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Thread: Me again

  1. #11
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    Re: Me again

    Hi

    This is just a courtesy reply to let you know that your thread was merged with another of your threads.

    Please when posting on similar topics add it onto your previous post rather than starting a new one.


    It is nothing personal it is just to make it easier for people to follow your story and to give you advice as a whole.
    __________________
    Nicola

    “Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.” - Natalie Babbitt

    Please help keep NMP running and donate to the running costs: http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/donate




  2. #12
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    Mar 2016
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    Re: Chest tightness.

    Quote Originally Posted by xleax View Post
    Hey, rough time for everyone atm I know, my symptom atm is kind of like chest tightness and shoulder tightness I am very tensed and I also know its anxiety, I was just wondering if anyone has this and they feel asif it makes them feel short of breath and how to get rid of it?
    I am very stressed. Had a neg covid test 3 days ago, but the week prior to that I've been really bad someone tried stealing my car twice, so I was worried about burglars aswell. Stayed out for a night I was that bad.. so haven't actually been sleeping the best since I just hate this symptom so much cos it makes me very paranoid im short of breath because of covid. :( its awful.
    Your GP told you there's nothing to worry about and you were reassured all for what, 24 hours? Now you're back with a new thread (now merged with the other one) and obvious ANXIETY symptoms.

    HA is awful, what's worse is not doing anything to help yourself.

    Fear= stress hormones= bloating= chest tightness. It's a very physical ANXIETY symptom and the more you fuel your anxiety with fearful thoughts, the tighter your chest will feel.

    You get rid of this by breathing properly and not catastrophising.

    You can keep going as you are, or you can do something to break the cycle, so maybe start by accepting the advice from your GP?
    __________________
    A thought is harmless unless we believe it.

  3. #13
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    Apr 2018
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    82

    Re: Me again

    Thank you for the reply. I agree I need to get a grip now,I just find it so hard.

    I do feel relaxed today apart from really cold feet which I'm just taking as a anxiety symptom.

    My therapy finished last week I had 12 sessions I found they really helped me :(

  4. #14
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    Mar 2016
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    Re: Me again

    Quote Originally Posted by xleax View Post

    My therapy finished last week I had 12 sessions I found they really helped me :(
    Except that the recent posts suggest otherwise?

    (I always have cold feet btw - and hands. Have done since I was a little girl. Wear some warm socks.)

    How did therapy help you?
    __________________
    A thought is harmless unless we believe it.

  5. #15
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    Apr 2018
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    82

    Re: Me again

    Im going to try accept its anxiety, and that its ok to have anxiety.

    Been reading a book and writing a journal to write my thoughts down which I'm finding somewhat helpful.

    Therapy.. I don't know if it was just because it was someone to talk to.. and she used to explain alot which helped me believe it to be just anxiety, some techniques im still using but finding they don't help as much now.

    I feel like since therapy has stopped I feel like I've just been let back out alone again to be able to handle the world on my own which im finding difficult.

    My biggest fear is death.. dying from anything (not just covid).
    How can I help this fear, it honestly has taken over 10 years of my life im 29 next month and still feel I did after my very first panic attack at 17 of not worse.

  6. #16
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    Mar 2016
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    Re: Me again

    Quote Originally Posted by xleax View Post
    Im going to try accept its anxiety, and that its ok to have anxiety.
    More than OK - it's necessary to feel anxiety because it keeps us from doing really stupid things which could kill us..

    HA is anxiety out of control, and we have to regain control, and part of that is to remind ourselves that these are just thoughts, not reality, because it's generally the case that people cope far better with what's real than what's imagined when it comes to illness..

    Been reading a book and writing a journal to write my thoughts down which I'm finding somewhat helpful.
    Which book?

    Therapy.. I don't know if it was just because it was someone to talk to.. and she used to explain alot which helped me believe it to be just anxiety, some techniques im still using but finding they don't help as much now.
    So, maybe you used those sessions to talk about your fears - as people do on here? But the information via the therapist didn't actually go in?

    I feel like since therapy has stopped I feel like I've just been let back out alone again to be able to handle the world on my own which im finding difficult.
    Because you didn't achieve the point of therapy - which is to be able to use techniques in order to control your HA. So your therapy sessions have ended and you're back where you were.

    My biggest fear is death.. dying from anything (not just covid).
    I got over my fear of death after I had a paranormal experience where my deceased grandmother visited me. It doesn't matter who believes me. The fact is that it removed my fear of death. However, when I became a mother, HA came back with a fear of dying and leaving my kids. My worst bout of HA was after I'd had my youngest son, who is autistic, and after my mother died. I was terrified that I would become ill and leave him, and that was a much stronger fear than anything I had as a child..

    Death is a cert Xleax, and it's as natural as being born. I am 100% confident that death, itself, is just a change of energy, and what's essentially 'us' (consciousness) doesn't die. Scientists are generally in agreement now that consciousness does survive clinical death - there is scientific proof and a mountain of evidence. The 'dying brain theory' etc just doesn't explain how a brain that has been starved of oxygen for a long period of time (and has zero activity) can produce such lucid and profound experiences where people are able to describe what was happening to them at the time they were supposed to be 'dead'. The only logical explanation is that consciousness survives death. How does that make you feel? Better? Or worse? Maybe it's something you could look further into..

    When it comes to dying? My perspective changed when I thought about outliving my children. What parent would want that? Also, we live in a time where end of life care is excellent, and if death is sudden - there is minimal, if any, suffering. I know my son will be OK if something happens to me, and I don't want to waste the precious time I do have with him - worrying about things that might never happen to me - aside death - which obviously will happen one day.

    I keep saying this, but it really is the core of all health anxiety. We need to make peace with death and dying- of one day not being here as we are now - and it will be OK. I can't control when I will die, but it probably won't be today. I have today to love my son and be with him. To listen to music. To read. To live as best I can. To nag Mr Batty about leaving his pants on the floor. HA stole that from me, and for a long time, but I'm back in control, and to live, I know I have to accept the 'potential' of illness and the certainty of death.

    You're 29. You're still very young. You can absolutely turn this around. I did it at 47!

    and still feel I did after my very first panic attack at 17 of not worse.
    I had my first panic attack aged 5, not that I understood what was happening to me. I didn't understand it until decades later. I still have them now, but they are occasional, rather than numerous times a day as was the case when I joined this forum in 2016.

    Try and reframe how you think of death. It will be uncomfortable at first, triggering even, but this is the fear to face. As with all fears, the more we hide from them, the bigger the fear becomes and is distorted, like shadows.

    At my worst with HA - the night before the colonoscopy which would show the cancer I was 100% certain I had - I just gave it all up. I surrendered all the fear that was in me. It was the calmest I'd felt in years, and I just accepted whatever was coming my way. Of course, I didn't have cancer, but something had shifted inside my mind. That was it for me. Time to turn round and face the motherfungler that'd wrecked my life for so long.

    You can do this.
    __________________
    A thought is harmless unless we believe it.

  7. #17
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    Apr 2018
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    82

    Re: Me again

    Thank you Nora B. Thankfully whenever I see you have written back to me I feel reassured. Your very good at doing that.

    My book is called At Last A Life. He beat anxiety/ panic but today im thinking maybe I should switch to a book whats not reminding me about anxiety? I find i do this alot so then everything I do is about anxiety.

    Im going to ring my GP regarding therapy again maybe. They did say I could return if I felt I needed to.

    Death.. I love how you've explained this. Its helped alot.

    Today I have been having the chest tight/heaviness.. making myself breath and instead of going into full blown panic mode I came on here and re read some of my posts and now I know I've felt this many of times and I ain't dead yet from it or just stopped breathing.

    I feel I need to accept more of my anxiety rather then run away or wish it away which is what I do alot?

    I hope I can too recover fully for my son more so.. I feel sad for him.

  8. #18
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    Mar 2016
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    Re: Me again

    Quote Originally Posted by xleax View Post
    My book is called At Last A Life. He beat anxiety/ panic but today im thinking maybe I should switch to a book whats not reminding me about anxiety? I find i do this alot so then everything I do is about anxiety.
    I read a LOT of books on anxiety when I had my breakdown, and it did help to know that people could be as ill as I was and get themselves better, but more importantly I needed to know how to get better. It was like, 'I'm in the shit here. It's hell. What do I have to do to get out of this?'
    When I came on here in 2016, I also looked at the success stories. Not a lot of people do that. You only have to look at the viewing figures at any time, and symptoms are usually where the most people are and there are only ever a few people looking at how other people overcame their problems. I knew that symptom dumping wasn't the way out of it. It's like trying to put a plaster on a wound that needs stitches and any reassurance is short-lived - as you probably know. I learned about exposure therapy and exposed myself to all the things that were triggering me, like ambulance lights and sirens, hospital programmes etc. I binge watched 24 Hours in A & E until I got bored instead of triggered. Now, I see an ambulance and I don't feel my heart start to race. Those blue lights, which can be soooo offensive to the eyeballs (Thank you Gary King) don't trigger me anymore. While HA isn't technically a phobia - there is a connection, and effective treatment is basically the same (exposure) and we overcome phobias by gradually exposing ourselves to what it is we fear. If we have a spider phobia we don't overcome it by pretending that spiders don't exist, because they do exist, and sooner or later we will be watching telly when one of the big buggers does the fandango across the living room ceiling. Same with death. We can pretend it won't happen to us, and avoid all things 'death', but the fear stays with us and we become triggered at the slightest hint of illness and death - which is basically all around us. The thing with HA is, unless the core fear (death and dying) is faced, accepted and no longer feared - HA will only ever go into hibernation - ready to kick us up the bum at any time..

    If we can reframe death, it changes everything..

    I hope this is 'in order' to use this an example given the current situation but it's the most recent one I can come up with..

    On the news last night there was a very emotional gentleman who'd just lost his wife. The idea was to get people to see how serious this COVID situation is, and rightly so. I said to my husband - 'I feel enormously sad for this gentleman and his children, but for the lady who passed - there's something to be said for already being 'elsewhere' (sedated) when she passed over. With what I 'know' of consciousness after physical death - I am comforted that this lady is now free of all her ailments and is reunited with all those people she's loved and lost. That's what death means to me. There will always be sadness for those left behind because the price of loving someone is loss and grief.

    Im going to ring my GP regarding therapy again maybe. They did say I could return if I felt I needed to.
    Great. Yes, do that. Don't be afraid to ask for help, and as many times as you need to. Your GP's job is to help you.

    Death.. I love how you've explained this. Its helped alot.
    Maybe have a look at some NDE's? A good book to start is Imagine Heaven by John Burke. Prior warning, it is written by a bloke who is (now) a Christian - so there is a religious aspect to it, but I don't personally mind that and I don't think you have to be religious to enjoy this book. I've read a LOT of books on NDEs and some of them can get very in depth - which I personally love - but as a starter this is a very well written, easy-to-read book which includes a lot of NDEs from doctors, surgeons, pilots etc - in other words, people who are deemed more 'credible' because they have everything to lose by telling their 'amazing' stories. Or read Eban Alexander's book. He is a neurosurgeon who 100% believed that 'no brain activity' means 'no consciousness' - until his own brain shut down completely and he had an NDE which totally obliterated what he'd been taught in med school!
    Bottom line with NDEs: people die and come back to say that, actually, death isn't anything to fear at all. It's the very opposite to what we fear. I don't know about you, but I find that comforting..

    The thought of an 'afterlife' isn't everybody's cup of tea. Some people are quite looking forward to not existing at all after a lifetime's crap and that's ok too. What's important is that we understand now that consciousness is most likely separate from the body (brain). What it means is that death might turn out to be the last pleasant experience we ever have before there's nothing else to comprehend. Or, as I think, we do live on in a different form of energy - which would explain why I got a visit from my grandmother 7 years after her death.

    Today I have been having the chest tight/heaviness.. making myself breath and instead of going into full blown panic mode I came on here and re read some of my posts and now I know I've felt this many of times and I ain't dead yet from it or just stopped breathing.
    This is a very common anxiety symptom. It's unpleasant, but that's it. It's not harmful, and it will ease when you stop focusing on it.

    I hope I can too recover fully for my son more so.. I feel sad for him.
    That's what did it for me - my son. I couldn't put him (or myself) through any more HA crap.

    Children are a lot more resilient than you think. I was worried that my son might remember me as the anxiety case I was, but what he remembers are those teddy bear picnics he had with me when I was in bed, and all those movies we watched. He did think I'd had a heart attack, and I only found that out recently, when in reality it was a panic attack (I ended up in A&E) but I've set him right on that. But, in the main, he has a different perspective to me, and I'm sure your son will surprise you too, but, yes, do this for this for him - if not for yourself.
    __________________
    A thought is harmless unless we believe it.

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