having a good run, how can i keep it?

[Alice1]

Just wanted to say that this past week has been very good compared with the last month with my symptoms almost non existent and everything being well.

I'm going to the gym again and sleeping well and I feel like a normal 19 year old kid. I even contemplated going out with my friends on a science bar crawl but decided not to push my luck and had a dance round my bedroom instead.

Its odd because this seems to be a pattern, with there being a period of one or two weeks, up to a month, where everything is normal and I am symptom free and then BAM everything comes back and I have cancer and heart disease and everything else. This time round I am still getting slight suggestions of 'oh dear it might be this oh god' or 'what if there's something underlying just currently dormant' but these thoughts are pretty easy to toss aside compared to a few weeks ago.

Does anyone else get this? I'm worried these moments of calm will become far and few between.
And it sucks that I'm waiting for the next time I get super anxious too. Is there anything I can do while I'm still feeling good to prevent this?

[swgrl09]

I know how you feel. When we are so used to being anxious, it is hard to believe that we can feel better. A lot of people experience "anticipatory anxiety" where you are feeling better, but scared of anxiety coming back.

This is a dangerous territory because if something does happen that would normally trigger your anxiety, it will make it feel much worse because at the same time you will be "proving yourself right" or might feel like a failure. I say that from experience myself, although your experience might be different. We interpret it that way instead of just understanding that it is normal to sometimes feel anxious - even for people without HA!

The important thing is to practice living in the moment and being present. This can be done many ways, one way that is tried and true is mindfulness to your surroundings and what you are doing. Try to focus on the here and now, the room, the activity you are doing, and if anxiety or fear pops up gently accept it and acknowledge it and turn your attention back to whatever you were doing. Most importantly - ENJOY this!! Keep doing what you are doing and love it! If you do get anxious again - we all do - it is just a blip and you will get back to this place again.

I hope that made sense!

[LongDong]

Challenge your fears. Always push to the next frontier. The moment you stop pushing, is when you start receding.

[Steve1964]

It's great to hear your good run. Really happy for you.

I have had a really good nearly two weeks, as well. I am getting slight periods of being down, but I have found that Dr Claire Weekes has really helped me to accept these as just being who I am, and allowing them to be a part of me, rather than fighting it. As a result, my anxiety levels and headaches are well down.

Those of us who get these episodes will always get them, but I really hope that we can learn to cope with them as well as we are at the moment.

Here's hoping.

Oh, and definitely go on that bar crawl one day!

[Davit]

Part of CBT is repeatedly changing thought patterns from negative to positive till you do it subconscious. Think of it as stacking thoughts in your memory so the one you want is not only on top but most of the way down. Do this every time you have a trigger and the trigger will trigger a different thought than the one it used to. Keep in mind the old thought is still there just buried, you can go find it again. Triggers are just triggers, what you do with them gives you the reaction.

Davit