If you can find a friend to help you with dishes, that would be great! I am not so lucky as to have that right now.
I find that I use these tasks to bring me back to the present, and focus on them - using mindfulness I guess. This has worked for me so I thought I would mention it. Like with doing the dishes, I pay attention to how the water feels, the soap bubbles, looking at it as i am rinsing each dish, putting it away, and then listening to whats going on around me - the sounds of traffic going by, my own breathing etc... I've used it also to check in wiht my body , see how my stomach feels, lower back, neck, all the places i might feel tightness and not notice.
That may not work for everyone or for each menial task but I have found it works for me most of the time since i started doing it about 2 months ago. ANyone else do this sort of "mindful toilet scrubbing"? :)
I am glad you got that I was being a bit humourous there about the dishes. ! It was a funny image in my mind when i read it.
On a more serious note, can we explore what to do when no support people are available to help during a panic attack? I keep reading (and have been told by every well meaning counsellor i've had) to "get friends" and "get support from friends". but i've struggled to keep friends in my life long enogh to trust them with the fact i struggle with anxiety. i've not had a friend help me thorough an attack for over 16 years. family members neither. I end up worrying i won't be able to complete the program because having supportive people is integral to success.
I trust i will eventually have good friends again but right now, there is no one i am close enough with to ask for the hug and consolation and reassurance i need during the fear and peak of the attack. My thoughts during an attack (predictably) are "i'm all alone" "i'll never get through this without support" "i'll never have supportive people in my life". you cna see how that cycle makes things worse.
Thoughts? creative solutions to replace a friend support? stuffed animals? (i'm trying to inject some humour here!) but whatever might work.
Thanks for posting here. I am still trying to understand this all better.
Teebs, I agree with you. I am not sure what bringing on an attack would help with. Actually I think i was raised with the "If it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger" and I also think that when I worried as a child, I was left to deal with it on my own because they thought if I saw that nothing bad happened in the end, I would be cured of my worry and anxiety. This was wrong. I am an adult today with anxiety issues so this technique of leaving me to be anxious all by myself was wrong I think. What I think I did need at that tme was comfort and support and encouragement when I worried or felt anxious. I didn't get that.
I continue to ask for that today from people around me and this weekend I had a bad weekend and I think I have slowly realized I cannot keep doing this to myself. The attacks were bad and were made worse by the people who were around me at the time. Just because they say they want to help doesn't mean they will be able to at the time of the attack.
I woke up this morning realizing I have to go it alone in terms of recovery. I want the people in my life to be my cheerleaders during this painful time but they have shown time and again they cannot fulfill that role. There is nothing left for me to do but to face this. My main negative core belief is "I am alone.". During an attack I really don't want to be alone. But I do not have anyone who can be with me, my attacks make them too upset.
My weekend was so bad I am going to have to avoid some things this week to give myself a break from exposure to things that wake up my dragons. At least that is how I feel right now.
I am a big fan of writing and journaling. I liked your suggestion here.
I had a counsellor who suggested that since journaling was causing me upset lately, I should just stop doing it for a while. She was not using CBT with me.
I think I disagree with her, because she and I did not explore why some journaling sessions were leaving me upset. I now think it was / is because I am grieving and experienced a lot of major loss in my life over the last 4 years that has not been addressed by me - or anyone else for that matter.
Journaling has been the way i've used to make sense of my journey. I have lost significant relationships in the last 4 years and no one around me even comforted me or acknowledge these losses I had endured for the first year. I repressed the feelings that came from ending relationships that were causing me too much stress.
I don't think you would be surprised to hear then that I now struggle with anger issues. I get really angry sometimes as part of my panic attacks. I am grieving complicated relationships. Can you help me to understand what I should do to address the anger and upset I am feeling these days?
Although I don't feel I have much to give today, I want to take your hand Cleo and extend my other hand out in friendship and support to who ever can use it.
Ok. I tried the mirror thing that Davit suggested in an earlier post here.
I couldn't find a positive thought that I actually believed. The best I could do was say "i'll go eat a sandwich and try it again later". All I could do was cry when I really looked at myself. I tried saying something good to myself but I just couldn't this AM.
It was powerful to do though and i will keep trying at it. Thanks for posting about it Davit.
I agree with you. Like I said, I've thought about the "thrown into the deep end" approach a lot since it is a way I've been told is "good" by family members when I was growing up. I disagreed then and I disagree now with this approach. Some people think that it is the same thing they might experience if they sign up to go sky diving and then have to 'push' themselves out of the plane at the last moment in order to do it. Then they enjoy the experience. That is different from being pushed into panic because panic is not enjoyable!
I have also personally noticed that the specific people in my life who like to think that being thrown in the deep end is the "best way to learn" tend not to do much of that themselves. It is a rationale for them leaving when someone wants help. So I am cautious when someone says "just throw them into the deep end" because THEY might have their own issues and reasons for saying it that has nothing to do with whether this is good advice or a good appraoch. Just my 2 cents again. If sommeone lives by the "just jump in" motto themselves, I gues I can give them a little more credence that maybe this is actually their way of going thorgh life. When they advise it for others but dont do it themselves, I become suspicious.
Being pushed a little to do something that has a good ending - going on a roller coaster or something like that maybe, is part of the experience of exhiliration. I think this distinction is muddled sometimes by "well meaning people" who don't understand anxiety. They lump it all together. They are also the "walk it off" folks I have noticed who also might say that so that they can leave instead of helping.
It is possible I am caught up in my own issues again this AM. I resent the 'walk it off' advice because it is said instead of providing comfort or empathy. It sometimes appears almost inhumane to me. It is sometimes said by people who care for their pets better tahn their children. I admit, I am upset about how little support I have around me today and my thinking is colored by that here. My apologies. Good to be aware, bad to be cynical. I am going to breathe and keep trying to reboot.
thanks for the encouragement. Yes you probably did look silly arguing with a computer. We've all done it. The new ones are not as big and heft as the old ones you could tap like an old tv to see if that would work (it doesn't but we all try it i think).
:)
Well I have to admit for many many years I tried to go along to get along. Then, and you used this word before, i cauterized or performed intense surgery in my life by ending several important relationships all at once. Thinking that the relatinships (stress inducing for me) were the source of my problems and that all would be well as soon as i got these certain negative people out of my life. Then for a year or so i went numb, or underground. I didn't let anything sad come to the surface for fear it would kill me. I tried to pretend (and got lots of reinforcement from people around me on this one) that you can ignore the grieving period and fast forward straight to authentic living. Ha ha. I'm starting to feel better this AM because i now see how funny that idea was. You can't skip over resolving your pain. I see that for myself now. People will encourage you to skip over it if they are avoiding pain also. Which most people in my life are. But i have to stop concerining myself so much with them.
Do people actually win the war against the panic attacks? I would like to live without them. The grieving, the loss, the sadness, the anger, I can work with the fact I have to heal these things and grow positive thoughts like tending a garden within. But the attacks are setbacks on all levels - emotional, mental and physical as I have trouble eating the day i have one.
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