TheGodSplinter
09-11-03, 10:40
Hi...
This question was asked of me, one day, during my time on the Health Anxiety Support Site and I felt that the basic concepts in my reply may be applicable to the anxiety/panic state/s often found in sufferers of all types of anxiety - not just Health Anxiety or Hypochondria.
This may turn out to be the largest post ever placed here and I apologise if its size causes any inconvenience. I sincerely hope that somebody is able to stay the course of reading this gigantic posting and that they try these therapies, and for long enough to make it all happen for them, as I made it happen for me, around 3 years ago!
"I want to live as though I am living. Why do so many of us do the opposite?"
I would like to thank the member who asked me this very well placed question, in a very recent PM...it's a great way to start a posting, so I have started a posting with it.
This is a question that is so big...people often forget that it's there to ask, at all.
If I were to dig really deep, inside my conscience?
I'd have to say that, bottom line, I don't fully know.
But, anybody who knows me, well enough, will tell you that I never take "don't know" for an answer...not even from myself!
So...
Anxiety and Panic Attack Syndrome are not easily shifted, as if anybody, here, needed me to say that.
I think it's important to remember that it could just as easily have been ANYTHING in your life that you developed an obsession with, and fear of.
Obviously, the body is an ideal area of operation for this debilitating thing, because we are always living inside it and we always, therefore, notice every little movement, sound, twitch, jerk, jump, lump, bump, blemish and temperature change, etc..
Anxiety comes up as an old prehistoric survival reflex, the second reflex kicks in as the brain switches, immediately to, "LOCATE SOMETHING THAT THIS PANIC IS CAUSED BY, RIGHT NOW!" ...and we are living inside a body.
We notice ONE...possibly just ONE...thing about our bodies that we either think was not there before or we get angry about our inability to remember the likelihood of it having been there, before. We desperately try to remember if it was, this bump, lump, spot, discolouration, or eye-pupil size difference, etc.. We just can't. Mental and emotional tiredness adds to our difficulties, and trouble with remembering, or just surviving, and BANG...we are now suffering from one of a series of possible neuroses, called "Anxiety Neurosis" or "Panic Attack Syndrome."
And so lives each of us.
It's easy to figure out the way in- the attention was gripped, at a weak time, at a nervously high time, by negative thoughts about something harmless in the body, or something seemingly terminally harmful in that body.
That was the way in for almost everybody...the imagination began to write fiction that it had nobody's consent to do!
It's not easy to either figure out a good way out, or, once figured, to apply the route-details to get us back out.
There can be little doubt that the following make differences...
1. CREATIVITY
Right now, the HA sufferer is witnessing HER OWN imagination working against HER OWN mind, about HER OWN body. This is an ongoing thing and it can get only worse, if allowed to persist. Something MUST BE DONE to re-direct that imagination (it will always find something, because that is one of its natural drives) and make it work elsewhere.
This involves DELIBERATE ENTRY INTO ACTIVITIES IN EVERY ART-FORM THAT YOU COULD POSSIBLY GET INTO!
Dance, painting, sketching, photography, model making, sculpture, pottery, interior decorating, woodworking, etc.. Without this being done, the imagination is unable to find a new place to dwell. Without this being done, therefore, you will continue to watch yourself betrayed, time after time, by this very item of mind that is supposed to be there to pleasure you and take you [b]OUT
This question was asked of me, one day, during my time on the Health Anxiety Support Site and I felt that the basic concepts in my reply may be applicable to the anxiety/panic state/s often found in sufferers of all types of anxiety - not just Health Anxiety or Hypochondria.
This may turn out to be the largest post ever placed here and I apologise if its size causes any inconvenience. I sincerely hope that somebody is able to stay the course of reading this gigantic posting and that they try these therapies, and for long enough to make it all happen for them, as I made it happen for me, around 3 years ago!
"I want to live as though I am living. Why do so many of us do the opposite?"
I would like to thank the member who asked me this very well placed question, in a very recent PM...it's a great way to start a posting, so I have started a posting with it.
This is a question that is so big...people often forget that it's there to ask, at all.
If I were to dig really deep, inside my conscience?
I'd have to say that, bottom line, I don't fully know.
But, anybody who knows me, well enough, will tell you that I never take "don't know" for an answer...not even from myself!
So...
Anxiety and Panic Attack Syndrome are not easily shifted, as if anybody, here, needed me to say that.
I think it's important to remember that it could just as easily have been ANYTHING in your life that you developed an obsession with, and fear of.
Obviously, the body is an ideal area of operation for this debilitating thing, because we are always living inside it and we always, therefore, notice every little movement, sound, twitch, jerk, jump, lump, bump, blemish and temperature change, etc..
Anxiety comes up as an old prehistoric survival reflex, the second reflex kicks in as the brain switches, immediately to, "LOCATE SOMETHING THAT THIS PANIC IS CAUSED BY, RIGHT NOW!" ...and we are living inside a body.
We notice ONE...possibly just ONE...thing about our bodies that we either think was not there before or we get angry about our inability to remember the likelihood of it having been there, before. We desperately try to remember if it was, this bump, lump, spot, discolouration, or eye-pupil size difference, etc.. We just can't. Mental and emotional tiredness adds to our difficulties, and trouble with remembering, or just surviving, and BANG...we are now suffering from one of a series of possible neuroses, called "Anxiety Neurosis" or "Panic Attack Syndrome."
And so lives each of us.
It's easy to figure out the way in- the attention was gripped, at a weak time, at a nervously high time, by negative thoughts about something harmless in the body, or something seemingly terminally harmful in that body.
That was the way in for almost everybody...the imagination began to write fiction that it had nobody's consent to do!
It's not easy to either figure out a good way out, or, once figured, to apply the route-details to get us back out.
There can be little doubt that the following make differences...
1. CREATIVITY
Right now, the HA sufferer is witnessing HER OWN imagination working against HER OWN mind, about HER OWN body. This is an ongoing thing and it can get only worse, if allowed to persist. Something MUST BE DONE to re-direct that imagination (it will always find something, because that is one of its natural drives) and make it work elsewhere.
This involves DELIBERATE ENTRY INTO ACTIVITIES IN EVERY ART-FORM THAT YOU COULD POSSIBLY GET INTO!
Dance, painting, sketching, photography, model making, sculpture, pottery, interior decorating, woodworking, etc.. Without this being done, the imagination is unable to find a new place to dwell. Without this being done, therefore, you will continue to watch yourself betrayed, time after time, by this very item of mind that is supposed to be there to pleasure you and take you [b]OUT