How to recover from HA when you haven't recovered from the original trigger?

[scaredpt]

Instead of posting about a symptom, I'm going to post about a bigger issue. My HA was trigger by a relative being diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer. Not necessarily a really close relative,but still see them frequently at family gatherings. It was three years of treatments, etc, before he passed, and I spent a lot of time with him at the very end. My family deals with things by pretending nothing is wrong, so even though I was disturbed and sad at the time, I couldn't act like it and I repressed it.

Right after, though, my HA kicked up and I can't get certain memories out of my mind, or think that this will happen to me-mind you, I'm a 23 year old girl with no family history of cancer, and he was an older man with almost every relative of his having cancer.

Any advice would be helpful.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I'm sorry to hear you lost a relative to cancer :flowers:

Changing thinking is important. If you didn't have certain negative beliefs & thinking styles in play around your anxiety theme, you wouldn't have it as a trigger.

So, perhaps working on how you view that period so that you don't prioritise the things that feed anxiety, like the uncertainty & sudden finality that he was impacted with, may weaken the strength of the anxiety around those memories?

Obviously there's all the usual healthy behaviours to work on too.

[Fishmanpa]

Any advice would be helpful.

The truth is, we could give you pages of advice and suggestions but in the end it comes down to you acting on it.

My advice would be to seek professional real life help. My daughter is your age and suffers from anxiety and depression. She came to me and told me what was going on. I, along with her mother, made sure she got the real life professional help she needed. Between therapy and meds and a lot of hard work, she's gotten her anxiety and depression under control. She just graduated college and got her first job in her field of study (education). She has her moments but she's learned techniques to deal with them.

There's a certain amount of comfort here knowing you're not alone in your struggles and it can be cathartic to write them out but it's not a replacement for real life help. And, having real life help makes you more accountable to helping yourself.

Positive thoughts

[scaredpt]

The truth is, we could give you pages of advice and suggestions but in the end it comes down to you acting on it.

My advice would be to seek professional real life help. My daughter is your age and suffers from anxiety and depression. She came to me and told me what was going on. I, along with her mother, made sure she got the real life professional help she needed. Between therapy and meds and a lot of hard work, she's gotten her anxiety and depression under control. She just graduated college and got her first job in her field of study (education). She has her moments but she's learned techniques to deal with them.

There's a certain amount of comfort here knowing you're not alone in your struggles and it can be cathartic to write them out but it's not a replacement for real life help. And, having real life help makes you more accountable to helping yourself.

Positive thoughts

Thanks so much, I just started CBT with a really good therapist but it's really hard, and he's having me imagine "worst case" scenarios which has been traumatizing and depressing. They are also suggesting medication which I am considering, so I am totally in treatment-its actually at a very good anxiety clinic at a university, so they have a bunch of different doctors and therapists.

[Fishmanpa]

Thanks so much, I just started CBT with a really good therapist but it's really hard, and he's having me imagine "worst case" scenarios which has been traumatizing and depressing. They are also suggesting medication which I am considering, so I am totally in treatment-its actually at a very good anxiety clinic at a university, so they have a bunch of different doctors and therapists.

Good going! That's really what you need to do as difficult as it is. My daughter takes meds and they're really helped her. Heck, I took Zoloft for 6 months along with therapy for some depression after my 1st heart attack. They were the crutch I needed until I got my feet back under me ;) Also, please discuss your participation on the forum as reassurance seeking is detrimental to your recovery. Any therapist worth their salt will tell you that ;)

Positive thoughts