Free at last

[Carnation]

Love your new Avatar Davit.

Just found this Thread and enjoyed reading it.
I too, like Terry says, enjoy Gardening. It has done wonders for my Anxiety. I use it as one of my tools if I am highly stressed and it always calms me down.
I am in the process of growing a large variety of Tomatoes.
I have set up an area in the shed against the window and watching the progress is very exciting.
I normally stick to plants, but this is a new challenge for me.
The Earth is very special to me, I feel a rapport with it. It's creating and I've always been that way inclined. I like to Landscape and make features and create colour and pleasing things to the eye. I love trees and I told Terry a while back that apparently 'Tree Hugging' is very therapeutic for Mental illness.

I found CBT very helpful. Some of it came from my Therapist and the rest I applied myself from gathering info to other Member's help on here.
I have managed to improve from 10% to 80% in 1 year, with occasional blips that I now understand to be part of the recovery.

I have also suffered from Health Anxiety, which is truly unbearable.
If you have this as well it throws the GAD into oblivion and hinders the recovery time.

Panic Attacks have to be the worse in my opinion. And the 'Fear' of the Panic Attack, well, it's like a vicious circle. I just got so fed-up with it in the end, I just thought, "Oh heck, I'm just going to do what I want to do and If I suffer, I suffer. I can't carry on living like this". And it is the 'Fight' that got me through. Mind you, it wasn't easy

Yes, I am an OCD sufferer. Was like this before Anxiety came in to my life.
Don't know why, does anybody? And different degrees as well.
I like order and I have to be in control of a situation. Not a control freak, but have to prepared in any sort of situation, especially in emergency situations.
I have an issue with cleanliness, mainly the general public. Restaurants, cafes, toilets, how food is prepared, stored and cooked. Things in wrong places like books in the wrong category or alphabet order. I have a problem with symmetrical and items off balance. Precision is a big one for me. Everything in the kitchen cupboards is labels to the front and in their categories. The list is endless and it annoys me know end.
I am trying to break some of these habits, which I believe to be a help with the Anxiety.

One of biggest helps, has been my Cat. They say that animals are great for people with Anxiety. I love most animals and would have loved your Farm Animals Davit.

Anyway, before I drivel on any longer, pleased to have found your post and if I can be of any help, I am here.

[Davit]

At fifteen years of age an annoyed teacher told a bored student he was wasting his time in school instead of bumping him up and giving him a challenge. So I dropped out. For fifty hard earned dollars I bought two trap line cabins from a trapper whose girl friend had been shot and killed by a previous boy friend. They weren't much but i would go on the weekend with friends and we would fish mostly. Funny thing is we could get marijuana but not beer. Too young. One weekend we were to meet there but I was the only one to show up.
Turns out some one sold them beer. I was terrified. I'd never spent a night alone. Next day same thing but the fear wasn't so bad. Well I wasn't working and I wasn't in school so I went home, got my dog and groceries and moved there. I almost froze the first winter.
I got a job unloading barges in the summer and EI in the winter. Used to be called UIC then. In summer I lived in the bunk house. When they replaced the deck on the docks I bought the 4x8s and built a new cabin in the next inlet. I towed the decking around by boat. This cabin was solid and the roof insulated. That winter I was warm. I had six dogs and a sled and toboggan. In summer I had a job. I became quite the recluse but never had any panic. Life was good. The mine town was closing and I wasn't going to have a job anymore and there was a woman. Isn't there always. We packed up, gave away all but one of the dogs and headed to BC. Two provinces west. No work there but there was in Alberta. I inherited enough money to buy land in BC. but worked in Alberta. Four years later we decided if one of us could get work we would move. Jennie got work and I got part time doing what I could. The life proved too hard for Jennie, she moved to town. I'm still here but living on a better piece of land. My first panic attack happened after an operation. The anesthetic was still in my system but anne (just a friend) thought we should have beer with lunch. Anne liked her beer. Wow, back to ER. thought I was having a heart attack. I was checked out and given Ativan and a prescription. I wish they had never said it was a panic attack, that set the wheels in motion and for ten years life went down hill. It took a year to get off the Ativan and a few years of study and therapy to end the panic attacks and anxiety. That was five years ago. And I have been doing research those last five years. If I wasn't old and happy I would go back to school.

I used to be obsessive but I wouldn't call it OCD, I liked things in their place I liked my house clean. One day I noticed this perfectly straight rows and perfect spacing didn't look as nice as mother nature so I quit doing that. I'm more random now and when things are straight and properly spaced it is because that is how it is supposed to be. It isn't obsessive anymore. Even today when a spider landed on me in the car and I got a little too close to the ditch I didn't panic.
CBT was the outline, or pattern but what I did was specific to my needs within the guidelines of CBT. Stacking is mine based on a principle off the internet, Want to verses have to is mine also based on necessity. Oranges and apples is mine but is also a fact my Therapist is familiar with. Not sure if it is on the net. Some of what she taught me is not. Like the panic triangle. it is not but there are similar things. Seratonin information and memory and how the brain works are on the internet and very interesting all be it a bit technical.
80% panic free is considered recovered, I'm sure people can do better. I'm better than 99%. I will have night mares, but never a panic attack again. Eating too late can make me a bit edgy. I'd very much like to see everyone recover. So many people have said the cat in the bowl is how panic fear feels to them. Not my cat, mine are both siamese colour.

[MyNameIsTerry]

The more you post, Davit, the more I feel like I'm reading a book or watching a film!

Mines more, teachers were just there to earn money, went to college, started drinking on the town, started working, kep drinking!, worked myself too hard and ended up like this. Work was mainly office work at various levels, all boring corporate BS in the rat race that meant nothing and never changed anything.

Is the panic triangle the same as the panic cycle diagrams?

[Davit]

The panic triangle has three corners. It should have five, but two are actions between. First corner is observation thought or trigger in panic thoughts, second corner is memory where the answer for the first thought is stored, third corner is the reaction from memory in the second corner. Between the first and second is a subconscious survival check that decides if the first thought or observation is worth bothering with even. (back ground noise, perifferal vision etc.) So every thing you think or see is the first corner, that which is considered important goes to memory for a decision based on previous experience.That decision gives you the reaction to what you saw or thought (heard felt etc) The reaction cycles back to memory to update it or leave it alone if it is satisfactory.It also cycles back to the original thought, (first corner) to stimulate continuity of the thought or start a new one. In panic memory doesn't have a logical answer if it is a new trigger so guesses or if it is a previous trigger it uses what it did last time. The reaction then is panic which cycles back to both corners and if the answer it is using does not satisfy fight or flight it continues to go round the triangle till it gets one or it times out. Confusion comes in when memory in fear and desperation draws off associated memory looking for an answer. So instead of doing the whole three corners in a nano second subconsciously it now comes to the surface as important and is either normal panic which you change between second and third corner so it goes back to the first and second corner as not important or you give it importance here and it cycles around as a panic attack. All thought has this option between memory of a previous solution and reaction to it called choice. Core beliefs are in the second corner and dictate what it will use. I bet you could almost paint OCD on this triangle. Mindfulness would probably fit between the first and second corner to keep thoughts to a certain pattern. Attitude and perception do. Triggers are just triggers, what you do with them is what matters.
My core beliefs are all spin offs to something that happened when I was three. The trauma started a thought which my mother reinforced instead of correcting. I couldn't correct it because I had no similar situation to use for a pattern. So you can see that the first half of my life although good was a major avoidance of anything related to this trigger or it's spin offs. Any attempt to caused anxiety usually in the form of head aches. You can continue to build core beliefs for the rest of your life, especially if you are climbing the success ladder which I seldom did because there was no need do to, my personality being Orange rather than Apple. I don't know if Apples and Oranges is on the net but My therapist knows what I mean by it. And says it is a fact with people fitting in between also. My brother went the same route as you as did his wife, the difference is they were only interested in the money. Which there was a hell of a lot of. Different core beliefs. I would have not survived trying to do what they did with ease. I'm an introvert so living in a cabin with six dogs for company and transportation was an ideal peaceful life. (not six dogs in the cabin) Anxiety never showed up till I tried to leave that mold. I'm back in that mold, ( canadian spelling, mould) only without the dogs. There were farm animals instead. So i guess I will go to my grave avoiding stress because I can because I like this life.

[Davit]

[ATTACH]2319[/ATTACH

This should be the triangle in JPEG how do I open it.

[Davit]

Ah, just click on triangle jpg

[Davit]

Gone to garden. I will be limiting my time on here. Yu can still PM me or if you have my Email use it. It is real nice out today and there is much to do. Planting potatoes now.

[Sam123]

As long as you don't desert us for too long, i will allow it

[MyNameIsTerry]

As long as you don't desert us for too long, i will allow it

Crikey Miss

[Sam123]

Crikey Miss