did/do you feel the need to explore the reasons why it all started?

[honeybee]

hello all... hope you've had a good day...

the reason i'm adding this thread is because when my panic attacks started there were things going on my life that lasted a couple of years that i think most people would find really hard to deal with(deaths, child abuse, depression, alcohol misuse, the list goes on, rather like eastenders actually, actually no, my life was way worse than that... lol)... although saying this i feel im a very strong person and at the time felt i was dealing with everything really well despite my panic attacks... in the early stages of it i didn't have any time to concentrate on myself or put in the time to try and help myself because i was putting all my effort into supporting my family and their problems...

i've had so many people say to me 'why do you think it all started?' or 'if you can find out why it all started maybe it'll help' but the way ive always seen it is even if i did explore why it all started in more depth it won't make any difference because i'll still have it... BUT i'm starting to wonder if it would make any difference or not... when i try and think back i seem to have a bit of a mental block on it all... could this mean im just suppressing everything? during the time, my relationship with my mum got very rocky and i know it caused a lot of pain for me at the time, maybe i don't need to remember what that was like... i dont know..

i realise you're not counsillors (spelling???) but was wondering if anyone is willing to share with me any experiances they've had about dragging up the past. did it help? was it necessary? i find it quite had to recognise my feelings sometimes and just want to understand myself better... im open to any ideas on the saubject, thanks for your time

[happyone]

Hi Honeybee,

funny you should ask this as tomorrow I am embarking on just this. Exploring my past and how it fits in to the here and now. I was asked by the nurse that I go to see if I was sure that it was what I wanted as it can be painful. I have replied 'yes'
My life has been a bit Eastenders like too and I'm not being flippant! I know that there are things in my past, combined with possibly an inherited tendency to depression/anxiety that have got me to where I am now. My main fear is not addressing this, but being left to deal with it all once I have brought it into the open.
I have had counselling in the past. Once I abandoned it halfway through as the counsellor left, another I gave up after one session and the most recent I think helped enormously, but it was purely bereavement counselling.
I am not sure what I have been receiving over the past few weeks, it is counselling of a sort I think, and it has really helped me. The nurse therapist has helped me to recognise things about myself, as like you I find it difficult to recognise my feelings.
I am not sure if this is what you were looking for, or if it helps.
Happyone
xx

[normalwisdom]

When I was going through my "really bad" time my doctor told me to keep a diary.......mainly for the mental health team I think. It did help at the time and I still have it although I can't bring myself to read it:blush: .

Being better now than "my dark days" I do look back and try to figure out what went wrong and I still can't work it out. The thing is my worst period 2004-2005 wasn't the start of it, my panics started way before that back in the 80's(yes I remember leg warmers LOL) It just seemed to come to a head then.

I have had councelling (can't spell it either:blush: ) but she just kept going on about how much do I love my family...same ole same ole!!!!

I do know that when it was worse I was going through a lot Dad had cancer a friends baby died i hated my job etc and I did take a lot on myself that I didn't need to.......oh honeybee you are getting it all out of me now:blush:

So it is hard I think we sort of know its happening but can't stop it.:shrug:

[tam]

hi honey ive thought about this and gone through it alot i didnt really have any thing that wasnt going right or problems in my life it just seemed to happen,after going through this with my councillor,it was said that i was just exausted and worn out,due mostly to having a 3 yrs old and then twins and i had done to much without a break no me time,which i honestly believe now is true.tracy:)

[Keitharcher]

Honeybee

I think I have an answer for you, not difinitive but it did apply to me. During the dark days when I was a total suicidal wreck and tryingh everything to get myself out of it. As soon as I saw the way forward and started on the road to freedom from this horrible thing one of the tools I used was hypnotherapy. During my sessions with the hypnotherapist we explored my past in an effort to see if there was an any emotional baggage that was causing me to exhibt my symptoms. During one of the sessions we uncovered something in my past that I had repressed for many years, Thisincinident I always dismissed as a nothing, however, it appears that it was a lot more than nothing, it actually had a big impact on me and I was represseing the effects it caused on me. Over the years in my subconcious I had actually built this up to be a mountain. To cut a long story short, under hypnosisis i was able to examine the event in a detached way, and discover that for yesrs I had been working under a misaprehension and the truth was the incindent should have been a nonevent, But I had built it up to be significant. Once i realised then I was able to work through the event and dismiss it for it was an irrelevance. It took a weight of my mind and enabled me to get on with curing myself.

So in my opinion the answer to your question is yes the emotional baggage that we dont deal with at the time does tend to fester in our subconcious and come back to haunt us, well thas my opinion any way

Keith

[happyone]

Keith,
I am really interested in your answer. I have 'things' that happened in my past. I was young. Young enough to remember but not remember completely. For many years I made something out to be very big, when in reality, I think it was bigger than insignificant but not huge. I have often thought about hypnotherapy to help me get to the bottom of this as I wonder if I 'filled in the gaps' with my adult knowledge, when maybe they didn't happen. False memory sort of.
Do you recommend? How did you go about getting a hypnotherapist? Not on the NHS I presume?
happyone
xx

[jodie]

hi

i think i was allways panicy from a very young child i can remember allways stressing over my health ect ,but do feel like things in my life that have happend have made the anxiety and pa,s worse my little girl died 8 years ago that made me much worse then some other family members my dad was very ill a year ago ect .
i went to the docs and she sent me to a lady that workd there to talk over it all and yes it did help a little but aas the years went on it all came back it is like a fast fix . but everone is diffrent .
i think i went to that lady to soon after my little girl dieing i went 2 months after if i went now i might get more out of it ?

jodie xx

[Coni]

Hi Honeybee,

my experience is similar to Keiths. I was really bad a couple of years ago after a particularly stressful time at work and home and ended up off sick with stress/depression/anxiety. I was completely destroyed at that time but my responses seemed really disproportionate to the actual events.

I went on to have medication and counselling which helped temporarily but I still had a tendency to be over anxious and depressed and the slightest thing would floor me and bring me to my knees. I have since started seeing a psychologist and have been exploring my past in great detail and there are several things which have led to me being the way I am.

Interestingly, like Keith there was one event in particular, which I had told no one about ever, which in my mind had become this huge thing, with feelings which grew around it and stayed locked in a box in my head for 20 years. I didnt even realise this thing was an issue for me until I was made to talk about it in detail and explore how I felt...boy was this an eye opener...it explained so much for me. And I also realised I carried a lot of shame for something which in reality was not my fault, but in my head I had made it my fault.

I have found this all very painful and difficult and still do as I'm still going through this process but I do think that for me it will help me let go of some of my emotional baggage once and for all....I do hope so cos if not the alternative is too scary...that I might just 'be' like this always.

Sorry if this is all a bit jumbled but I hope some of it makes sense for you.

Good luck and take care

Coni X

[happyone]

I think maybe two months after such a traumatic event might have been too soon. your emotions were still raw. I think you would have a god case to ask for another course.
happyone
xx

[Lynnann]

I have had so many traumatic events happen in my life, that I can't pin anything down to one event. My close friends joke that I should write a book, except no-one would believe one person could endure so much. Maybe I should become an Eastenders writer lol.

However I did do a short course of Counselling.
Which did help in the short term. I am not saying this was easy, It was extremely difficult. At the end of the course the recomendation was for a yrs intensive counselling/therapy. It took several months before I could bring myself to see my doctor to request this. I am now on a waiting list for it. All I can say is try it and see if it helps.

I had a friend that I completely trust that I would meet afterwards and he would help me as I was quite distraught. If I didn't feel up to that I would go home and sleep afterwards as it can be mentaly exhausting.

Whatever you decide I hope it works for you

Lynnann

[honeybee]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR REPLIES

happyone -
wish you loadsa luck, if you're up for it it would be great to hear how it all goes and it'd be interesting to see if it helps with your anxiety at all.

normalwisdom -
i also kept 'A LOT' of diaries and letters to and from my mum, after i wrote things down i couldn't read back over them cos it hurt too much and its only now i can read 'some' of the stuff, my panic attacks started roughly at the same time as (excuse the language) 'the sh*t hit the fan' but it all did get a whole lot worse 'after' my panic attacks had already got really bad. thank you for sharing your thoughts, i think its quite good to get it all out on this site because its kinda like writing in a virtual diary cos you can get feedback aswell as getting it outta your system, i find its also nice to be able to let down my strong outta shell and show my vunerability to people that aren't in my life rather than those in my life..

tam -
i find this interesting too cos i was wondering how many people out there started getting panic attacks when there wasn't loadsa drama going on (not for one second saying you had it easy bringing up a child though...lol), maybe mine would've all started anyway then??? i did cope very well with everything that was going on...

keitharcher -
hmmm, interesting, i have been for hypnotherapy, but not in an attempt to explore my past but to overcome my agoraphobia (which is what i'm left with now my general anxiety has gone)... this could prove to be good because as i said i also seem to have a mental block on the whole situation, i feel i coped with everything really well but maybe that was because i didnt have any choice so instead of letting it all out i just supressed in all in an attempt to stay strong for everyone else... hmmm, thanks for that

jodie -
i'm so so sorry to hear about your little girl. you say you were always quite anxious, whereas i wasn't, i had just been promoted to bar/restaurant manager at the age of 18, i had been travelling around spain, some of it on my own with no phone and with prebooked train and bus tickets to meet friends often with no money, i could hardly speak the language, i could NEVER do that now, i was always so confident and excited to explore the world, that's why its so hard to understand now, maybe i don't need to understand it, i dont know...

coni -
what you said at the end was interesting about the alternative being scary, the thought of you 'just being like that'... this is what really scares me too but the longer it goes on the more i'm giving myself up to that notion - something i'm trying hard not to do, as i said in another thread, its like i can see the real me but there's just a veil on top of me, a veil of fear anxiety and irrational fears, i've always had faith that things happen for a reason and that things will get better, i just need a super huge gush of wind to come along and blow away that bl**dy veil because i know i can have my life back i just dont know how to go about it

lynnann -
i'll join ya in the eatenders script writing... lol, even though i'm only 21 i've had more than my fair share of crap, it always seemed like when one thing came to an end another huge thing happened, thanks for your post, i hope everything works out for you

SORRY TO HAVE GONE ON SO MUCH EVERYONE, THANKS FOR YOUR REPLIES, I MIGHT LOOK INTO HYPNOTHERAPY, HADN'T THOUGHT TO USE IT IN THIS WAY, I BELIEVE THE SUBCONSCIOUS IS A VERY POWERFUL TOOL THAT COULD POSSIBLY HIDING ALL THE ANSWERS, I'M NOT YET WILLING TO GIVE INTO THE NOTION THIS IS HOW ITS GONNA BE FOREVER, AND NEITHER WILL I EVER BE, JUST GOTTA FIND THAT DAM MAGIC CURE... :)

[happyone]

Hi,
I probably would be up for letting folk know how it goes as I can talk for fun LOL!
I'll see how it goes today and maybe post later as a sort of diary thingy.
I have to say though, at the moment, my anxiety is much less than it was 6 months ago. My everyday anx is caused by my depression and as it is more under control with drugs at the mo, it is not so prevalent.
I am interested (and hoping) to see if it can help me with the bigger anx's that I am able to avoid, or function with.
Namely, my anx of losing people.
My anx of what people think of me.
My anx in relationships (some of that could be quite embarrassing:blush: , I might not share that!)
My anx at my ability (or lack of) as a parent
My anx at social functions/ gatherings
My anx at dealing with 'male' practitioners
and my anx about death, not especially mine.

What a recipe eh? LOL

Thanks for the wishes of luck honeybee!

happyone
xx

[honeybee]

happyone, i'd love to hear how you get on, i think counsilling can be fantastic if you suffer from depression, but as with all forms of therapy it's hard to find a good one sometimes, its easy to get put off if you have a bad experiance with one, i started counsilling but didn't get much from it because i did a lot of talking but didn't really get anything back other than the impression she thought i was just a silly little girl, at one point she was the one crying when listening to my story, thought it was meant to be the other way around??? :shrug: anyway, i dont really feel the need to delve into my past but maybe that is what needs to be done, anyway, i wish you lotsa luck for today and really hope you're get what you're looking for out of it..

[Breatheon]

Hi

This is all very interesting and is a topic which came up during my CBT sessions recently, it is amazing how much you can recall when you really think about it.

I remembered when I must have been about 5 years old I was having some chewing gum and was told that I shouldn't run when I had it in my mouth in case I swallowed it and choked. Well of course being me I did this and swallowed it and I remember rushing about for the next hour at least saying "I'm going to die, I'm going to die!" the whole time.

And to be honest that is how the anxiety has been ever since, any tiny sensation makes me think that it is going to kill me and my visits to the GP etc are really just an older version of me saying "I'm going to die!" The heart palpitations become heart disease, the dizziness becomes a brain tumour, etc etc.

I remember another time for some reason I was talking to my dad about breathing and about how we breathe through the windpipe and he said that the diameter of the windpipe was about the size of a piece of mince. Guess what we had for dinner that night? Bloody mince!! I remember taking about 2 hours to eat it for fear of it blocking my windpipe.

The anxiety sensations (I've been told to call them sensations and not symtoms) often seem to come from nowhere and certainly the most recent lot I've had are like this, but when you start to try and trace them back you can make some progress.

I think often they can be connected with something we've heard or been told when we are young which gets stored away somewhere only to reappear at an inconvenient time!!

Hope this helps, Chris

[Phill2]

I was told by my counsellor that it's no one thing that causes it but rather a build up of things over the years until it just gets too much.
She said the typical anx sufferer goes through life taking things in their stride until BAM it hits.
I've read the same in Bev Aisbetts book Living With IT which I highly recommend.
Phill:shades: