Increase in anxiety/panic, when I try to relax!

[LittleLionMan]

It's was the paradox that anxiety creates thought streams, and then being scared of (monitoring and analysing) my busy mind and anxious thoughts that got me in a pickle and made me start worrying about my mind. This is honestly what started this decline, and now I don't know how to get out of it, but I'm frightened of it, and it's been relentless ever since.

This was when my anxiety changed from being frightened to do stuff and go out, to being anxious 24/7. The complicated paradoxical nature of it, is too much for me to get my head around, and no therapist or psychologist has been able to explain it to me.

[LittleLionMan]

This is the closest I've found to an explanation, and even then it refers to an odd thought or two, not being constantly scared and wrapped up in anxious thought.

https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-...-just-thoughts

[ankietyjoe]

I'm not going to bother getting into a discussion about the 'why'. That article is on to something, but that's all you need to know. The place you are in now you could read that article and believe it, and then tomorrow something 'proves' the article wrong and you're back to square one.

You need to just accept it, and move on. There is no answer, and never will be. It just 'is'.

You have all the evidence that panic isn't dangerous. Act on that evidence.

[pulisa]

Panic doesn't matter. Once you make it matter you have a problem and if you focus on that problem ad infinitum it becomes an obsession.

[ankietyjoe]

Panic doesn't matter. Once you make it matter you have a problem and if you focus on that problem ad infinitum it becomes an obsession.

Quoted for genius. This is the deepest and most concise understanding of anxiety I think I've ever read.

And I think I will probably steal it for future use.

[LittleLionMan]

I'm trying to break that pattern, and have just forced myself to make and eat French toast for breakfast (first time I've been able to eat before 11 for about a month) and have delayed my run, I'm trying to break my day up a bit more so I'm not just stewing in my own thoughts, and have more of a full day, whilst trying to get more food in me.

The obsession with what's in my head, why, what it means, and what it will do to me, is the obsession, you're right, that's what I have to break somehow.

Edit. Anxious as hell now, but I think the more I eat regularly, the less this after effect from eating will become as I get used to it... hopefully! I'm focussing all my efforts on getting some weight on and getting generally healthier. I'm trying to make that my new obsession.

[LittleLionMan]

Quoted for genius. This is the deepest and most concise understanding of anxiety I think I've ever read.

And I think I will probably steal it for future use.

It pretty much sums it up perfectly doesn't it.

I suppose if just from that initial panic attack or high anxiety moment we've all had, the second you think 'I'm avoiding that at any cost', you're f*cked aren't you.

[ankietyjoe]

It pretty much sums it up perfectly doesn't it.

I suppose if just from that initial panic attack or high anxiety moment we've all had, the second you think 'I'm avoiding that at any cost', you're f*cked aren't you.

Well yes, that's it. You can't avoid it and the journey of trying to avoid it is the universal road to self destruction we all go down. That's what defines the anxiety disorder.

[LittleLionMan]

I'm practicing the non avoidance tonight.
My therapist has challenged me to do lots of 'quieter' things and just shrug off all these nonsense thoughts that I get. I'm failing so far, but hope I will get the hang of it.

[ankietyjoe]

Try to understand that using words like failing is part of the problem.

You are judging your reaction to something you cannot possibly change right now.

I've said it time and time again, your new behaviour of acceptance isn't to be judged immediately. It's practice for feeling better weeks or months down the line.

There is no success or failure here, only re-learning.


If you had a friend who was overweight who was on a diet, what would you say to them if they claimed their diet had failed because they weren't thin again after one day?