I find without panic attacks and an understanding of who I am that I have more energy and enjoy life more. The down side is I find myself outside enjoying what I do far too long. The up side is that I sleep very good and wake up with out any anxiety about the coming day. 

Good night everyone, I hope tomorrow is a good day whether it is or not.

Davit

Ps with the change in thought patterns I very seldom have to resort to relaxation and coping skills. And when I do it is automatic and barely noticed.

Read the other one first please.

Now that was just an example of how they work. Back to the triangle. During panic the mind prefers negatives because negatives are survival skills. During panic a person looks at all the negative possibilities and discards them or uses them to get out of a situation. Anxiety and panic are normal as is using negatives to check the situation. You wouldn't want to peacefully step off the curb into traffic but this is what you would do if you only had positive experiences to draw on. What takes that normal panic and makes it an attack is not being able to change the thought between the second and third point because of a strong core belief that says the negative thought is right. So the thought goes round and round the triangle but not to point A because it is still negative. Point A has no way to move on because it depends on input from the other two corners of the triangle so it sits there confused and trying to do something. Meanwhile the panic thought is still going round. Fortunately there are ways to break the cycle and even if you don't use them panic will still stop on it's own but not before reinforcing the trigger. Which is why they can happen over and over again. People who have one panic attack and never another have strong positive core beliefs and strong self esteem and weak negative core beliefs. They might just be a pain in the butt who questions everything because as a child they were told to. So when you read here to challenge your core beliefs it is more than just do it between the second and third corner of the triangle during panic but every time you use one. Basically question any thought that is remotely related to your triggers. An interesting thing happens when you find a false thought and realize it. You get an empty feeling till you replace it with a truth. And sometimes the truth can be painful. Remember you have been living with this false but controlling thought a long time. People here will tell you this is hard to do and it is. But it needs to be done. Journalling is the best way to do this. Writing down your thoughts while speaking them uses four parts of your brain and makes accepting stronger. Writing, seeing, speaking and hearing. Four positives to counter one negative in memory. Which is good because with negatives being survival skills they have priority.

All this work because of something small that grew into something that isn't true but your mind says it is. 

There is more to core beliefs but it is late, and I'm tired and hungry. 

Because of their nature you can not always find your core beliefs at first without taking a very hard look at your triggers. This is where a good therapist can lead. (never answer but lead so you find the answer)

Davit

Davit

Really interesting that you chose the heart attack example to illustrate this point. My ex died of a heart attack a couple of years ago. He was the same age as me but he smoked and drank too much. His mother blames me for his death even though I hadnt seen or spoken to him for over 10 years. When I first started having panic attacks I thought I would die of a heart attack. He passed away in a bathroom in the middle of the night. For the longest time I was afraid of going to the bathroom in the middle of the night because I thought I would meet the same fate.

 

I have worked on that and I am no longer crippled by that particular fear but it is still there. I am overweight and I am sure my reluctance to believe my cardiologist that my heart is in perfect shape lies in that fact - I have a core belief that being overweight is synonymous with death. I am trying very hard to believe that my heart beating fast and my chest being tight day in day out are symptoms of anxiety but I guess I have to change my core belief first?

 

Small world - I attended MUN (St Johns Nfld). I love Canada. Tofino is one of my most favorite places in the world. I just wish that mental health services were readily available for everyone who needs it. My therapist doesnt accept insurance so it's 100s of dollars out my pocket each week... Willing to pay as long as I get results

I have probably the best Therapist in the world and she could be working anywhere but I believe is here because she can have an acreage and animals and actually afford it. You see in Canada she is paid a salary and we the sick get our therapy free. She has an even bigger fascination with how the mind works in relationship to panic than me, and another rare thing is she has first hand knowledge. So this is where I get my information or direction where to go for it. You know there are some leaches on the net that will tell you anything for a dollar. 

Since anything can be a symptom there would be a long list if there was one. Instead why not look at your core beliefs to see why you have the ones you do. This can lead to things you have forgotten. (buried never forgotten just not accessible). But lets use the word forgotten anyway. 

Your symptoms are a product of your triggers which are a product of your core beliefs which you have built or have been building since day one. We have a lot of tolerance for stress so that when we do hit the breaking point we have no where to go. So we depend on our core beliefs to tell us what to do. Negative ones do not fit the situation but since they are what we have we use them. In the form of assumptions and negative thoughts. Which reinforces the negative core belief which is still not the answer to the situation but the only one we have because we believe them.

An example. Aunt Mabel has a heart attack and dies. Instead of explaining to a child that eating to much is not healthy mommy says you are going to have a heart attack like Aunt Mabel and die. You notice other people that eat too much have heart attacks. Maybe you see it on TV. (a good place for exaggeration) Since you have no proof otherwise you have to assume this is true. Remember the child is still filling it's mind with information and experiences as reference. So now there is an association with eating and heart attacks. Uncle Bob dies of a heart attack and he isn't fat but the association is still there only now it is not eating too much but must be the wrong food, or some other reason. The core belief now is that the child is going to die from a heart attack because Aunt Mabel and Uncle Bob did. 

Later in life when stress is putting a stain on the adults thoughts it starts to worry about heart attacks, maybe the trigger is someone close dying from one. Remember this experience is going to go into memory. So now lets say indigestion triggers chest pains. The memory says this could be a heart attack. The memory says people die from heart attacks. The core belief won't allow any other thought so the person panics and assumes it is a heart attack. It goes away but the damage is done due to a core belief built a long time ago. And because the person has been reinforcing the core belief for years it is hard not to accept it.

We have lots of core beliefs, they dictate how we think and feel. and they can reinforce each other by making each other more believable. 

They can be changed for better or worse but in panic disorders it is usually for worse because of an attitude built over the years. 

Davit.

Sending this before I lose it.

Davit

I am so glad I found this website. I have been searching for answers for a while and dont understand why this did not turn up a few months ago when I started my search. but I am grateful i found it. Your explanations/response/advice in the last few days have helped me more than the 3 months that I have been going to therapy! No one ever explained the thought-body connection to me in these terms - I actually understand it now. Thank you

Now the hard work of coming up with positive thoughts to replace the negative ones I have accumulated over the years. I know this is going to be hard but I am more than willing to put in the work. I think I just dont know how ...

Question: Is there a place where I can find a complete list of anxiety symptoms - how they make you feel and why?

Naa

If you look at your trip to the dentist it has two parts. Success and fear. To explain why the focus is not on the success I need to explain a piece of information I was saving for later. You remember how everything going to the brain gets there. Okay so if you want to lift a coffee cup why not just do it? Why involve the brain at all? Because the hand doesn't know how to do it? No. Because from the time we are born the brain gathers and stores information in memory for future reference. Information you access at such an incredible speed it makes a computer look slow. With every thought or planned action your brain asks for ways to do it and picks what it feels is the most pertinent. Not the best but the most obvious based on past experience. This is why if you stir your coffee in one direction you will do it that way all the time unless you are tired and your mind is slow accessing memory. Or drunk or drugged. Which interferes with memory. Imagination is just forcefully choosing a different solution from memory. 

So to get back to your question "why". Both the success and the fear are in your past experiences memory. But your mind is used to picking one over everything else when making decisions so that is what it does. And again, "why".

Because you went looking for it and it gave it to you. You allowed yourself to slip and think about how it could have been rather than how it was. 

This process is called a thought triangle and has three parts or corners and they all work together. First corner is planned action or thought, second is thought memory third is the actual thought or action which goes back to the second for future reference and to the first to decide the next planned action or thought. 

So thinking about the day opened thought memory which gave you a negative thought because before CBT that is what it would normally do. This actual thought then went back to memory and covered up the success thought. With CBT you stop the thought from going from the second corner to the third corner and replace it with the success thought so that that one is the one you will access. WOW hey. Do it enough times and the negative one although still there is so buried it doesn't show in the choices anymore. Until some trauma makes you look for it. But by then hopefully you will have the CBT skills to bury it again. 

This is another example of the simple changing negative to positive. The difficult part is breaking the conditioning so you can actually do it. This the personality aspect. Are you prepared to change. You have to you know.

Davit

I have had every test under the sun and everything has come back alright. I just cant seem to get it into my head that I am physically fine and that all these sensations are just that ... sensations. But the fear that accompanies them is so great.I always think well what if the doctors missed something and I am really ill?

 

Anyway I wanted to share a success of sorts. I went to the dentist for a cleaning this morning. As usual I worked myself up and ended up with severe anxiety but I went anyway. My legs felt like they would give at any moment but I survived. I was actually quite calm at the dentist then got anxious all over again when I got home. What gives???

I was doing well a few weeks ago then had a massive attck and cant seem to remember or put into practice any of the skills I learned anymore