Anxiety "trap"

[aquarian]

I'd be very grateful if anyone can suggest the best course of treatment for me, because I'm at my wits' end. I feel trapped and exhausted by my anxiety, which has become increasingly obsessional.

The regular trigger for my anxiety is any mechanical or electronic breakdown at home -- or just the prospect of one. I continually dwell on memories of very unpleasant feelings that I've had when facing these in the past, even if the outcome was fine. My brain frantically searches for ways to avoid repetitions in the future but, of course, it isn't possible to avoid all potential setbacks, and I don't believe that I can alter my response, so I just end up feeling even more anxious, vulnerable and despairing about my situation.

Ironically, I'm a professional engineer, so my fears about technology aren't unfounded. Indeed, I probably have too much understanding of technical pitfalls, problems and worst-case scenarios.

I've always had perfectionist tendencies, but I seem to have become much more obsessive lately. I now feel compelled to carry out certain rituals (virus scan the computer, make backups etc.) on a precise schedule to try to avoid "trouble", even if these conflict with other things that I'd like to do. I've even returned from holiday early because I've known that software updates are due!

Most recently, I've been feeling tired and run down from this recurring cycle of worry and obsessive actions, and I'm despairing at my inability to see a way out of this prison of anxiety which is partly self-constructed.

I've had some counselling and CBT in the past, but although these helped me to understand better what's going on, I don't seem to have taken them on-board well enough to reduce my underlying anxiety. Indeed, I'm confused about whether it's the symptoms of anxiety or another underlying cause that I should be addressing.

Please do let me know if you have any ideas on how I might tackle this.

Many thanks for reading this far!

-- aquarian

[Bill]

They often say ignorance is bliss and this is why. When we know Too much and have an intelligent mind like yourself but also suffer from a lack of confidence, our minds will worry about all the worst things that can happen.

Obsessive nature is about being in "control" so we keep "safe". It makes us walk down a very narrow path because we won't allow ourselves to take risk. This means that every time we feel we're being forced off our path, we feel tense and anxious because we're beyond our boundaries of safety. We never allow ourselves to be "de-sensitised" from risk.

This narrow path can control our lives and can be exhausting but the only way to break free from its grip is to allow ourselves to take risk to prove to our own minds that it was safe to do so. In this way, we let go and become more relaxed about life.

An example would be perhaps wiring up a plug. The temptation would be to unscrew everything After you've wired it up just in case you've done something wrong. The lack of confidence in your own ability forces you to do this to keep safe. However, there is nothing wrong in your ability if you've wired up plugs countless times before so it would be safe not to re-check and once you've plugged it in and it works ok, that's the only proof you need that it was safe to leave.

It's the same with intrusive thoughts and OCD. Often we'll be doing something and have a bad intrusive thought that makes us feel we have to repeat whatever it was we were doing so that we keep safe. The only way to overcome it is to resist the temptation because gradually the anxiety will ease and then we prove to ourselves it was just a thought that was safe to ignore.

I think I wrote a thread called "Our hills" or something like that and it explains more on this subject.

Anyway, it's all about resisting what it feels anxiety is pushing on us because it acts like a bully forcing us to do what it wants so that we can't live the lives we want. Also though, we have to expose ourselves to what is irrational risk to break free. In other words, if you feel your worry and anxiety is forcing you to do something but deep down you know it's irrational, do the opposite and that way you'll break free.

If you wish to share more I'll see what more I can suggest but it Is possible to overcome it.

I've come back to add the thread I was thinking of "Our hills" in case it was of any help...

Our hills
This is something I was taught which I've found has helped me overcome fears.

Imagine you are walking along without a care in the world tackling every obstacle that stands in your way. However, with each obstacle you tackle, a small part sticks to your body until one day the weight becomes too much and you fall over.

You find it too much to pick yourself up as the weight is too heavy and it makes you breathless to attempt it but somehow you stagger back to your feet still carrying the weight that made you fall.

However, instead of the path still flat as before, you now see a hill but you now find it near impossible to climb it. However, at the top of a hill is a tree full of fruit and you are starving so you have to find a way to climb the hill.

You already feel too anxious after your fall but you have no choice than to climb this hill. With every step you take with your heavy load, you become more and more breathless but eventually you reach the top and feed.

However, your body is now exhausted and when you look down the other side of the hill you feel terrified but the fear of staying where you are is greater because you feel so breathless. Therefore, despite your exhaustion, you decide to run down the other side of the hill as fast as you can.

You reach the bottom and feel safer but you want to collapse because the ordeal has been too much to bear. After a while your body has relaxed but you still carry your heavy weight. You begin to feel hungry again but after the ordeal that you've just suffered, you feel you just can't face climbing the next hill for more food.

However, you know that if you don't attempt the climb you'll starve so once again you go through the same ordeal and lay exhausted once more after running down the next hill.

One day though you meet someone else on your path and together you climb the next hill. You sit together at the top of the hill, talking, eating and enjoying the view. During this time you feel the urge to run down the hill again so with this person you both leave.

However, for some reason the next hill doesn't feel so difficult to climb and you feel you're carrying less weight. You climb it together and you find you're able to stay a little longer before having to run back down again.

Gradually, the weight becomes much lighter and the fear of climbing the next hill becomes less. You find that you're able to stay at the top of the hill, even without the support of this person you met. Instead of running down the hill, you take a slow walk as you're enjoying the scenery.

The moral of the story -

The heavy weight is stress that gradually builds up on us without realising it until we break down under the weight which then causes panics every time we try to pick ourselves up again.

Imagine a graph with tall peaks and deep troughs. When we attempt to do something we're afraid of, our anxiety "peaks" which frightens us so we "run away" from our fear which then causes a "trough" because we feel so low from the fear and the effort it took. These create our hills.

If though we stay at the top of the hill, the anxiety Always gradually declines. As it declines our confidence builds, the fear subsides and gradually the heavy weight (stress) falls off so that our hills become easier to climb until once more they become a flat path.

Once the path becomes flat again, we learn that if we tackle too many obstacles, our weight will become too much again which will make us liable to fall again so as a result we learn our limits and how not to take on too much.

As for the person we meet after our fall - the cbt therapist.

I've copied the following post as well. Although it's about OCD, I think you may also find it helpful...

What actually happens to our thinking patterns is this...

Imagine a rollarcoaster. The peaks are high anxiety. The troughs are after you performed an OCD ritual to ease the high anxiety. This is how OCD takes hold because we never allow ourselves time to become de-sensitised to our fears.

The normal pattern should be to allow ourselves to feel the fear by resisting our compulsions to perform a ritual. In this way, the high anxiety "gradually" goes down with time. The next time we the think this frightening thought, it becomes easier to resist a ritual because over time we gradually realise it's safe to think this thought because nothing will happen because it's just a thought created by our fears like having a nightmare while we're awake.

One way of working through OCD is by making up a list of fears and rituals. Grade each one from 1 to 10. The thoughts that create least anxiety you grade as 1 with the thoughts that create extreme anxiety as 10. What you then do is target one of the grade 1's by pushing yourself to resist performing a ritual. Once you achieve this goal on a regular basis, you then move to your grade 2's and so on. By the time you reach your grade 10's, they will feel more like grade 1's. The reason for this is because with each grade you overcome, your confidence builds because you prove to yourself it's safe not to perform a ritual because they are just thoughts. By the time you reach your grade 10 you'll have proved to yourself they're just really the same as your grade 1's. Thoughts created by fear. In this way, you then overcome your OCD.

[aquarian]

A massive thank you to Bill for taking the time to set things out so clearly and comprehensively for me.

I'm still in the process of assimilating these ideas and working out how they apply to me. I've read through Bill's posting a couple of times already and I'm going to do it again as my mood varies, to see what different thoughts pop up.

I think the bit that I'm going to struggle with is finding the strength to face up to these issues once more and to try again to change. I'm discouraged that I've tried before to address these problems via (costly) counselling and CBT, but without success. In the past, I've been able to find the courage to take on things that I find scary but, at the moment, all of my instincts are to hide.

As Bill has correctly surmised, lack of self-confidence is (and has always been) a big issue for me, and I wonder whether I'm just stuck with the way that I am. One of the recurring unanswered questions in my head is "How do other people manage to cope with these things that send me into a panic?". I may have more technical skills than them, but it appears that I lack something more important to get through these setbacks smoothly. Whatever this missing factor is, I don't think I've ever possessed it, so I question whether I can find it now.

Anyway... many thanks for your reply, Bill! I'll continue to contemplate it over time. It's clear to me that there's a lot of good wisdom in there -- my only doubt is whether I can find the way to harness it.

All the best.

-- aquarian

[Bill]

Aquarian,
You're very welcome. I'm just glad to be of help.

"How do other people manage to cope with these things that send me into a panic?".

Before I attempt to answer your question I think we need to take a step back to discover why it might be so difficult for you and one of the main reasons might be "Perfectionism".

When we're perfectionists, we create an awful lot of stress and pressure for ourselves because we feel everything has to be "just right". In a way, it goes back to the need to be "safe". If we're not perfect, we feel we haven't done a good job. It's good to be conscientious but perfectionism makes us over-conscientious so that we don't allow ourselves to make mistakes, even if what we feel is a mistake doesn't really matter.

I can remember once that I completed a list on a form at work but I made a mistake. Rather than just amend the mistake, I felt the need to write the whole list again because of my perfectionism. My boss saw me do this and I won't repeat what he said. Now, I realise the pressure I put on myself and that this mistake could have easily been rectified without writing the whole list again but at this time in my life I wasn't happy in my job so I also felt alot of pressure just working there.

When we feel under alot of stress, have alot of responsibilty or put alot of pressure on ourselves, these stresses will make our anxiety worse and so that the need to feel safe becomes much harder to ignore.

Perfectionism creates alot of tension because we can't relax. In fact, we won't allow ourselves to relax because keeping safe is in reality impossible.

I can remember a friend who every day straightened her curtains to be "exact". It really didn't matter if they weren't "exact" but to her it did because she was afraid that if the neighbours saw them out of line, they would think she didn't keep "control" of her family. You see, perfectionism can also be a symptom of "feeling the need to be or appear in control" which is another example of our insecurity.

Often we are insecure and sensitive people which can also mean we fear making mistakes because of our fear of criticism and ridicule.

lack of self-confidence is (and has always been) a big issue for me, and I wonder whether I'm just stuck with the way that I am.

On to another subject - "lack of confidence". How do we build our confidence. I've written many posts on this but I feel it all comes down to the same method - "practise". If we don't know how to do something, we don't feel confident but if we learn and do the same things countless times, we become confident in our own ability. This applies to whatever it is that causes us to feel panicky, even panics themselves. So, whenever you don't feel confident about something, you have to learn the right methods and techniques, and just keep practising until you feel confident. Only then do you conquer your fear.

A good example would be the football penalty taker. He steps up, he misses. He loses his confidence so what does he do? Give up or go back to practising ovr and over again so that the the next time he takes a penalty, his mindset is confident in scoring and not filled with "what if" he misses.

If we go out expecting to panic then we probably will because fear creates panic. A confident mind won't think about panics so you probably won't and ven if you did, you would have probably learnt what to do to cope with them.

Anyway, to go back to your original question, you first need to tackle the roots. When we feel panicky, it's normally a result of stress and in your case being a perfectionist will be creating alot of stress. Therefore, you must allow yourself to make mistakes so that you can take a more relaxed approach to life in general. In this way, you will avoid being sent into a panic. For instance, say to yourself, what does it Really matter if you don't do an update on the pc? You an just do it next time you use the pc. It "Can" wait. In every example such as this, ask yourself "Does it Really matter or is it just anxiety talking?" You could even ask your wife on examples where she will know and if she says it can wait then leave it. You could also ask her to help you resist your perfectionisms.

When we're a perfectionist, we'll feel very stressed which will also mean we feel very anxious when we try to resist But the anxiety Will go down Gradually on its own. If you don't resist, the anxiety drops immediately but the rollarcoaster will continue with the anxiety feeling much worse each time so it's important to allow ourselves to make what we feel are mistakes that really don't matter.

The following is an old thread which I've copied in case it's of any use to you...(See what you think on this and the above...and ask me Anything you like).

One other thing....be Patient. If you're impatient to get better, you'll just be adding more stress...

Making mistakes
I think alot of OCD is caused by perfectionism. Perfectionism makes us very intense so we feel we have to get things "just right". However, it also causes tension because we worry when it doesn't seem right which then leads to anxiety and anxious thoughts creating OCD problems.

In life though we can't always get things right. We make mistakes and it's only by making mistakes that we learn. However, consequences of mistakes can vary enormously.

How many of us feel bad when we make a mistake? How many of us feel even worse when our mistakes cause hurt to others? How many of us feel even worse still when those we've hurt rub it in that we've hurt them? How many of us then take it out on ourselves thinking we must be a bad person for making the mistake and causing hurt to someone? What if our mistake involves someone we care about? Can we forgive ourselves? I know I find it very hard.

I know I always do my best but sometimes we make mistakes due to fears so get caught in a position where avoiding hurt is unavoidable, whether the hurt is to ourselves, to others or both. Somehow though we have to learn to live with ourselves in the knowledge that we do always try our best but we are only human because otherwise regret can cause us to live in the past and prevent us moving forward.

However, I have alot of regrets and I know I could have tackled things in my past alot better but then that's being human I guess. We can't go through life without making mistakes but we can learn from them.

Those 2 big words "What If". What if I hadn't done something, what if I had etc. What's the point of going over it though if a mistke can't be changed? We can only do what we can and what we feel was right at the time, even if it means self-sacrifice for the benefit of another.

Does anyone believe in fate and destiny? What will be, will be? Sometimes I think it helps to think that way that things happen for a reason and only a long way down the line do we find out why.

There have been various things that have happened lately which have stirred up alot of emotions so I guess I'm just venting some of them. For instance I took the dog out today and he had another seizure. It was my fault. I should have known better. He's fine now by the way. Last week I wasn't well but I didn't want to let the team down. I was late but they laid into me even though I tried to explain. My wifes cpn came round today but totally ignored me Again. There's been a couple of sentimental films on which I've enjoyed but they hurt because of the memories they brought up so I turned off. There's been other things but they've only been small but I think they've snowballed. I guess all I can do is remind myself I do my Best and keep going to wherever fate leads. I feel like a ship on the sea at the winds mercy blowing me wherever it takes me.

I'm not even sure why I've written this! Was it a mistake?

[aquarian]

I'd like to thank Bill quickly for his follow-up reply. I wouldn't want him to think that I'm ignoring it or don't appreciate it -- far from it!

I'm currently being side-tracked by other issues and so I'm not getting much time on the 'net, but I've printed out this thread so that I can contemplate Bill's thoughts during quiet moments.

Thanks!

-- aquarian

[Bill]

It's fine Aquarian. Please don't feel obliged to reply. I post to try and help, and it's always nice to know if I've done any good but I don't always expect replies because I realise people have plenty of issues to cope with daily. Please don't worry about it. I'm always around if you have any problems you think I might be able to help with.