stressedGuy
30-06-14, 17:57
I'm so utterly disappointed with myself right now. I've suffered on and off with HA for about a decade now. A couple of years ago I finally had a chance to go for some CBT. I think the CBT helped a lot, if only to have a chance to sit across a chair with someone for an hour once a week for several months to try and get to the bottom of things, to talk to the sympathetic therapist, do some exercises to try and train my mind to think in a different way. Vocalizing (sometimes tearfully) my worst fears to a stranger seemed cathartic to me. After the CBT, I felt much more in control of my tendency towards catastrophic thinking.
Fast forward 2 years of HA freedom and I suddenly find myself back almost where I started. Over the past week or so I'm struggling with symptoms that the rational part of my mind thinks is related to a cold/virus that I had but the HA part of me won't let go of the possibility that it's something deadly serious.
I feel like I'm firmly back in the bad old days and I don't know if I can face being back there. I've forgotten everything from the CBT. I used to be on Fluoxitine but I hated it. At best, I felt they did nothing and at worst I think they made me feel a bit spaced out.
I remember days where I wished that I could go to sleep and not wake up. There were days that really strained my marriage because my wife could never come close to comprehending what I was going through and I was unable to find the words that would allow her to empathize with me. But I suppose any mental illness is difficult to understand if you don't have personal experience with it.
Right now, I don't know where to go from here. In the past, I'd usually have battled with it for a couple of weeks and then make an appointment with the GP when things got to be too much. I think that I might have to do that again but at the back of my mind is the dreaded thought - what if it's not HA this time, not something benign, and what if my worst fears are correct?
Fast forward 2 years of HA freedom and I suddenly find myself back almost where I started. Over the past week or so I'm struggling with symptoms that the rational part of my mind thinks is related to a cold/virus that I had but the HA part of me won't let go of the possibility that it's something deadly serious.
I feel like I'm firmly back in the bad old days and I don't know if I can face being back there. I've forgotten everything from the CBT. I used to be on Fluoxitine but I hated it. At best, I felt they did nothing and at worst I think they made me feel a bit spaced out.
I remember days where I wished that I could go to sleep and not wake up. There were days that really strained my marriage because my wife could never come close to comprehending what I was going through and I was unable to find the words that would allow her to empathize with me. But I suppose any mental illness is difficult to understand if you don't have personal experience with it.
Right now, I don't know where to go from here. In the past, I'd usually have battled with it for a couple of weeks and then make an appointment with the GP when things got to be too much. I think that I might have to do that again but at the back of my mind is the dreaded thought - what if it's not HA this time, not something benign, and what if my worst fears are correct?