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13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Social Anxiety

Hi Ashley,

Thanks for the response and encouraging words.

It is not even noon here yet and I've already bumped up against core issues and managed to navigate through a minor anxiety. I feel proud of myself that I did something different and was able to prevent a more deeper attack this AM.

Writing down the negative thoughts is really helping.

Davit's advice to come to the forum instead of turning to my partner was hard to read at first but challenged me to do something new and the whole reason for joining was because what i was doing was clearly not working. So this AM i forcd myself, it was hard, not to go to him as soon as i felt anxious. I was posting about assertivness when i had to respond to an email from someone and had to state my position they were questining me on and had to be assertive. I felt dizzy and tight chest while doing it and afterewards waiting for their response. I was able to observe my anxiety a bit more than before instead of being caught up in it. I had some nervous energy taht I used to do the dishes and focus on that while I calmed down, and I put on some music to also help me focus and calm down. I think I sent an assertive email, I didn't attack or anything, I jsut stated what I needed and what I am willing to compromise to solve the problem at hand. Regardless of the outcome of this scenario and if this person takes advantage of me or not after my being assertive, I know I did my best on this today and that is a start.

I really hope that my posts help other people because the forum has been the best thing here that I've ever found to help me with what I struggle with. I hope I contribute to that now and into the future.

You asked me 2 questions about relationships:

What did they add to my life? What did i learn from them?

I'm going to admit, my immediate response to these was "nothing good". negative core beliefs definitely. What I learned from my parents for example is that people don't follow through on things they say they will do for you. What I've been learning from friends over the last 10 years is that everyone I click with eventually moves away.

I suspect you were pushing me to cnsider the positive things I've learned from my relationships too. I have to dig a bit for that stuff. I struggle to feel that people care about me after they've disregarded my needs so many times. I realise some people have not even been aware of my needs because I didn't tell them. I wanted them to "just know", or to use their common sense in the fact that everyone has needs and if they enjoy pretending that i don't have needs, then they are not people I should be friends with. Intellectually, I realize that if I continue to believe everyone is out to hurt my feelings or ignore my needs, that all the relationships I currently hav will end because these are normal people who will not be able to stay with me in the long term if I continually make them prove they are not hurtful, mean and ill intentioned. Emotionally though, I still want that wall to stay up for self protection.

Hope that made sense. I am sure I'll read this again in the future and see if my heart can catch up to my head or vice versa because I don't want to live the rest of my life fearing everyone around me, its exhausting.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Helpful Questions For Challenging Your Anxious Thoughts

Davit,

I know what you mean about hiring people. I've had to do that for my job and I've had the continuum now from awesome helper to useless person I had to fire before the end of the contract. There was very little that was different about the directives given to my different employees but some of them of course did the job well and some did not and much of that had nothing to do with me, I told them what I needed, some of them didn't do it. I fired them. We moved on. Of course I had to take over their workload which ticked me off at the time. I know how disruptive and in the end it can cause more work to ask people to help you! For sure.

I want to believe that as I become stronger inside, I will have the skills and emotional ability to ask people for what I really need, and to ask them to be honest about whether they can give that to me or not, and remind myself that not everyone is able to be honest with themselves or others. This is just a fact of life I think. I will probably always run into some people who say they want to be my friend but they really dont. Or they want to help, like you say, and they dont.

I'm sorry to hear this person who stayed with you created chaos for a week. It reminded me that there's this one couples researcher who says in a relationshp if one bad exchange occurs you need to have 4 or 5 positive ones to balance it out. The idea being tht we need more positives to balance out one negative event with people. Sometimes we get hit with a bunch of negatives in a row from people. But not always. Here in this forum I see a lot of positives between people, and it is so great.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Social Anxiety

Hi Shari,

I ran into a few unexpectedly before we had gotten to lunch hour today. I have calmed down and succesfully addressed them best I could. Now I'm crafting for a while to de-stress. You've got me thinking about trying out candle making. seems like it would be fun. i look forward to hearing about how that goes, and if it is fun. I"ve never tried it. right now i'm cutting up peices of fabric and asking the colours to go together harmoniously wihtout being boring. so far so good...

hope the rest of your day goes well.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Social Anxiety

I have started trying only to use lead free or beeswax candles now that i know those are not toxic like other ones. i love beeswax candles and they burn a long time. i left one unattended by accident last week for several hours. oops. it was just a votive and was only half done once i realised it had been burning all day.

i had lit it to make a point of being mindful while it was lit that day, and yeah...then i forgot about it! ha ha so much for the mindfulness. although i wasn't specific with myself about being mindful of the candle and i got absorbed in sewing. so there you go...

I think we have some common interests to chat about! Normal perfume makes me nauseous so i use lots of essential oils like lavender which i adore the smell of. I grew some last year but didn't get any plants this spring and its late now. I love how much it smells when you rub your hands against the leaves. I got peppermint growing outside which is great for stomach nerves which is where I feel my anxiety. You didn't mention chamomile. I've used that for flu and pink eye infections but I don't know if thats an old wives tale or if it actually worked. it seemed to. I've never grown it from seed but I think that is how my grandmother grew it. I don't quite remember. Good luck with all the seed planting. What a great idea to do that for yourself.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Pleasant Activities

Hi Red,

I have used lots of different sewing machines in my time and would offer this (unsolicited) advice

- test them out like you have been doing. also test how to thread them and wind new bobbins. For quilting especially you'll want the bobbin winding process to be easy because you'll do it often.

- notice the volume when you are running it. Quieter is nicer when you're using it all afternoon like I get to do a bit sometimes :)

We havn't met much yet so I don't know - you might be a veteran sewer and know these things but I thought I would pipe in because some of my friends have bought machines that discouraged them from creating (thread breaks easily, tension hard to get set properly, etc..) . You want a machine that is so enjoyable to use that you want to sew all day! at least thats how i feel. i find sewing super relaxing. Let me know if you want to discuss more, I could talk sew talk all day... :)

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Mindfulness

I have found this to be true too that mindfulness does not cure anxiety. I've been reading about mindfulness off and on for years now. I've known about buddhist perspective towards life ,death, happiness, wanting, emotions, etc.. but still i suffered much anxiety and panic. Now, I have gained a lot of useful insight from mindfulness and its attendant philosophy but it is not CBT. Working this CBT program (I tried one through a work book years ago but lacked the support needed to keep at it and gave up) is definitely a focused approach to address a specific issue effectively (i hope).I would say that they don't necessarily contradict each other though from what I've learned about each one. They are both about paying attention to yourself but not in an ego way.

One of the insights I recently read from a mindfulness book is that we have an inner happiness, we don't have to cultivate our natural ability for happiness and contentment, we have to remove the blocks preventing us from experiencing it. I'm butchering that but I think thats the overall idea behind what he was saying there. I see CBT as removing a major, if not the major blocks preventing me from living with more contentment, happiness and joy. Anyways that is how i see these 2 as related right now for me.

CBT encourages me to be assertive and thats important. I do hope I get my tone across properly in my posts. i worry sometimes about using the wrong words and being taken the wrong way. I posted to a message board once about crafting and got jumped on because i guess some other person thought I was being judgemental, and I was upset because I reallly wasn't trying to be judgmental and wish she had given me the benefit of the doubt. anyways i can feel that it is getting too late to be lucid much longer if at all now. time to rest.

Thanks teebs for posting about mindfulness , its helpful to see these responses here.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Social Anxiety

Shari, That wellness tea sounds good. i have a stomach tamer one but one of the main ingrediants is something i can't stand the taste of , licorice. yech.

a sewing machine from santa would be an awesome present!

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Helpful Questions For Challenging Your Anxious Thoughts

Hi Jas,

We havn't met much here yet - I am new to the group and in week 1 of the program which is helping immensly already in terms of my day to day.

I read your post about your childhood and I wanted to also say that I'm sorry you had to go through that. I really am. No one should experience so much fear as a child.

It is hard to understand why anyone mistreats anyone else. Two years after coming to the realisation that I was no longer a child and didn't have to put up with being neglected anymore, some empathy for some of these people who had hurt me came over me. I mention the time frame because throughout the 2 years, I really wanted to forgive them but couldn't. Gradually, I managed to actually think about life from their perspective when I was young. What they were struggling with. how alone they probably felt. And I find this hard to write because this is no way indicates that i think what they did was right. not at all. I do not use their behaviour to model my life after which means I have to unlearn lots and learn lots as an adult i should have learned as a child. They didn't address their dragons and passed them on to me. but somehow, i found my way to a bit of empathy and it has grown and has slowly been taking over the anger i have / had towards them.

I do not know exactly how that empathy finnally found its way to my head and heart but it did. There was nothing different or special i did the first day I felt true empathy for them. I think i was brushing my teeth actually when i first felt it for real. It had just sort of gradually crept up. Maybe it was partly because I was able to compare the resources i have at my age to what htey had (so much less) at the same age. but I don't know. All i wanted to say is that even just saying that what they did was wrong took me over 20 years to do. And that probably was part of the process of letting go of it. But it is definitely not something easy to do and not something i want ot make light of. that forgiveness is a process over time. thats all i know for sure about it.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Mindfulness

Interesting. I had not heard that quote before. That is going to stick in my head. I like that perspective.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Mindfulness

I wish I fully understood what a child needs - from birth to age 2 was focused on physical needs, those ended up being much easier to understand how to fulfill than the ones from age 3 onwards. What does a child age 5-7 need? I puzzle with this. I wish I could use my own childhood as a reference point but I realized recently that I cannot. The easy answer is : love. But how do you provide loving boundaries, and loving discipline consistently when you have never seen it for your own eyes?

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