Drew
I noticed that when you responded to my post you still said that “I think I defiantly need to get my general anxiety levels/constant depersonalization down to an acceptable level before I even try to get out more though”. In my post I said if there is one thing that you must learn is the sensation are distressing but not dangerous. The sensation of depersonalization is definitely in the sensation inventory list of your daily diary (they call it a felling of unreality). So this means that a lot of people deal with this sensation as I have. I thought that I could not concentrate or work on anything with this sensation “this is the emotional response to the symptom” not the cognitive response. Tell me something if you were standing on a balcony and experiencing depersonalization, and you saw a bunch of people coming up toward you with guns in their hands would you concentrate on your depersonalization or would you get the heck out of there not noticing any symptoms. I am not berating you I still experience the same symptom and have hard days trying not to concentrate on it, but I know the symptom is distressing but not dangerous. Your negative thoughts keep coming out as symptoms of anxiety attack or just anxiety. To say I must reduce my depersonalization in order to reduce anxiety and be able to go tackle going out, is a self limiting negative thought about a symptom anxiety. What you are saying is I cannot go out because the symptom of anxiety must be reduced in order for me to experience the symptoms of an anxiety attack that probably causes the same symptom. I am in no way saying its easy and that you should go running outside right know but as I have said you symptoms are distressing but not dangerous, it’s in lesson 1 nobody ever died of an anxiety attack and nobody ever died of depersonalization. So if you have been checked out by a doctor or psychiatrist and they confirm there is nothing physically wrong with you and the symptoms you are experiencing are not dangerous (and I see from your posting that you have been prescribed buspirone) so you have probably been checked out by a doctor. I think you may want to tackle the negative thought associated with depersonalization to everyone who experiences it they has a different emotion response, so no one can know how you exactly how you feel only you know that. About the only thing persistent anxiety symptoms can teach you are that there is a thought associated with it that is maladaptive. It’s the same as saying I have a cramp in my leg to one person it may mean nothing at all to another it may be a symptom if anxiety and very distressing. I am in no way trying to offend you i am just giving you something to think about from my own experiences.
dizzy
Drew
About your IBS did it get worse when you became more anxious and if it did does that not tell you something about its severity? Even though I said I am a lot better than before is still get days IBS. But an interesting thing happened to me one day I had the erg to go then I became distracted and all of a sudden I did not have the erg. I believe in a sense it’s not unlike like the sensation we get during anxiety. We pay attention to them, we gives our whole attention, and then works them up. The same may be said for IBS, (IBS is definitely a diagnosable problem) but I think it is made worse by anxiety. As for your agoraphobia I had it before went into the hospital, then when I went in it got worse. It is all a perception of security you think if I don’t do something that causes sensations then I will not do it, and the cycle begins. I went through several months of terrible sensations in the hospital but eventually I bore the discomfort in order to gain control over it. I am not suggesting that you take this route. However after you starts to cognitively changing your opinion about your sensations you will eventual have to face your fears of the sensation. The most important thing you can learn is that sensations are distressing but not dangerous. We tend to attach danger to them by self-diagnoses, by assessing their significance and there severity and to their likelihood to recur, and or, to some event that makes no sense. When two things happen at the same time we as humans try to make a connection between the two events. This connection is where we developed cognitive maladaptive thoughts, in other words the events that happened are coincidental but we attach meaning to them. This is where your food intolerance problem may come from, in my case since I was having IBS almost every day I would attach my eating of an unfamiliar food with IBS. Now that my anxiety level has been drastically reduced I find that the foods that I thought bothered me do not bother me anymore (with a few exceptions such as being diagnoses with an allergy to milk). I am not saying that there are no food intolerances but you have to be careful about attaching danger to a food when I may be (and I say may be) anxiety about the food that is causing the problem. Are there foods that you eat and have no anxiety towards them and as a consequence have an IBS free day, and conversely when you eat a food that you think you have an intolerance to do you have anxious thoughts about eating and therefore have an IBS day. These things can be worked on latter when you have worked on you more pressing problem of agoraphobia, you may find that by reducing your anxiety level in general you start to have less IBS days.
Dizzy