pd
28-12-10, 20:18
Warning - big long essay type post!
I've been doing a fair bit of introspection on this subject recently, mostly because I want to understand the way that I think, in the hope that I can change the way that I think. This is what I've come up with. I thought I'd share it to see what other people's thoughts were, and to see if anyone felt the same.
I fear having something seriously wrong with my health. I fear being unwell. It's not so much that I fear dying, it's that I fear dying RIGHT NOW. I'm going to die one day, which is a fact that I think I've accepted, but the thought of dying suddenly and leaving 'unfinished business' scares the crap out of me.
I don't want to die before I've really had a chance to live. I want to live my life to the fullest, and I want to see a lot more of the world before I have to leave it.
So far, I've spent my entire life in education. I'm in the final year of my undergraduate degree, and I have at least three and a half years of PhD research ahead of me before I reach where I want to be. I don't want to die before I get there. I don't want to have been working my whole life towards an academic career that I'll never actually get a chance to have.
I have a very negative outlook. I don't believe in luck, but I still say that I have very bad luck. It always seems with me that if something can go wrong, it will. That may well be self-fulfilling prophecy, since I am so negative about everything. I pick every achievement apart. I always could have done better. I am my own harshest critic.
I am now so close to my goals that it is easy to see them slipping out of my hands, just out of reach. I can see them, but there is still a long, hard, slog in the way before I get there. I will have to work very hard over the coming months and years. I believe that my health anxiety is a way of subconciously displacing the fear that I'm simply not good enough to do what I wish to do.
If I spend all of my time worrying instead of studying, and then fail my exams, then I can validate that failure to myself in a way that I would be unable to had I spent all my time studying. In some crazy way, I think my HA fears are trying to protect me.
Changing my outlook seems key to cracking this. I need to be positive. I need to believe that I'm good enough to do the job I want to do, health anxiety or no health anxiety. I need to analyse every negative thought, work out why I thought it, work out where it came from and give myself a reason not to believe it. I need to analyse every strange bodily sensation. Is that *really* pain in my chest? Is that *really* a numb, tingly feeling in my face? Usually, the answer is no, or there is a rational explanation for the sensation. I know, for example, that I suffer from costochondritis, which causes (completely harmless) chest pain. I know that I am incredibly tense and have poor posture, which cause back, neck and shoulder pain. I need to give myself a positive response to every negative thing that I think about myself and my situation.
I will change what I can, and learn to live with, and respond rationally to, what I can't.
I am going to get better this coming year.
I've been doing a fair bit of introspection on this subject recently, mostly because I want to understand the way that I think, in the hope that I can change the way that I think. This is what I've come up with. I thought I'd share it to see what other people's thoughts were, and to see if anyone felt the same.
I fear having something seriously wrong with my health. I fear being unwell. It's not so much that I fear dying, it's that I fear dying RIGHT NOW. I'm going to die one day, which is a fact that I think I've accepted, but the thought of dying suddenly and leaving 'unfinished business' scares the crap out of me.
I don't want to die before I've really had a chance to live. I want to live my life to the fullest, and I want to see a lot more of the world before I have to leave it.
So far, I've spent my entire life in education. I'm in the final year of my undergraduate degree, and I have at least three and a half years of PhD research ahead of me before I reach where I want to be. I don't want to die before I get there. I don't want to have been working my whole life towards an academic career that I'll never actually get a chance to have.
I have a very negative outlook. I don't believe in luck, but I still say that I have very bad luck. It always seems with me that if something can go wrong, it will. That may well be self-fulfilling prophecy, since I am so negative about everything. I pick every achievement apart. I always could have done better. I am my own harshest critic.
I am now so close to my goals that it is easy to see them slipping out of my hands, just out of reach. I can see them, but there is still a long, hard, slog in the way before I get there. I will have to work very hard over the coming months and years. I believe that my health anxiety is a way of subconciously displacing the fear that I'm simply not good enough to do what I wish to do.
If I spend all of my time worrying instead of studying, and then fail my exams, then I can validate that failure to myself in a way that I would be unable to had I spent all my time studying. In some crazy way, I think my HA fears are trying to protect me.
Changing my outlook seems key to cracking this. I need to be positive. I need to believe that I'm good enough to do the job I want to do, health anxiety or no health anxiety. I need to analyse every negative thought, work out why I thought it, work out where it came from and give myself a reason not to believe it. I need to analyse every strange bodily sensation. Is that *really* pain in my chest? Is that *really* a numb, tingly feeling in my face? Usually, the answer is no, or there is a rational explanation for the sensation. I know, for example, that I suffer from costochondritis, which causes (completely harmless) chest pain. I know that I am incredibly tense and have poor posture, which cause back, neck and shoulder pain. I need to give myself a positive response to every negative thing that I think about myself and my situation.
I will change what I can, and learn to live with, and respond rationally to, what I can't.
I am going to get better this coming year.