so tierd of fighting this

[tricia56]

hi im so tierd of fighting this anxiety , ive had it now for over 8yrs, ive tried cbt twice I don't take meds im petriefied of taking them, i do relaxation and breathing everday and try distraction but it never seems to get any better ive been trying to do the exeptance bit for a long time now ,im always over analizing every thought and feeling and dwell on them. the last four days have been so bad and ive been thinking im going mad and this cant be anxiety.and yesterday sat down to eat xmas dinner with my family at the table and i had to make out that i wanted to watch queens speech just so i can go in to the living room and eat my dinner because i felt abit funny and really anxiouse .i felt so bad about about myself for doing that and kept thinking why cant i be normal and surely anxiety cant make you feel this way, sorry for posting this as just don't know what else to do or am i doing everything wrong to overcome this anxiety or am just not really helping myself im just so tierd of trying to overcome it .maybe this is my problem and im trying to hard i just don't know anymore.

[Dingle]

Tricia
Can identify completely please don't give up.
I've only suffered for 10 months but I've tried all the therapies you have and I know what you mean they don't seem to work do they.
Then again even though it's been the same for me this Christmas when all the family were round I wonder deep down whether I have in fact made some improvement.
Suffering as we do it's possible I suppose that sometimes we forget any progress we have made however small
There are times when like you I feel I can't go on it just gets to much particularly in the morning it's beyond awful.
However life is precious and as a new member to this board I find some comfort in our all being in it together. Don't give in.
Of all the therapies I have tried I found the breathing,meditation and muscle relaxation excersises the most helpful.it is hard but we've got to battle on after all it's only anxiety. It's the one illness that we can cure ourselves its not terminal and we are going to be around a long time
Sorry it's such a rambling post but I understand just how you feel

[PanchoGoz]

WHY DO YOU STILL THINK RELAXATION WILL HELP WHY
I'm sorry but I have told you more than once that relaxation, breathing and distraction do not cure anxiety, they only give you temporary relief and are a way of pushing it away. Did you take on anything from your CBT? Are you challenging your thought patterns and not giving them power?
You are not getting better because you are not doing ANYTHING to make yourself better. You ask if you are doing everything wrong, well you pretty much are. It' more beneficial to not do one single relaxation exercise and say fck it, anxiety can do what it likes to me, I'm going to live my life. Because that is possible and that is how you beat anxiety.
I told you to look at the links in my signiture. Do they tell you to do relaxation and breathing all day? No because they teach you to overcome your thought patterns and let the anxious thinking go but you are getting pulled back into it every time and just letting it win by making it more than it is.
This time I am being very blunt, I know that, and I will not be replying again unless I see you have taken something on board.
Only then will we be able to help you move forward and push you on with reassurance.

This isn't trying to be one of those nasty posts that people write to have a go at someone for not accepting help - You are always grateful for what you recieve I know that - but this is to try one last time to drill into you that you can beat your anxiety if you will let yourself move forward.
Some reminders.

relaxation will make you feel better for a short while, but does not change your thinking.
It's your thinking that is the problem, and learning to spot when you are catastrophising and changing that stops it.
Anxiety symptoms feel horrible but are totaly harmless and is just caused by adrenaline.
If you stop fuelling the adrenaline the symptoms gradally die down.
Most of the time, you can just float past these sensations and pretend they are not there.
If you gave anxiety no attention whatsoever it would go pretty quickly
By pretending you are fine, however unnatural that sounds, you are retraining your limbic system to relax
By fighting anxiety you are giving it power, but letting it come through and smiling, it goes
You are playing the game. There is no way to win the game, except not to play.
Simple things like holding your head up high, engaging mindfully in everyday tasks and staying occupied help straight away
This is only something you create. You have the power to change this. Start now.

Read Nothing Works and download CBT4PANIC again and read with passion and vigor.

[Fishmanpa]

Also, I want to differentiate the word "cured" with the word "healed".

It's my opinion/belief that one is never "cured" of a mental illness. I equate it to my cancer. Am I cured? No. Am I healed? Yes.

To be cured is to return to the way you were before the illness. To be healed is to be free of symptoms. When you're healed, you have the symptoms under control and the disease itself in "remission" so to speak. Anxiety and other mental illnesses are a lot like cancer in that it can return. One must do the right things to keep the beast away. And just like cancer, it can rear it's ugly head no matter how hard you work at the healing.

The bottom line is that we have to continue the fight in one way or another. With my cancer, I will have side effects that remind me of my illness for the rest of my life. But as time goes on, the reminders will become quieter and quieter, eventually becoming silent enough as not to remind us of the battle, much in the way our hearts heal from heartbreak.

So do not tire of fighting. You've already fought the war and now, each little blip is but a skirmish or a bout of hand to hand combat as opposed to an all out offense. Find new weapons to use, whether it's therapy, CBT, medication or combinations thereof. Learn techniques to control the enemy advance and prevent it from breaking through the lines as often. Eventually there will be a truce and cease fire.

And please understand, that by fighting I don't mean ignoring nor denying your anxiety. What Poncho is saying is correct. It's about accepting and then doing things that challenge yourself to change your thought patterns. It's the same with me. I know what I've been through and I also know what I have to do to make the best of what my "new normal" is going to be.

Positive thoughts

[tricia56]

pancho I didnt say that relaxation cures anxiety I know it doesn't and it just helps relieve it for a short and I do it everyday and yes I do say fck you anxiety im not going to let u beat me and yes I do do the thought challenge and I go out for walks etc and I yes I do let the anxiety wash over me and try and stay calm while its happening so am really helping myself and I have took your advice on board ,its only when I get so over welmed with anxiety everything goes out the window , so I have decided to come off this site as feel your comments to me have made very upset and the way you speak to me as if im a child I thought this site was for support and advice not for someone to be so harsh on someone who is really strugling

[PanchoGoz]

I agree with your comments about the word "cured" fishmanpa, it's a trap I fall into easily, anxiety does change us as people
Tricia! Right! You are doing other things to what you say you are doing which is good - we can continue to help you so leaving the site really would not be a good idea.
I am really not speaking to you like a child and I'm sorry if you feel that way, I am giving you advice that only an adult can handle and the only reason I am being like this is because I want you to be free from this, I really do and I feel you are too scared to make that brave leap. If I thought you were like a helpless child, I would not try to help you, and there are people I don't help anymore for this reason. I too have struggled, just as much as you but I no longer need reassurance because the knowlege is in me.
Lets help more - say you are feeling really anxious, you have lots of weird symptoms, what do you do? Do you relax your body and smile or do you run away? It's little things like this that change everything. Are you comfortable that all your symptoms are just anxiety? If you feel you can't do something, say go to a meal due to your anxiety, what runs through your head? Does it match what actually happens? What CBT techniques are you putting into practise? Do you find yourself getting into arguments or do you let them float away? You don't have to reply to these, just think about them. There's nothing new with anxiety, you have seen all this before and you can tell yourself, I have been here before, this is nothing new, it's just anxiety. Talk it down. Tell it how insignificant it is and how it needs no more attention.
Thought box: Tell it you will deal with it at 8 o clock Make a note of it and think of it at 8 o clock, then you can deal with it appropriately or you may find it seems totally unimportant compared to what it felt like earlier. This helps you sift through what is important or not. Sometimes you will find the same thing comes up every day even though you have dealt with it before. This is one you can tell yourself is just an anxious obsession and you can toss it aside more and more easily.
I hope you can try that technique if you have not already because it is the one I felt was most useful along with mindfulness.

[loreen]

Tricia

Please don't leave.

I haven't answered you before, but I can understand how upset you are. When we feel anxious it is like the whole world is against us. What this site does is help us when we need it most.

I understand everything you have written,and I want to tell you to stay on board as there are lots of people who may not have answered,but can give you a sensitive reply

Loreen xx

[tricia56]

sorry pancho for my last post I do know you only try and help people and maybe I got upset because they say you have to be cruel to be kind to help some one so i am sorry for saying what i did , ill try and answer your questions the best i can and be honest with them , firstly when i am very anxiouse most times i do run away but some times i do find the courage and say fck you and just let it be there and carry one with wat im doing , the thought challenge i find very hard to do as even tho when i had the cbt the therapist only gave me sheet of paper to write my thoughts down when im anxiouse and told me to write my challenging thoughts down next to it which i did but she never read wat i had put so i used to come away from the session wondering if i challenged my thoughts the right way or not, because she never told me if i was doing it the right way, if i have to go out anyware especialy shopping or have to go to social gatherings i get very anxiouse and think wat if i get dizzy or passout or die so a lot of the time i ovoid going most of the time. but a few times i have gone out and done it even tho i felt awful and put into practice my coping skills like doing my breathing tell myself so wat if go dizzy or passout ill be fine afterwards and if i die i wont know about it. hope ive try to explain properly what you have asked so you can get a insight of wat im like

[PanchoGoz]

Thank you Tricia for that insight, I do get in trouble regularly for writing harsh posts and in life for saying what I think to people bluntly and end up with people crying or running away, but that seems to be how I am and it affects some worse than others!
It sounds like you've had an undertrained therapist, something we see too often here, but that doesn't matter, most of the CBT me and others have learnt is just from here and the world around us and the links I keep going on about in my signiture.
So first, you mostly do the most tempting option of running away. This can be called an anxiety urge. Other anxiety urges are
wanting to go to a safe place to "work things out"
looking for exits and toilets in a public place
wanting distraction or to fiddle with something
wanting to go out "equipped" with stuff like lucky charms, plastic bag for vomiting, anxiety books...
The need to do rituals such as relaxation and deep breathing (most relative to you)
Anxiety urges are futile and end up securing the anxiety and making it worse. You can train yourself to look out for anxiety urges - recognise that pulling feeling. Memorise them and test it by doing something that scares you and be on the lookout for that "pull" to do something like go home or get your phone out. Recognise it and then disobey it, keep distracted with mind games if you have to, and watch it go down. WHen you see it through like that, it feels really good after.
If you are panicing, number your anxiety to see where it is at. It's easy to think we have really high anxiety all the time when actually it's only a 4 or 5. This helps to rationalise us.
You should reward yourself for being able to say fck you anxiety by doing something fun, smiling and, I dunno, do something naughty! Spontineity is something us sufferers forget about.
Challenging thoughts is much easier than you think. Recognise it first - eg "I'm going to pass out" and then just give it no attention. Isn't that the best way of challenging? To recognise it and put it down instead of getting into an argument with it?
Next - misconceptions. I can assure you you will not pass out, die etc. These are things you are not very good with (sorry) but you have started doing exactly the right thing by saying so what if I die etc. You can also look back on all the other times you have nearly died and show yourself how wrong that is.
Don't let the breathing trick you - you can begin to rely on exercises or rituals as a form of comfort, your breathing sorts itself out on your own if you just relax your belly. Don't let yourself think it is important to do these exerciese or you will be stuck when you don't do them. You will get to a point where you don't have to do them. They are just an anxiety urge. Hope some of that is helpful.

[tricia56]

thk you so very much pancho u have made me realise i haven't been taking the right approach with the anxiety , that's why i haven't got anyware wth it, so if im right in wat ur saying thing best way is to just let it be there and there is no need to do my breathing constantly or always ask for reassurance like have been doing and just say yeah i feel anxiouse so wat nothing is going to happen to me and loosen my attitude towards it they are just thoughts and feelings and cant harm me, and start to believe in myself. so once again thankyou

---------- Post added at 18:19 ---------- Previous post was at 18:15 ----------

thk you everyone for your kind support and advice you have helped me alot