My Health Anxiety has led to Depression

[Ben1989]

After fighting and fighting I unfortunately have depression. Don’t get my wrong I used to be anxious about my health but now I’m just generally depressed. I haven’t had any physical HA symptoms for a while now.

I’m very down and I worry about my daughter. I always worry/panic and pray I never get to a serious stage. I’ve tried my hardest to avoid pills. I’ve started therapy but it’s crap. It’s just over the phone and I struggle to understand her. I come out of it more.

Any advice?

---------- Post added at 13:53 ---------- Previous post was at 13:51 ----------

Tell a lie, I haven’t tried my hardest before pills. Does meditation work? Exercise? Herbal teas etc?

[Ben1989]

Any success stories or encouraging words?

[lucymarie]

Hi Ben,

I’m sorry to hear about your situation. I too have issues with depression stemming from health anxiety. I haven’t tried medication so I can’t comment on that and my previous experience with therapy was poor, although I am currently waiting on a trial of CBT again. For me the only thing that really provides any respite is distraction although a healthy diet and exercise goes along way. That being said, this is easier said that done when your feeling awful. If you can get over the hurdle of starting, exercise really does help as it releases feel good hormones and the physical act of working out does distract you for a while. Other than that, I really like reading as you become absorbed in the book or anything that keeps your mind busy like gardening or crafts.

Hope you feel a bit better soon.

[GiantMogwai]

Any success stories or encouraging words?

If over the phone therapy is not working for you I strongly suggest face to face. Over the phone would make me feel worse.

Counselling can be a huge help to depression but it will take at least 3 or 4 sessions before you feel any relief and each session could feel fairly draining.

Ring your local service, tell them over the phone is not working for you, and ask to be on the waiting list for face to face even if you have to wait a bit longer.

---------- Post added at 19:24 ---------- Previous post was at 19:20 ----------

Exercise does help too if you are able. :)

[Ben1989]

Thanks guys. I’ve been waiting over a year and half for therapy to then get over the phone. I might pay to go private as this is the worst I’ve ever felt in my entire life

[GiantMogwai]

Thanks guys. I’ve been waiting over a year and half for therapy to then get over the phone. I might pay to go private as this is the worst I’ve ever felt in my entire life

You shouldn't have to wait that long. The typical wait in my area in London is 3 months. Are you self referring? Which organisation are you talking to in what area? A year and a half is absolutely ridiculous.

[ankietyjoe]

Meditation works. Meditation cured my anxiety, but it cured my depression faster.

Just be aware that meditation is not a quick fix, it's not a relaxation technique and it requires practice.

It took about 3 years for it to work fully for me, but I felt benefits much earlier than that. I kind of understood where it would take me in the first couple of weeks.

I would say my anxiety is 85% cured and my depression 100%.

Exercise and diet also help a great deal, particularly exercise.

[Ben1989]

You shouldn't have to wait that long. The typical wait in my area in London is 3 months. Are you self referring? Which organisation are you talking to in what area? A year and a half is absolutely ridiculous.Yep. I guess different areas of the country get different budgets? I live on the Wirral outside of Liverpool. The organisation is Inclusion Matters and due to the continued wait they seem to have gotten relief from a over the phone company


Meditation works. Meditation cured my anxiety, but it cured my depression faster.

Just be aware that meditation is not a quick fix, it's not a relaxation technique and it requires practice.

It took about 3 years for it to work fully for me, but I felt benefits much earlier than that. I kind of understood where it would take me in the first couple of weeks.

I would say my anxiety is 85% cured and my depression 100%.

Exercise and diet also help a great deal, particularly exercise.This is really good to read. My hesitation with meditation is I will be alone with my thoughts which normally isn’t good! But I’m saying that having never tried meditation.

Could you give me some recommendations? There is obviously a vast amount of meditation material on YouTube etc. Also, recommendations on getting the best out of it.

I’m unsure if I’m anxious about getting seriously depressed and scared about getting to that stage. I’m a skinny guy and my appetite has vanished which is not good. I’ve enquired privately to a psychologist organisation in Liverpool.

[ankietyjoe]

There are lots of meditation resources on Youtube, but the majority of them are 'guided' meditations with persistent new age music backings. While these may be useful in a relaxation sense (personally I find the over reverbed voices and music distracting), they have very little to do with actual meditation.

As far as being alone with your thoughts....that's actually not a bad thing. Meditation is a technique that actually allows those thoughts to occur, but reinforces the practice of just letting them be. Thoughts come and go, they're not permanent, and they have no basis in actual reality. They're most often an interpretation of how you perceive the world around you. Meditation is mostly the practice of allowing those thoughts to come and go, without judging or reacting to the thoughts. It's an extraordinarily powerful tool as you eventually become non reactive to them. The hardest lesson for me was the idea that a lot of the time, meditation feels like it's not working (this is the same for a lot of people), but it actually is. You're effectively re-writing synapses in the brain when you persistently practice not reacting to thoughts (and physical sensations for that matter).

I found this channel particularly useful. He talks in depth about why our minds get the way they do, his own story of anxiety (anxiety and depression are closely linked), his methods of meditation and more. There are some guided meditations in some of his earlier videos, and they are the best ones I have come across. Simple instruction, no music.

https://www.youtube.com/user/MingyurRinpoche/videos

Just remember that meditation often feels like it's doing nothing (he touches on that a lot), but it is. The analogy I often use is an overweight person who alters their eating habits and starts to exercise more to lose weight. On a daily basis, nothing appears to change, but then they'll look back after a year and realise that the efforts weren't wasted.

[Ben1989]

Thanks ever so much Joe.

Did you use this channel throughout? Is it structured (i.e part 1,2,3 etc)

[ankietyjoe]

I actually used a number of resources, predominantly this one though. I collated a playlist of guided meditations on Youtube, but rarely used more than half a dozen. I also read a number of books, but most of them were relatively long winded and talked a lot about Buddha, which is not relevant to my life. It's not something I need to embrace, and absolutely not required for meditation to be effective.

I eventually stopped using guided meditations (they were useful when my mind was noisy) and just used meditation timers. Often just ten minutes, sometimes twenty. A simple gong to begin and end the meditation.

These are some of the better ones I found (better for me at least!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWK8D4uNFTo&index=2&t=0s&list=PLE0yUaL_2ajOI6Cp9uTmEkZ7GthuU94Dd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JIHbs0AZQ8&index=23&t=0s&list=PLE0yUaL_2ajOI6Cp9uTmEkZ7GthuU94Dd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozvFOvNmbzs&index=25&t=0s&list=PLE0yUaL_2ajOI6Cp9uTmEkZ7GthuU94Dd

Meditation is often focused on the breathing, because breathing is constant and does not stop. It's a useful object to focus on. Other meditation techniques will have you focus on a sound or visible object too. You may find something like this useful as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb3okem4OCk&index=30&t=0s&list=PLE0yUaL_2ajOI6Cp9uTmEkZ7GthuU94Dd

Just remember again that it's the practice of re-focusing thought that makes meditation effective, not the actual success of re-focusing. If your mind wanders, it is NOT a problem, it's expected. A lot of this is explained in the older videos on the Mingur Rinpoche Youtube channel, and there are plenty of other resources online about Vipassana meditation, and why it works (science agrees a great deal).

You don't really need a structured course. It's a very simple technique, that's hard to put into practice.....like losing weight! :D

[Ben1989]

Thanks so much Joe. This is the exact thing I was hoping to look for.

Even just knowing it was successful for you has made me feel better