Notes of hope: Gradual recovery from anxiety

[NoPoet]

Hi all, yet another "yaay I'm winning" post about anxiety, but this one is hopefully more realistic and it will demonstrate a definite improvement.

I started CBT about 4 months ago. At the time I was a nervous wreck, I don't even want to describe it to be honest. The therapy took time to track down my real problems but when we did the overwhelming anxiety backed down with surprising speed, and it rarely gets as bad these days.

Unfortunately the anxiety was replaced with feelings of sorrowwhich in turn gave way to feelings of deep, existential fear, which turned out to be the real problem. The fear seems to relate to my inability to reassure myself or cope with life's problems, which in turn lead to helpessness and more fear. Even this is now starting to break up a bit and I was able to recently go to Scotland for 4 days with my girlfriend.

Speaking of breaking up, I had horrible relationship anxiety for months and when we finally split up after we got back to England, I found myself not as devastated or depressed as I feared I might; if anything, my confidence has climbed to its highest ever. I've actually started noticing female attention from people I work with. I've been on evenings out, I've been out on my own a couple of times, I've patched things up with an old friend who's in the same boat as me and we have started our lives over again.

I've been using self-help mp3s which I made myself. I also constantly repeat positive, self-affirming statements to myself when things get bad. It has started working and I can feel a new confidence inside myself which has never been there before - like a light that's been brought into a hidden cave for the first time, showing me that things in there aren't as scary as I thought.

I hope this goes to prove that recovery - REAL recovery - can happen, although it takes a lot of time and requires almost more courage than you think you've got. Remember what Claire Weekes said: recovery lies in the people, places and experiences you fear.

Good luck!

[Ingenious]

Excellent post PsychoPoet - thank you.

[NoPoet]

Hi, thanks for the reply Ingenious. I've got an update about my anxiety which will hopefully be inspirational to some.

I have only had 2 or 3 CBT sessions since splitting up with my ex in April. In the meantime I have been working fairly constantly on morale and motivation. I no longer feel so much like crud when I have to get up early for work.

Over the last 2 months I have re-worked my fiction website, re-written a lot of old stories and started work on several new ones. I've also nearly finished two large and complex levels for a computer game project I'm working on.

My confidence in myself has improved to the point where I can look people in the eye and make them back down when things get nasty. My writing has improved so massively it's like I'm a different man. I feel like I've evolved several years' worth of ability in the space of several months. My style has become epic, aggressive and exciting where before it was restrained and clever, and my dialogue, characterisation and attention to detail have come on in leaps and bounds. Reading my Citalopram Survival Guide which was mostly written in 2009-2010, I am shocked how far I've come since then.

I won a holiday to the Algarve for selling so many Sony Xperia P and U phones. I've been back in the UK for two weeks now. That this is the first time I've mentioned it on NMP should be a testament to how far I've come. The first day was very hard but I persevered and made rather a name for myself with my colleagues.

Finally I'm getting out of the house more by taking my brother and his mate for a day out followed by a pub dinner. We're now going out twice a week instead of once as we all enjoy it so much. My brother has schizophrenia, and I'm trying to show him (and myself) that the world is not such a scary place.

I am now having problems with stress, aggression and frustration. The release of the latest Crapple i-can't-afford-Phone is hammering us at work with the usual complaints, moans and threats to leave our network which you always seem to get with Apple phones but never with other phones: consumerism at its worst.

I look forward to beating these problems and taking another step closer to recovery. There is a lot of work to do, it's not going to be easy, but these days I am almost over-eager for a challenge.

[merlotsmum]

I loved reading your post Psycho-Poet - really, really inspiring as is your Survival Guide.

Hope this continues for you and you get all the happiness you deserve

[OliviaD]

Fantastic thread really

Also, it's nice that you're helping your brother and having fun with him.

[NoPoet]

Thanks everyone

One thing I forgot to mention. As the anxiety and depression clear up, they leave huge holes in my life. I've been anxious for so long I literally do not know how to live without it. Don't worry though, I am not being negative. This stuff will fall into place. Never thought I'd need therapy to help me live without anxiety - I always thought of therapy as something that gets rid of the illness, and living a normal life comes naturally. Living normally is NOT coming naturally. This is all part of the coming challenge. For now I'm doing ok considering I was 17 out of 21 on the anxiety scale 8 months ago and now I am probably around 8.

[loopylu86]

A very inspiring post! I have just had my first CBT session and surprised myself with how much I had to say. I have already seen a reduction in my anxiety...The fact alone that I had to travel to a city to have the session was a giant step for me and I did go alone. I have been feeling abit down since but I will take that of the anxiety anyday. I wonder why this is?

[Belleblue]

My confidence in myself has improved to the point where I can look people in the eye and make them back down when things get nasty. My writing has improved so massively it's like I'm a different man. I feel like I've evolved several years' worth of ability in the space of several months. My style has become epic, aggressive and exciting where before it was restrained and clever, and my dialogue, characterisation and attention to detail have come on in leaps and bounds. Reading my Citalopram Survival Guide which was mostly written in 2009-2010, I am shocked how far I've come since then.

Hi Poet - good to know that you are doing so well
I fully understand that you have done a lot of work on yourself, but I wanted to ask you out of curiosity really, how much do you think the mirtazapine has contributed to this new attitude? It's just that your post reminds me of very much of someone I knew who was on seroxat for a long time and he described his style on that in much the same way you have. He felt braver and more combative.

All the best.
Belle x

[NoPoet]

Hi everyone, thanks!

Belle - I'm not sure how much is me and how much is the medication. It's tempting to say this is all the meds talking and I still experience anxiety at the thought of coming off them. However, this overlooks the ridiculous amount of hard work I've put in.

I only started to notice the benefits of mirt after returning from a holiday to Scotland in April. I'd been on mirt 30mg for 3-4 months by that point with no real benefits beyond improved sleep and revived appetite.

The holiday represented the breaking of a mental brick wall - I never really travelled anywhere before that, the very idea filled me with fear - and I have simply gone from strength to strength since I came back.

I still have blips but I know how to break them and I didn't know this before. Therefore I am still having the same type of blips for the same reason but they now last like a day instead of 2 weeks like they used to on mirt and cit.

You've got to understand I consistenly put hours of hard work each week into understanding my symptoms and developing counter-measures, which have gradually built my confidence and provided a launchpad to getting better. I was a wreck eight months ago. Now I feel like a man.

My therapist is extraordinarily good and her advice and input has shaved years off my recovery, not just months as I originally thought. While Mirtazapine has had an impact, I highly doubt I'd have come this far without the CBT and the self-help.

Finally, having come so far with so much left to do, I now believe (and my therapist concurs) that I have been much worse affected than the average anxiety sufferer. My anxiety has branched into OCD, health anxiety and depression to the point where it took my therapist (a registered and highly qualified psychotherapist) seven sessions to correctly diagnose me and it's taken months upon months to get me level. I'm going to make a separate post about this.

EDIT: I am not trying to make out I'm totally better, I have simply rebuilt my foundations and am finding that I am capable of dealing with blips. There are still plenty of black clouds on the horizon. I now believe I'm ready to face them without excessive fear.

[Belleblue]

Thanks for that very interesting reply Poet. I think a good and insightful therapist who really knows their stuff will do far more good than any medication in the long run. The medication can be very important too of course because people with anxiety/depression problems can get very run down both mentally and physically and thus find it almost impossible to do the necessary work which will enable them to get better.

Incidentally the friend I mentioned who spent a lot of time on seroxat, also did a lot of good therapy. He says he learned a great deal from both. The seroxat helped to show him how he could live in the world "if he wasn't so afraid". Both these things helped him break the vicious circle of unhelpful behaviour patterns.

Thanks for coming on and sharing the progress you've made. It's really important that people do this as it gives others hope.


All the best to you!
Belle xx