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

[LittleLionMan]

The eating thing is incredibly significant. At this point I would even suggest having a couple of meal replacement shakes and an evening meal. Anything that's quick and easy to get the calories in. You can worry about the actual nutrition of your diet later.

I'm not sure I see the value in the schedule she has given you as (to me) you are the type of person who might self analyse if you 'fail' the tasks laid out for you. I'm just putting that out there as something that you might want to make a decision rather than be dictated to.

From everything you've said, my anxiety was at least as bad, if not a lot worse than yours (no, really). I never took medication and it's not 99% gone, so don't worry about having to take it. I knew all along it was not the route I wanted to go down.

And if you feel that I'm being flippant about how you feel, it's deliberate. It's the attitude that you need to learn about your anxiety too.

And once again Pulisa is right. One of the biggest issues here is the amount of time YOU are spending completely focused on anxiety. The only possible outcome of monitoring or assessing how your anxiety is, is additional anxiety. There is no immediate process to reverse this, but at least be mindful about the amount of time you spent hyper aware. Tell yourself it's ok to feel like crap and watch some TV at the same time.

I was considering shakes, but I ate quite well yesterday, so hoping I can continue that.

I'm purposely not being hard on myself with the schedule, I'm just seeing it as an ideal, not a set in stone stick to beat myself with, like I told her there was no way I would be able to eat first thing.

Going for my run in a minute, so hopefully that perks me up to have a bit of breakfast and it will go from there.

Seeing the symptoms and horrible feelings as insignificant really is the key isn't it. Something I think everyone struggles with. I've been trying to bring the other things in my life into play, but finding that hard as well, because nothing is enjoyable when you have to tolerate anxiety whilst doing them.

[ankietyjoe]

Seeing the symptoms and horrible feelings as insignificant really is the key isn't it. Something I think everyone struggles with. I've been trying to bring the other things in my life into play, but finding that hard as well, because nothing is enjoyable when you have to tolerate anxiety whilst doing them.

I'm not sure that insignificant is the absolute best term, but ultimately yes.

The entire point of this thread for me is to get you in a place mentally that takes most people a year or two to get to when left to their own devices.

Your reactions to anxiety are completely normal, and par for the course. It's very common for people to absolutely catastrophise what they are feeling and for them to 'know' that nobody else understands. It's also normal for people to try everything to evade, run or avoid anxiety, but that is absolutely the wrong thing to do and paradoxically can only make it worse.

The quicker we can get you to the acceptance phase, the better. It still might take you a month or two to get there, but to be able to avoid the normal anxiety life cycle at the start is the goal here, I feel.

[LittleLionMan]

I can feel myself doing that a tad, quite instinctively now. I've just been doing an urgent job for work, and my throat tightened, mind wandered, and I acknowledged it, but didn't really react and carried on with my work.

The biggest thought problem I seem to have at the minute is that my mind goes to evaluating the day / how long do I have to cope / how many hours until I can go to sleep/ how bad will I be all day / when will I panic / how bad will it be... etc.
Dealing with things as they come is one thing, but looking ahead, it obviously feels very overwhelming, so I have to stop engaging with them thoughts. I'm trying to apply the fortune teller idea to it, that my mind doesn't know how I will be, so there's no point guessing.

[ankietyjoe]

I'm going to bring you back to the idea of meditation.


Put simply, the whole point of meditation is to practice bringing your mind back to the object of your focus when your mind wanders (and it will wander). The point isn't succeeding, the point is practicing.

For example, you focus on your breathing. Within 1.3 seconds your mind will wander. You don't judge it, you don't attach a negative or positive feeling to the wander, you just slowly re-focus on your breathing. 2.6 seconds later your mind wanders again....you re-focus. 0.5 seconds.....you get the picture.

The power this practice has to negate exactly what you are describing here cannot be overestimated. Without going into great detail, mindfulness (a close relative of meditation) could be incorporated into your morning run for example. You can take this mental practice with you wherever you go.

I would highly recommend a book by Mark Williams called Mindfulness.

[LittleLionMan]

I've got that book actually, I also tried to do the BeMindful online course, but didn't finish it as I found it very difficult, and blamed it at the time for making me worse. I have noticed that my mind wanders around when I run and I do actually practice bring my attention back to the rhythm of the run.

I get scared of things like mindfullness (or anything for that matter) will make me worse, and then I'll have to cope with that increase in anxiety symptoms.
Everything seems to be a calculation in my mind, scared to do anything that might 'rock the boat', so I end up doing nothing but sitting and panicking, as everything seems scary. The one thing that I have going for me is that I always sleep well now!

[ankietyjoe]

Mindfulness can't make it worse in itself, neither can mediation. If you react badly and have an increased sense of panic then it's most likely because you expect to, that's how anxiety works. But the irony is that the thing you believe is making you worse is the thing that helps you ignore the ingrained negative feedback loops you're stuck in.

Again, you are what you think.....for the most part.

[LittleLionMan]

Yeah, that's what my psychologist said.
It like every time I panic after doing something, my mind lays down a red flag and I never want to do it again, and I get boxed in.

[LittleLionMan]

I get the same after I've eaten. Most of my high anxiety times (like this horrible one now!) come after I've eaten. No idea why.

[ankietyjoe]

As we've said before, avoiding things that cause you anxiety (or to be more precise, things that you attach an anxious reaction to) serve no purpose.

There is a line to be drawn however. It's still best to avoid coffee, drugs, horror movies and anything else that will artificially stimulate the adrenals or fear response. It's ok to avoid those if you choose. It's a bad idea to avoid eating, shopping, 'normal' activities, exercise, sex etc etc though. As you say, you box yourself into a corner that becomes increasingly difficult to get out of. At my worst I could barely go outside. Even taking the bins out (down a 20ft alleyway) would cause me horrendous anxiety.

It's best to try and normalise those things now.

In terms of eating. I suspect it's because you're eating a lot of high carbohydrate junk foods. Try having something like egg and bacon for lunch and see if it's still the same. Even now if I eat a high carb lunch my heart rate will bang away for a couple of hours and I'll feel the shakes. I just don't pay attention to it any more. But in reality you're at the stage now where farting could cause a panic attack so just ride it out.

This laying down of red flags (as you call it) is incredibly common, and sadly one of the most self defeating things you can do. We all do it, because we feel it's the right thing to do at the time, but it's really not.

[LittleLionMan]

I've just panicked now after trying to figure all this stuff out. That's massively what I have to stop. It ends up taking your mind back through all the bad times you've had, and there is only ever going to be one outcome!

I used to get the same when I worked in my office, I would be fine up until break time, eat, and then my anxiety would start up.

I don't go much further myself at the minute.

You're right though, that you can assign anxiety to everything if you want to, you're always going to be doing something when you panic, I just find it hard to accept the randomness of it all.