clicking on the FM station that plays 6 hours of blues on both Saturday and Sunday night. Maybe dancing around a little, maybe playing along on the electric guitar with some of it. Taking a hot aroma bath while listening. lighting aroma diffuser with a calming scent.
Stretching, applying A534 to stiff muscles, yoga poses, jaw and neck exercises.
Gain a sense of accomplishment by tidying up a bit.
Hi Josie,
My primary diagnosis is Social Anxiety. I have addressed many of the symptoms over the years, gaining some comfort being in front of an audience. Eating in front of others, writing in front of others used to be a problem but I worked on overcoming those too.
Triggers now are around being faced with critical scrutiny, dealing with aggressive people, authority figures, interacting in social situations. My symptoms are perspiration, raised temperature, heart and breathing restriction, and disassociation in worse cases. I've avoided having full blown panic attacks by quickly exiting situations that have caused me anxiety.
I have had periods in the worst of my social anxiety where I maintained extended lengths of complete isolation. I have a belief that I can't defend my personal boundaries in interactions with others. I don't like being pushed to experience my feelings and most recently believe much of the negative symptoms is a result of being inexperienced at expressing feelings.
I look forward to working through goal setting work in your program.
critical scrutiny. dysfunctional group dynamics. belligerent authority figures. arrogant people. angry people. those with excessively strong opinions.
situations where I feel incompetent. situations where I think I've made a bad decision. being placed in a position of having to make a tough decision. having to be assertive. having to ask someone to change their behaviour. expressing feelings especially with someone I don't know or an person with an attitude of superiority.
sometimes when my anxiety thinking is not obvious, I use a reverse approach. What thoughts would lead me to feel the way I do? By working backwards from my symptoms, I can sometimes uncover what subconsious thinking might be driving the anxiety.
I often connect my reluctance to be social to my parental leaning towards my own isolation. I believe I was severely beaten as an infant for inviting another child into the apartment to play when I was left alone all day. Much of my childhood, I was left alone while parents went out to work or whatever. I was restricted from having people visit and was "grounded" through early teenhood.
As an only child, I didn't gain much experience with complex interactions with others, I've had to learn much later in life than many others.
I had agreed to come into the office over the holiday period to cover for all the people that were at home with family etc. As it turned out, I was worn out from attending so many social functions and essentially missed showing up for work on a number of days without notifying any of the supervisors.
I was scared to death of the consequences of my actions and it took all my courage to drag myself into work on the Monday morning after the holiday. I haven't been directly addressed about it, other than some subtle hints in conversation with other staff. It appears that someone went into the payroll system and entered my missed days as legitimate holidays. I guess I picked a good time to be immature and irresponsible, there seemed to be some forgiveness given that not much was happening over the christmas period.
The success is that I could easily have skipped coming in on the monday and initiated a chain of fear that I couldn't overcome. By facing it ASAP, I got back into the rhythm of getting to work, regardless of what awaited me there. An important peice of healing because my disability was linked to not making it to work when I imagined it was going to be a tough day.
My experience with all the medications I've been given is that they only provide subtle improvement, just enough that I still need to apply as many other techniques as possible to really manage things. I need to challenge thoughts, eat well, exercise, reach out in addition to simply taking medication. They have not be a cure all panacea for me and I will continue to press on for additional improvement.
Yes your story gives great hope. My friend has been advised that she needs to wean off of a certain medication. She is terrified and wants them to provide a replacement. By implementing a variety of techniques and strategies, we can improve our ability to cope.
Thank you for the message of hope.
It may not be exactly by the program but sometimes I just have to have the inner conversation that although my first instinct is often to give up easily at the first sign that something will be beyond my capability, I remind myself that I always feel this way and have overcome seemingly overwhelming odds before. In fact I have to get past the initial fear to the point that I'm performing the action before it triggers my exit routine, and stay continuingly diligent as I resist the exit message while I try to gain greater confidence in the activity that has me worried that I'm not capable.
I am struggling to keep the discipline of a journal. Right now I need a concrete structure to follow. I had one job coach that gave me a list of questions to answer each day and that really helped but although I know I'd like to keep an emotions log, I haven't found a structure/format that I can stick to in practice.
Do you have a journalling format that is not too onerous yet provides guidance?
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