Whose fault it it? Are you weak?

[TheHusband]

Failure
Blame
Weakness
Inability
Try harder
Useless
Pathetic

I was shocked to hear my wife use words like this, when discussing her health anxiety. She feels ashamed that she is too weak to beat it. She says she feels a failure.

This is INSANE! I was gobsmacked at the inaccuracy of it. I tried to tell her it was all wrong.

She remembered her doctor talking about seratonin levels causing the anxiety....and saying how nobody blames diabetics for failing to manufacture the correct amounts of insulin. But my wife could not allow herself to be acquitted by this example.

Question 1: Does anyone else do this?

I can't help thinking she needs to work on ridding herself of this blame, as much as she needs to work on the anxious thought processes. So many other psychological routes to healing (e.g crime victim support, recovery from abuse) start with acknowledging you are not at fault, or forgiving yourself. It is the first step, I've heard people say. Even recovering addicts have to do this before they can work on fixing themselves.

I think it could interfere with her progress to beat the anxiety.

Question 2: Any ideas on how to stop thinking she is weak/failing, other than extra CBT focussing on it? Or do you think it is pointless to look at this area?

[.Poppy.]

Yes. I think in general we feel we should be able to control our thoughts and perceptions and it is off-putting when we just can't.

My therapist had me watch a TED talk by Brene Brown on vulnerability. It's on youtube and may be worth a watch. She explores many of these things there.

I do think it's very important for her to stop blaming herself, but of course that's much easier said than done. Does she see a therapist where she can talk over these things? It may be good for her to explore WHY she feels like this is all her fault.

[MyNameIsTerry]

This is common because negative thinking styles are part of mental health problems. Cognitive Distortions dominate our thinking until we learn to change from these patterns. I suggest reading about them because they explain how our skewed thinking leads us to the worst and generally incorrect conclusions. The Wiki page is accurate, it matches the information I obtained through a charity.

What you see as insane here is just normal when you go through this. We start to view ourselves negatively. Self esteem, and it's components such as self confidence, take a major battering and this only reinforces our negative self beliefs.

Such beliefs are generally part of "core beliefs". Think of these as flowers with petals. The petals are called "attached cores". Resolving a petal doesn't resolve the core belief underpinning them so a therapist has to determine what is the true cause. They often use the Vicious Flower metaphor for this so that a Virtuous Flower can be produced aimed at working on changing it.

So, if your wife had a core belief of say "I'm a failure", she may have attached cores such as "I can't go to the supermarket on my own". One leads to the other but it's easy to see that the "petal" is not the main issue, it's an element of the overall issue. In reality, "I'm a failure" may not be a core belief, more one of the petals for some reason.

Core beliefs can be positive, neutral or negative. The more we spend our time in negative thinking styles, the more of these negative beliefs we build. We can resurrect the old ones or create new ones, modify others, etc. The brain is able to do this until we die, a theory that replaced the neuroscience view of a brain ceiling when it came to learning.

Those Cognitive Distortions will only add to this issue because they are traps we fall into when we view something in life or about ourselves.

CBT can tackle all of this, it's one of it's strengths. Other forms of therapy do it too and may have differing methods. Some forms of therapy go deeper beyond core beliefs in Schemas which are more linked to identity and very deep. This is more where Personality Disorders are in play that are developed at an earlier age.

The problem may be that many of us never see this in CBT. It's in the area of CBT known as Cognitive Restructuring. I had High Intensity CBT and what I've just described above was never even mentioned. Much of IAPT CBT is exposure therapy by the looks of it and that won't tackle such thoughts, it's not meant to. The only way exposure works for this is by naturally changing them as we gain in confidence from facing & beating our fears. Cognitive Restructuring works on the thoughts and beliefs end.

There is plenty out there about this so I will find you some links to have a look at.

Is it pointless to look at this area? No, completely the opposite. It's like having poor foundations. I strongly believe that unless you tackle areas such as this you leave yourself open for later relapse.

I think part of dealing with this, other than information to understand that this is normal and that you are not alone here, is to learn to accept that this is how you are at the moment. Don't berate yourself for it. You will, I know I did, but you learn to change that and accept it as a stage of your anxiety that does not have to last...I got through my stage of a lot of that.

---------- Post added at 05:22 ---------- Previous post was at 05:10 ----------

Vicious Flowers are used in others ways to so these examples might look different to what I just explained, in some cases:

http://psychology.tools/vicious-flower-formulation.html

Page 78 onwards of this ebook talks about Vicious Flowers in more detail:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2QvoM5tBoN8C&pg=PA80&lpg=PA80&dq=vicious+flower&source=bl&ots=V2hagmtxcw&sig=oEL7Zm0B9JJgA4xQSVlkM8QfQeY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjqkNX-4brNAhVCDMAKHbXxDXc4ChDoAQg3MAU#v=onepage&q=vicious%20flower&f=false

Core beliefs info (might be repetitive):

http://psychology.tools/core-belief-magnets.html
http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/Info-What%20are%20Core%20Beliefs.pdf
http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/WS-Core%20Beliefs%20Worksheet.pdf
http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/BB-8-Core%20Beliefs.pdf
http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/Info-adjusting%20negative%20core%20beliefs.pdf
http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/WS-adjusting%20core%20beliefs.pdf
http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/Panic-08_Core%20Beliefs.pdf
http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/SE_Module%208_July%2005.pdf
http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/SHY-09-Core%20Beliefs.pdf

[Colicab85]

That's a great post. Thanks
I also agree with what's posted. One of my biggest things in all of this is my belief im a failure, useless and worthless.

Its strays very close in to depression for me.

[TheHusband]

(Terry: Thanks for the links, I will look into those.)

This is so sad. None of your are to blame, or are weak, for having an anxiety condition. Just like I am not a failure for having IBS or fungal nail infection.

Of course, if I chose to do nothing about my food intake, or foot hygiene, then that is a bad thing, and affects other people too. If I make a daily attempt to battle a health issue, that absolves me of any blame.

Those of you on this forum have the wrong amount of serotonin, and other chemicals, in your brain. You've had them out-of-balance so long that it has affected the way you learned about everyday life. At no point did you choose for this to happen, or have any control over it. In addition, it was so subtle and deep inside you that it wasn't possible to notice until after the damage was done.

If your partner or family members have ever expressed annoyance/exasperation with you, please rest assured that they were angry with the illness, not angry with you. Have you ever cared for a toddler or elderly person when they were sick? It isn't always possible to keep your temper! You can get really fed up with it (note the "it" - the illness - not the "him" or "her").

In the beginning, when your partner or parent knows nothing about anxiety conditions, and first sees the symptoms you reveal, they may have said something out of frustration...something like "snap out of it" or "there's nothing wrong with you". For them, it may have seemed like you were just being weird or silly. They simply could not understand at that point. They tried to deal with you as if it was a matter of opinion/education. They may have said all sorts of well-meaning things that actually ended up sowing the seeds of that feeling of blame/failure. All unintentionally!

I can see why it might start to cause the incorrect feelings inside your minds, simply because of the lack of medical understanding. Perhaps at the very beginning, you too were uninformed, and thought this was just a matter of willpower. Not so!

It is all so very sad. I wish I could help you all see this. You're probably amongst the mentally-strongest people of the world, not the weakest.

[MyNameIsTerry]

It is all so very sad. I wish I could help you all see this. You're probably amongst the mentally-strongest people of the world, not the weakest.

I think you just have.

It's good to see the opinions from the other side. And you always come across very well , very enlightened by your experiences, empathic to everyone on here and this is truly a wonderful thing for your wife. She just needs to remember you as you are here.

It's very true what you say about caring for someone with an illness means at times tempers fray. What matters most is the talking afterwards and where you go from there. None of us are saints on either side and we all have our limits, our own stresses, we can feel unwell and be snappy, etc.

Something we need to do on here is think "how does someone without anxiety feel about this?". We forget this, especially earlier on. When someone has a week of insomnia, do they bounce around all chirpy or can they get snappy? If someone has a painful condition, doesn't it grind them down into depression or bad moods out of frustration with their situation?

You remind people of this with what you say here and people need to listen and try to implement this into their rationalising of the things they go through.

Your wife has something more important & powerful in her life than any of the meds or therapies, you.