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Helpful Questions For Challenging Your Anxious Thoughts

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 22

Hi Davit,

Brother let me tell you in no uncertain terms, that I feel so peaceful and content amongst the new friends I have made here.

Yourself, Sunny, Shari, Teebs, Red and others have showered me with your love, kindness and support. I love you all.

We are in this together and together we will help each other overcome all obstacles!

I feel safe and sound amongst you.

Your Amigo for eternity, Jas

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 22

Hi Sunny,

I agree with you about not hanging on to the past and moving on.

I am 33 and have my own family now. Despite the anxiety I feel in a happy place at the moment, life is busy and hectic but I am enjoying it, or at least trying to. It is a constant battle, you never forget, you just learn to cope.

May be one day I will find that place where you are at, but not right now. I have forgiven him about 80% because of his illness. But the other 20 will be really hard because to an extent despite his illness, I think he knew what he was doing was so wrong and I think he may have actually quite enjoyed his sadistic power trip.

I will always keep trying Sunny, because my heart is filled with love and I want to forgive him, I really do. It is just so hard.

I wish we could all live in perfect, peaceful harmony, love and help each other unconditionally, what a world this would be.

I think even amongst the infinite characteristics, emotions and conditions of the human form, each and everyone us crave that place of eternal peace and contentment to a certain extent. Why is it so hard to find common ground? So many wars, battles and bickering over absolute nonsense!

Wishing you peace and happiness too Sunny!

Jas

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

I don't know what to say, both of you have suffered more than me. My older brother used to beat on me till one day he came in my room and was lifting the end of my bed and dropping it. I was sitting on it cleaning a rifle and just could not take it any more. I put a shell in it and was going to shoot him. He never physically bothered me again but he mentally did and I put up with it for years till I was 59. I have forgiven him and had to forgive my parents also because they spoiled him and made him who he is. Jas I really do not know what you can do. This is too big of a dragon to slay and it will take a pretty big chain to keep him at bay. I think you are doing very well. A person can move from a bad neighbourhood but a bad memory would be hard to do, it just follows. Do you think you could seal up the cave and start over from today with a clean slate. This is tough my friend. Memories can not be changed all we can do is change how we look at them. I'm not sure if I ever forgave my brother totally or just accepted that it is his dragon and I don't want it in my back yard. I have cut ties and he is no longer family. He is still in my past just not a necessary part of my future. I have a new life, panic free and no one is going to mess it up. A bit assertive there but not aggressive. I can not make up for the lost years but I can cut them loose and start over and just like a boat on the river I can let them drift out of my life. I have a new boat and a new course to follow up stream.

And well I like a challenge so I can do this.

I hope you find peace here with us and in your life.

Your friend for ever

Here for you

Davit

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1665

Hi Peaceforall: You've had a rough time growing up that's for sure. Your father was/is ill. I'm sorry you had to go through that and quite understand why you have anxiety and had depression. I also saw things I shouldn't hae seen. It makes you wary of people later on. Now that I am older, my father has died, my mother quite helpless in a nursing home, I have been able to reevaluate the past. I suppose we do that every few years anyway. I have forgiven my father and mother. What does forgiveness mean? I have been able to see "their" reasons for acting the way they did. I put myself in their shoes. Not saying that some of the things they did were right or that I will forget, just saying that I can figure it out now as an adult. I'm not that child/teenager anymore. I can take care of myself. I finally let it go. The strings are all cut and I am free to be myself. I feel that it is now my responsiblity to be the best I can be. It might have taken me a bit longer to be "happy" or "content" because of the lack of nurture, but that's o.k. That was my life journey then, not now, and I know that I am not alone. Many, many children are going through this and adults. I'm glad to hear you and your mother received counseling afterwards and you write that it helped. Wish I could have had some when I needed it. It wasn't until I was in my 30's that I decided to try it.

Peace to you! your friend, Sunny

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 22

Hi Davit,

I do not know about nature but I do know that nurture has a huge impact on how the mind evaluates each and every situation.

I had a very frightening and violent childhood, I saw things that no one should have to see and suffered extreme mental/physical abuse. Seeing, experiencing and learning during this very precious time led to everything being negative for me and left me with severe depression and anxiety. Thankfully depression I have overcome but anxiety, although manageable, may be there for the rest of my days. Forgiveness is the key to full recovery, but I will never be able to completely forgive my old man. He was a terrifying, violent control freak with some very backward views and ideas. Me and my Mother suffered continuously at his hands until the day I stood up to him. I was 16 and never felt so scared in all my life, even now I think back and never have I been so petrified. But it worked he backed down and me and Mum went through quite a few years of counselling which really helped. My Father became quite withdrawn during this time, almost like he had lost his power. He saw several Doctors over the course of a few months and was diagnosed with Delusional Paranoia. He has been on medication since which has calmed his symptoms. It has been 15 years since I have spoken to him and I do not foresee ever forgiving him fully even though I know he has a serious psychotic illness. May be my downfall, but its how I feel. My Mother has forgiven him though.

Sorry for waffling on............................. To explain my point, I have a younger Brother and Sister by 5&7 years respectively. They did not suffer so much as me and my Mother bore the brunt of his violence. I always stood in front of them to protect them and take the beatings when he flipped, which was just about everyday. They are now both very successful in their careers and have never suffered any mental illness. May be they knew their Brother was there to protect them, this may have been their mental security, a positive thing. For me their was no protection not even my Mother would try and stop him, no where to run or hide, all negative.

Just my personal theory.

Hope you are well davit, your Amigo Jas.

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Loves trees

It must be our nature but it seems in all things we reach for the negative, maybe because it is the expected. But it seems in the beginning it takes more positives to hold down a negative but it does get better to the point that just one positive point is enough to dispel one negative. It does get better! No actually what happens is you get better. Negatives are just things, how you react to them changes them.

Your friend

Davit

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

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.

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Loves trees

I am a disabled person. People are always saying to me "if you need help just call me". Most of the time they are not available when I need them. This used to bother me and I would be upset.

So I would manage alone or do without. This year I hired a guy to do all the heavy work around my place. As you might guess, he did not do it the way I would. I had to tell myself, "what did I expect" it is just a job to him. Some times he broke things. Since I am so close to cured I used those situations as a way to do a combination of exposure and core belief rebuilding. At times it was not pleasant. but I managed. On top of this I invited some one to stay with me. Major exposure there. She turned my house and life upside down. I survived it.

(for a whole week) I'm not sure where I found the inner strength to do this but I did. I wanted to do this so bad without crashing, I did not want to give in like I used to. I'm still putting things back the way I want them but it taught me to accept that if I deal with people to expect the worst and accept what I get and to celebrate when it is right. I also discovered that a lot of people have there own anxiety problems, or other things. It is not always directly their fault they disappoint me. It is just the way they are. They think that by saying they will help even though they can't I will feel better, they don't understand. They have there life and if there plans and mine don't mesh then so be it. It is even more frustrating when I am paying them. One solution is to have more than one back up person. But this summer even that didn't work.

What does it matter, I have made my mark on life. In the end when I am dead who will notice and who will care. A couple of years ago I unexpectedly got my fifteen minutes of fame. I don't need to outdo it, It will last me till the end. I'm content with my life (little as it is). This is a major accomplishment, most people can not be happy with life as it is.

All I can say is get mad get over it and look for another way. Don't quit dealing with people just accept that they are not as good as you would like. Life goes on and tomorrow this crisis will be in the past.

Not much help here but see I too can only do so much. But I will promise you one thing that I can fulfill. If you stay with us and do the program you will get better, even cured.

Your friend

Here for you Even if only to listen

Davit

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 11226

Hi Loves Trees,

I already wrote a bit about this in the other thread on the three components of panic and anxiety but I will add a but more here.

I love that you are feeling so positive about the program. That will help keep you motivated to stick with it. Isn't it great that you now have a place to go for support?

It is great that you recognise these thoughts as Negative Core beliefs and you understand that changing this thinking will help change how you react to situations like these. Recognizing this is the first step! Now what you need to challenge these thoughts and replace them. These questions posted here are great for this! You can find these questions in session 3. Continue with the program and you will get far. Keep us updated on how you are doing with this situation.

Ashley, Health Educator

Here to help :)

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Thanks for posting this.

I have to post here this AM to really stop myself from responding anxiously to an email i got from someone yesterday that is causing me some anxiety this AM. In their e-mail said they would do something that I asked them to do, and that they have said is important to them to do - but this AM I am starting to have negative thoughts about it "they probably won't follow through" "they won't be honest and tell me they are not going to follow through" "they don't realise it is important to me" "I'm not important to them" "they are not an honest person" "i shouldnt be friends with them" "if they don't follow through, i will have to re-evaluate our entire friendship".

I've read over and over now that this program is going to help me address those negative thoughts and help me prevent panic attacks. In the meantime though, I know I will encounter these sorts of things with people in my life that are raising my core issues with trust. I am tempted to tell everyone to stop saying anything to me until I am done this program. That seems extreme though and they will probably misunderstand and wonder what I am talking about since without an explanation of what their words do to me right now, it may not make sense.

Over andover I have "solved" these problems by trying to control the person or do the thing for them so I can prevent myself from the feelings that come from them not following through or doing what I want them to do. I don't want to do that today. My anxiety really wants me to leap in and do it that way though.

At least I've realized that I tend not to ask people for help because its harder to feel dissapointed when they don't follow through than to just do it myself without their help. This will help me to develop assertiveness I think.

Any thoughts or advice or words of encouragement?

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Helpful Questions For Challenging Your Anxious Thoughts