lauz_lea
04-05-12, 09:27
It's been a long, rough road, but I finally feel like I've nearly reached my destination. I say nearly because I'm prepared for the bumps and pot holes in the road which I'm sure lay ahead.
I no longer wake with racing thoughts and churning anxiety in the pit of my stomache, I've gone back to work and am still building my hours back up to where I was before I tried AD meds again in November and since coming OFF the AD meds the panic attacks have stopped.
I don't have a magic cure, but several things have helped me (in no particular order):
1) Claire Weekes - I put her audios on my MP3 and listened to them whenever I was out and about. They served as a constant reminder that I wasn't going mad or losing my mind and gave me a better understanding of what was happening to me and how I was causing some of it myself. Her theory on acceptance is spot on. Once I really accepted that even the most scarey of sypmtoms were just that, symptoms, they had far less importance.
2) Relaxation audios and Mindfulness meditation (http://franticworld.com/) - thanks for that Ingenious. Whenever I woke early with pure O and anxiety I just reached for my MP3 and used the audios. Most times I would fall back to sleep, but I didn't mind that at all.
3) Tough love - my husband knows me better than I know myself and I can't believe that I was ever considering leaving him a few months ago. Sometimes his tough love approach felt hurtful and cruel, but it made me realise how much he was hurting seeing me in the state I was in. I was letting anxiety and depression beat me, but he wasn't willing to let that happen and he gave me so much strength. I used tough love with myself and made myself do things that I'd convinced myself I couldn't - I stopped lieing to myself.
4) Work/distraction - going back to work not only gave me a reason to HAVE to get up and get dressed in the morning, but it stopped me sitting at the computer all day consulting Dr Google for answers and only finding horror stories and worst case scenarios. Don't get me wrong, I found some very useful information and found NMP, but I also "developed" symptoms after reading about them and I'm sure many of you know exactly where I'm coming from.
5) Belief - believe you can do it and you will. Maybe not on the first attempt, but that's how we learn, by repetition. Helping my daughter with her school work rienforced this in me. I wouldn't let her slam down her pencil when a sum was too hard, the solution came from the same principle she was applying to her other sums, it was just that the numbers were bigger so she automatically thought they would be harder.
In addition to the all the above, I also went against the grain a little. I could never accept that my episodes and experiences weren't cause by something else and I was right. After many blood tests I was finally able to say "I told you so" when some of my hormone tests recently came back abnormal for someone of my age. I know it's not as simple as that for everyone (but believe me it was by no means simple getting the doctor to order the tests), but I have half a diagnosis at least and that has made everything a lot more tolerable.
I still check in the NMP when I can, but I'm not spending all day every day here like I used to, which is a good thing for me, I spent way too long living on my computer.
I wish everyone the best of luck. A few months/weeks ago if someone had told me I'd feel like "me" again I wouldn't have believed them. You may not be where you want to be today, but tomorrow is only a sleep away.
I no longer wake with racing thoughts and churning anxiety in the pit of my stomache, I've gone back to work and am still building my hours back up to where I was before I tried AD meds again in November and since coming OFF the AD meds the panic attacks have stopped.
I don't have a magic cure, but several things have helped me (in no particular order):
1) Claire Weekes - I put her audios on my MP3 and listened to them whenever I was out and about. They served as a constant reminder that I wasn't going mad or losing my mind and gave me a better understanding of what was happening to me and how I was causing some of it myself. Her theory on acceptance is spot on. Once I really accepted that even the most scarey of sypmtoms were just that, symptoms, they had far less importance.
2) Relaxation audios and Mindfulness meditation (http://franticworld.com/) - thanks for that Ingenious. Whenever I woke early with pure O and anxiety I just reached for my MP3 and used the audios. Most times I would fall back to sleep, but I didn't mind that at all.
3) Tough love - my husband knows me better than I know myself and I can't believe that I was ever considering leaving him a few months ago. Sometimes his tough love approach felt hurtful and cruel, but it made me realise how much he was hurting seeing me in the state I was in. I was letting anxiety and depression beat me, but he wasn't willing to let that happen and he gave me so much strength. I used tough love with myself and made myself do things that I'd convinced myself I couldn't - I stopped lieing to myself.
4) Work/distraction - going back to work not only gave me a reason to HAVE to get up and get dressed in the morning, but it stopped me sitting at the computer all day consulting Dr Google for answers and only finding horror stories and worst case scenarios. Don't get me wrong, I found some very useful information and found NMP, but I also "developed" symptoms after reading about them and I'm sure many of you know exactly where I'm coming from.
5) Belief - believe you can do it and you will. Maybe not on the first attempt, but that's how we learn, by repetition. Helping my daughter with her school work rienforced this in me. I wouldn't let her slam down her pencil when a sum was too hard, the solution came from the same principle she was applying to her other sums, it was just that the numbers were bigger so she automatically thought they would be harder.
In addition to the all the above, I also went against the grain a little. I could never accept that my episodes and experiences weren't cause by something else and I was right. After many blood tests I was finally able to say "I told you so" when some of my hormone tests recently came back abnormal for someone of my age. I know it's not as simple as that for everyone (but believe me it was by no means simple getting the doctor to order the tests), but I have half a diagnosis at least and that has made everything a lot more tolerable.
I still check in the NMP when I can, but I'm not spending all day every day here like I used to, which is a good thing for me, I spent way too long living on my computer.
I wish everyone the best of luck. A few months/weeks ago if someone had told me I'd feel like "me" again I wouldn't have believed them. You may not be where you want to be today, but tomorrow is only a sleep away.