre as we all did, but I now started to have thoughts of not really caring anymore. This continued and my college work suffered for it.

Then I started work and this seemed to no longer be there. For quite some years I had drive and a very active social life. I've never been good with relationships with women, I just didn't put as much into that as some guys do and I don't know; it happens or it doesn't.

As I got more into my stride at my last company I started to to become quite motivated and much more self confident. I still had some lagging issues around motivation for certain things like exercise but once I got started I seemed to be ok, it was more keeping the routine going around my work & social life that was a problem.

I don't think this hit me particularily hard until coming up to my relapse. I returned to work and threw myself into it for a couple of years. This was ultimately negative on me but the work culture was like this; everything going wrong, fixes that needed doing now, projects already behind that need advancing, etc. I loved it at that point because I had always loved the stress of work from my early days in call centres. However, in the 12 months leading up to my relapse the cracks were showing around anxiety and I was suffering with the influence of these old core belief issues. The last 6 months of this it had intensified and I became very sick of my work, lack of direction in life and why everything seemed pointless.

I had not had any therapy and relied solely on my GP up to this point, a very bad thing with anxiety disorders! So, I wasn't understanding that I was edging closer & closer to a more powerful relapse.

This relapse did further damage by reinforcing these old beliefs over a period of time and I now need to reprogramme how I see things to tackle it or it will re-emerge throughout my future. But by spending time trying to understand how I was feeling and learning about core beliefs, I found this one going back a good 21 years now.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Another core belief issue I have had to understand in order to start working on is connected to a fear of trying supplements, foods, new things, etc. It's not an OCD thing as it was born out of my GAD after my first breakdown or most likely originated leading up to it.

A very clear event I had prior to taking a serious dive in mental health where my anxiety greatly increased was when I had been off work for a few months. I was still training, mostly bodyweight work. I was also taking some sports supplements, some which were more advanced. I decided to supplement with a new one on top of this and it was for advanced trainers only. It was also a supplement with a similiar, but more powerful, method of action to ones I was already on. Up to now my anxiety had not been an issue with these supplements and some of them were stimulating. So, at this point my anxiety was geared quite heavily towards my work situation and not affecting as much of my daily life if I could do any of this.

I took this new supplement at the same time as all the others are started rowing. Within a very short time I experienced an adrenaline rush, not a panic attack, they feel very different. I had to sit it out for a time with my heart pounding and worrying about the impact on my asthma. I had panic attacks at work, they were nothing like this. Aside from the worry about the feelings, I was filled with energy, very nervous energy and could have ran & ran.

This was where I developed an issue with supplements and exercise. I couldn't vitamin C or paracetamol and wouldn't even use my asthma medication "just in case" it caused similiar feelings (some inhalers are stiumlating and make you jittery).

I went downhill from here into my first real breakdown and then came Citalopram. I managed to take this despite the fear, probably because I had hopes it would help me and my GP had advised me any side effects were minor (he said "some sweating and loose bowel" which I could easily handle). Wrong. Big mistake. Bad nausea came, I felt hungry yet could barely force myself to eat a biscuit, I stopped sleeping for a couple of days and my anxiety increased whilst I now also had crushing depression which I had never felt before. I was in tears in front of my parents, a 30 year old man. They called the surgery and as my GP was out on rounds in the area, he called by. Despite previously assuring me he had dealt with lots of depression cases, he didn't know what to do and called the Crisis Team out. They came and listened and advised my GP to give me something to help me sleep and see if that helped me through the side effects. It did. I had to see my GP the next day and I started 14 days of Zopiclone. It lost it's effect after a week but I was still sleeping enough on it but was exhausted upon waking for hours, couldn't eat and struggled just getting out of bed for an hour each morning. I felt drugged, which I assumed was the Zopiclone still working despite not sleeping more than 5-6 hours. The Crisis Team came back after a couple of weeks to check and advised me I shouldn't be taking the stuff daily but every other day. I had been on it nearly a month now so my GP was claiming he didn't want to give anymore. I had a final 7 days and I spaced it out every other day to come off it, which I just did because it was how I should have taken it before. I wasn't given any advice by either on how to withdraw from it. The first few times it was a typical pattern of not sleeping to sleeping well until it became more of a bit of both. It took months to correct my sleep though but this would have been the Citalopram affecting me at tghe early stages too.

This did an immense amount of damage to me. I just wasn't prepared at all. The second time around I treated it as a "worse before better" scenario and whilst it was very hard (and very different going on a SNRI), I just kept going and didn't bother with my GP other than updating him at the appointments he wanted. He wouldn't admit it was the SNRI anyway, despite the PIL clearly detailing the rarer side effects I suffered. Another dent in my confidence of GP's.

So, this had a deep impact on me as these events were traumatic to me and only reinforced the previous ones. I was developing some core beliefs around use of medication, taking any pills or liquids and it expanded out into food issues on the SNRI which I didn't have before starting that med!

BUT is is about the supplements? Is it about the exercise too as I was afraid to do that? No. It was pretty obvious why I was afraid to do exercise, the similiar sensations to panic & anxiety and something many of us will have experienced. BUT these weren't core beliefs in their own right. Why? Because it was not fearing the pills themselves but the effects and the only reasons the effects were an issue was because they made we panic or anxious or could be seen to stimulate me to feel similiar sensations.

So, the core belief was deeper than this. Simply put, these were attached cores. the exercise one was attached in a slightly different way to the rest but the connection is ultimately the same when you drill down.

The core belief was clearly panic & anxiety symptoms themselves and my fear of experiencing them. This is because the fear I had now gained was the same as the one I gained from my panic & anxiety at work so I had made connections between these isolated events and created these attached cores.

I can work on attached cores, and have done over the past year or so BUT on their own they will never remove that original core belief. I can make improvements to my life to exercise and take supplements again but it will simply strip a few petals from that Vicious Flower and learn the true cure in place. This core can keep working against me to replace those old petals with new ones or reinstate those old ones again or even both to make the situations even more complex and potentially intense/life-limiting.

So, I have been working on my fear of the supplements and exercise here & there. I have now started to tackle supplements in a more aggresive approach which is paying off more. Since I am also seeing improvements in how I feel from some of these supplements, I am building new core beliefs or attached cores stating how I belief them to be a positive thing. In essense, at least some petals on a Virtuous Flower. This is also creating new positive memories to push those old negative ones further back into obscurity.

Whilst I tackled the food issue head on at the start (I was panicking eating due to the location, the settee, being where some of the worst panic had been in my relapse and how the change in bodily sensations scared me) with a distraction techniq but I have felt it raise it's head again from time to time so it still is in there and needs some work. It's more minor though.

My true core belief about anxiety & panic symptoms is a complex one and attached to many other issues than simply the above. This is a massive one, so removing petals can help me get closer to it rather than tackling to hardest issues all in one go.

[NoProblem]

I wanted to take the time to bump this thread due to the extremely valuable information here.

A little backstory about myself: about a year ago, I quit smoking marijuana cold turkey after a daily binge for 9 months. This was due to some stressful times at work, although I did not realize I was masking the anxiety and stress with the drug until much after. In the week following this, I suffered an anxiety attack on an airplane followed by 4 days of withdrawal hell in a hotel room 800 miles from my city. I experienced symptoms of anxiety, depression, insomnia, lack of appetite, nausea, and agoraphobia. I was too afraid to leave my hotel room due to the symptoms at hand and I also had fear of having a panic attack and hyperventilating. I went to a clinic and was given some Xanax pills (6x - 0.25mg). With my pills in hand, I ended up driving home due to the immense fear of facing another flight. Upon returning home, my life as far as I knew it had changed.

For the past 11 months, I have been digging my way out of a mild agoraphobic hole using what seems like a fork. I developed various fears all revolving around the fear of having a panic attack, or feeling trapped or being too far away from home. I am functional and still work, however, some days can be a challenge. Since the event, I have struggled travelling long distances, flying, or doing some daily activities that would have otherwise been extremely normal a year ago. The anticipatory anxiety that develops is a fear and anxiety that I have never felt before in my life. Travel and flying was what I lived for, and will still live for as soon as I can find peace.

After starting some neurofeedback therapy, and doing various amount of self guided exposure therapy, I still have struggled with these daily tasks. This is why this thread and a various amount of MyNameIsTerry and Davit's posts and threads have gravitated to me. I feel like I finally found a logical explanation as to what has been happening to me. Throughout all of my 'exposure' in travelling long distances, or doing other normal tasks in my day-to-day, I still always have thoughts of panic or intrusive images of me hyperventilating (which is related to a panic attack I had in 2012, went to the ER, was hyperventilating), but the panic never comes. The symptoms can be distressing, but if I distract myself, it goes away. However, I am always stuck in my head, fearing what may happen next.

After reading this thread and various others, the idea of core beliefs, positive talk, CBT and why exposure therapy wasn't working for me, I finally had a gigantic spark of hope. A eureka moment, if you will. I have not had a full blown panic attack in well over 5 years; however, I have had limited symptom attacks. Mostly revolving around racing heartbeat, pressure in my chest and a feeling of butterflies, or doom, or pure adrenaline in what seems like my solar plexus (where stomach meets bottom of chest) which brings on awful fear. After reading these threads, I feel I have a core belief that I cannot cope with panic, that I fear having a panic attack and hyperventilating and these are situational depending where I am. But I don't believe the situations have much to do with the symptoms. I believe it all comes from the automatic thoughts I have about panic.

The purpose of this really is to possibly seek some guidance in how to properly begin the Cognitive Restructuring processes that Davit had spoke in detail about. I have read through numerous threads, looked at the links provided, read various studies and have a general idea; however, it is difficult to gauge where to actually start on this road of recovery. I am starting CBT with my neurofeedback therapist, but I also want to be productive during the week when I am not seeing my therapist. In addition, is there anyway to contact Davit as I understand he was banned from this website two years ago. He consistently spoke about a book that he had created and sent to users on this board. It would be more than helpful if someone could point me in the direction of it, if it exists somewhere.

I also want to point out that the information here by the various users will not go unnoticed. Your empathetic attitudes, knowledge and willingness to help have likely helped hundreds, if not thousands of other people in the dark. I cannot thank you all enough.

Cheers.