After 5 years, the things that have finally worked for me
Hi guys, just wanted to give you a list of very simple (in theory, anyway) things that have worked for me. After 5 years of panic disorder and 3 of severe agrophobia, these are the tried and tested methods I've used to start (albeit slowly) getting my life back on track.
Sorry about the length, I just wanted to share everything in the hope it would help someone.
1)Acceptance
I know, I know, you've heard it before. Seems so impossible, right? I suffer from migraines and if any of you have had them, you'll know how awful they are. I've taken them in the middle of a busy city centre, at work and at parties. But you know what? I have never lived my life in fear of having another one. I have never let them stop me from going about my day to day life.
If you had a cold, you wouldn't panic every time you sneezed or not go out for "fear" of needing to blow your nose, would you?
Same with PD. You have panic disorder. It comes with a set of symptoms which, as terrible as they feel, will not cause you any lasting harm. That is all. Accept it. Treat it like you'd treat a cold. Treat the fear/diziness etc the same way you'd treat a sneeze - nothing more than a symptom of your illness.
2) Treat attacks as a singular feeling.
You know the drill: you're sitting there, then the next thing, you're dizzy so you start worrying about fainting. You're tingly so you start worrying about a stroke. Your sister's dog looks at you funny so you start worrying about what a complete nutjob you must be for even the Labrador on the floor to notice it
STOP! You are having anxiety. However many symptoms come with it, they are all related to your anxiety. Stop obssessively focusing on each individual one and tell yourself "Ok, I'm feeling anxious right now. That is all, anxious."
Start training your mind to understand that what you are experiencing is an unpleasant FEELING and nothing more. Nothing you think is going to happen will.
Rather than going over and over each symptom in your head, Accept the anxiety is one singular feeling of fear and know that it will pass.
3) Understand your fight or flight response.
For whatever irritating reason, our fight or flight responses seem to misfire. Read up on the way the human brain and body works when it this mode. Everything we experience has a perfectly reasonable explanation. And I mean everything.
Knowledge is power.
4) Get healthy but don't cling to alleged miracle cures
Yoga is great. So is a good diet and cutting down on caffine and nicotine. But we are so desperate for a "fix" that we can sometimes end up buying everything for chinese herbs to supplements whose names we can't even pronounce - then we get so scared of not taking these things, we panic when we inevitably run out of the money to buy them.
You CAN cure yourself. Yes, be healthy, but YOU are the solution, not foul smelling conncoctions that make your kitchen stink.
5) When anxious, do the opposite of what you want to do
This one's the toughie. But practise - it's worth it. You want to leave wherever you are? Stay. You want to go to bed and curl up? Go for a walk. Start small, but remember, panic is a big fat liar with its pants on fire. It's like QVC - the longer you listen to it, the more you're convinced you need the garbage it's selling.
It's giving your brain bad advertising. You need to act like your own standards agency and write a complaint in the form of doing the opposite of what it tells you. Think of that walk round the block or refusal to run out of the room as ethical consummerism for your mind.
6) Set aside a daydream
From a walk on the beach to a candlelit dinner with Gerorge Clooney, have a little dream you can turn to that makes you feel contented and turn to it each time those negative thoughts creep in. And I mean the second the creep in, don't give them a chance to stay there.
7) It doesn't matter what you fear, it's the fear itself you need to face.
My biggest PA fear is that I'm going to go mad. For others it's a heart attack, for others it's fainting etc. Run over your biggest fear. Instead of telling yourself it won't happen (which it won't, but we can't seem to truly convince ourselves of that), think about if it does. Going mad? There are millions of people the world over who have had breaks from reality and gone on to lead perfectly normal, happy lives. Heart attack? With our advances in medicine, so, so much can be done. Fainting? Pfft. You won't even know it's happened till you wake up.
It doesn't matter what it is you're most scared of, the feeling the fear brings is the same for everyone. Face the fear, not the thing you think causes it.
8) Laugh.
Often. You deserve it.
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