Wallowing - definitely does not work.

Hi all - new member here,

Who would have though that a year spent travelling the world alone would make me anxious? Of course it would, and I reacted by developing ibs while on the train to work one morning, 6 years ago.
Since then I have been lucky enough not only to reinforce the ibs, which is charming enough, but also to sprinkle on its older, more violent cousin – panic.
Gradually, over time, I have broken down previously sacred barriers of reprieve. Felt bad in a cab once? Dread using a cab. Nauseous whilst on the tube? The tube is a nightmare. Working, drinking, socialising, chatting at a house party (as per last night – this is a new one)…all on the list. In fact, all the things I desire most – exotic travel, great nights out, adventure – are also now at the top of my “fear most” list, rendering my life almost pointless, should it carry on like this. Imagine the effect this has on my poor girlfriend.
I’m sure fellow members will share that distressing feeling of having the fabric of your life eaten away until you are left bare. I feel that my previously infallible force field – the one that protected me for 22 years, and the one that everyone else takes for granted – has completely disappeared, leaving me open to attack from all angles.
And of course, the wallowing and negative thinking not only cements things, but opens the door for the next level – what ever that is. I have read a few great posts on this forum addressing negative thinking, and it’s this area which I believe may hold the key to recovery.
I am especially interested in exploring those fleeting “tipping point” moments when you go from feeling fine, to embarking on that slippery road to panic and – for me – needing the toilet again and again…
I would be very grateful if there was anyone who has managed to control or analyse those moments when – either consciously or subconsciously – we flick that switch and start to poison our minds. Obviously for everyone, initial reactions are different, but my personal issue is that I have very real stomach cramps and the undeniable need to go to the damn toilet asap. I have read many books which advise the reader to analyse these sensations and ask themselves, in a rather patronising way “if they are really that bad”. Well, the answer in often yes. I am scared of having an accident in public because I am a human being. Fear of the fear - is still fear!

I think it is unreasonable to become fearless overnight but perfectly reasonable to change the way we respond to that fear. This in turn should disarm the fear itself, over time.

Any thoughts on this issue would be very gratefully received. :o

Hi

Depending on what books you've read, you may well know that there is an almost instantaneous biological reaction to fear that makes the sufferer want to empty their bladder and/or bowels. It's evolutionary function was to shed unnecessary weight to enable us to run from danger quicker.

The good news is, although you feel the need to go to the toilet, you are still able to override it and I have yet to hear about anyone who loses control of these functions completely.

As far as recognising the "tipping point" goes, it takes practice. There are millions of things going on in your brain at any one time and your awareness only has access to a small percentage of them. It has to be this way, otherwise you would feel massively overwhelmed by all the decisions you have to address. Very often the triggering thought for anxiety slips in and out of your conscious mind undetected and then gets lost in the avalanche of thoughts that follow.

I'm quite fortunate (if you can call it that) in that my problem is with agoraphobia and I can recreate my fear at will by walking futher than I am comfortable - that way I have a reliable way of bringing it on and I can study it at my leisure. I can understand your frustration because when I first started having problems with anxiety it was occasional panic attacks that just seemed to come from nowhere with no discernible pattern.

I don't know if any of the above has helped you but I wish you the best of luck.

Chris

Hi,

Well, i have manage to control my panic attacks. It is controlling rather than curing. The truth is that stress is normal and is innate. So we can never be rid of stress but we can control it the way we want to. Just like a stunt man would control his fear to the point where he can do actions that people would normally not do. but luckily we do not have to go that far :D. Our goal should be (ideally) to control stress to the point where it doesnt stop us from doing what we want to do. I dont mean to sound patronising but i think it will be a good idea to know what level of control we want to achieve and hence have a goal.
The way i used to target negative thoughts was to create a check in my head of any concious thought that i had. I would check to see if it was negative or positive. and if it was negative, i would force positivity on myself. This is the crucial bit in the technique. You must 'force' positive versions of that thought even if you dont belive them. Enough repetition will cause new patterns to form and these patterns of thinking is what we need to replace the old stress filled anxiety patterns.
I remember when i used to fear passing out in public. I started telling myself that i would not wory about it until i have actually passed out. The more times i repeated this, the more apparent it became to me that i was percieving my stress wrongly. So even though i was feeling kinda dizzy, it didnt mean that i would pass out. So i began to recognise the kinda dizzy feelings as nothing that could harm me. Your situation is different but i think you can make changes to the patterns in a similar way. What you could do is, the next time you are in such a situation, wait as long as you can before u think u cannot wait any longer. So something like maybe when you feel like you must go, go close to the toilet or even inside and wait another minute before you do. Then keep increasing the time you must wait. but make sure you give yourself lots of time to change. something like 6 months to try this technique, or whatever you think is ample time. what you must do is to make sure that you recognise that you are waiting over when you actually 'thought' you needed to reliev yourself. So lets say you waited a minute before you actually relieved yourself. You must recognise this accomplishment.
And recognise that it is a minute later of what you had considered to be urgent. This way you can relearn what the actual time to go is.I hope this makes sense :rolleyes:.

Let me know what you think, and i hope this helps you.

Stay positive and takecare

haunted5

Thanks for your replies.

haunted5 - Yours was one of the very good posts I read as it contains practical advise from someone who has seen real progress. Congratulations for this.

Your suggestion was particularly interesting as I have (sort of) started putting it into practice already. In fact, I keep a spreadsheet of my toilet patterns, which has helped me see that, under non-stressful conditions, I am in fact perfectly healthy and can "hold it" for hours.

However, my problem is that - under stressful conditions - the urge to go can take hold in a matter of seconds and get worse extremely quickly. I may be on a train or far from home etc. I know that these are unreasonable thoughts as in fact there is nothing to be scared of except being scared.
In these cases, I do not believe that I can hold it which leads to a constant state of fear. Once you add negative thinking to the system, I lose control as I haven't got the tools to deal with it under stress.

It would be very helpful - if you wouldn't mind - if you could give some real world examples of negative thoughts which enter your mind and the positive thoughts you counter them with. Do you use visualisation?

Thanks again for your help.

Hello again..

Im really happy to hear that you found my advice helpful.

Well, In general i feel that negativity is of no use to me. So all negativity has to be removed. This is for general thoughts like, 'everyone is staring at me', 'i will never be able to speak infront of a group of people' etc. Basically any thought that will hinder me from doing something that i should be able to do 'normally' will clasify as a negative thought(in my case). the reason why i dont go into too much detail about what kind of negative thoughts they are, is because everyone's idea of negativity and positivity is slightly different. But i have found that if i practice positivity on the overall thought process, then it gives me much needed confidence to overcome my fears. The thing that i found about my life was, that i had stopped to challange myself and was finding it hard to gain confidence that i would normally have from achieving things in life. But there are 2 different sorts of confidence, external and internal. And since i wasnt challenging myself externally, i made sure i had some confidence internally. And that is a biproduct of positive thinking. Internal confidence. Facing panic and anxiety like we do will really knock a person's confidence. This is for general thinking.

Now for panic related thinking, i have noticed that thoughts are geared towards the fear i have. So with passing out, it used to be something like 'what's happening' 'i cant walk straight' 'im going to fall' 'people are looking at me(as if they know what im goin through) etc. The point is that these thoughts are not going to help me in anyway. All they will do is make matters worse. So i would counter these thoughts by something like, 'nothing is wrong,its just your flight and fight mechanism playing up again' 'ignore it, and it will go away', 'you can get through this, im sure you can', ' im sure i'm walking straight', Nobody around me cares enough to stare :D ', 'i wont worry about it until i fall'. basically anything that will trigger positivity towards the negative fear. Even if i didnt believe the statements i was making, i said them in my head like i meant them. and with enough repetition, i started to believe them. And so the fear became something which was not real, but the statements i was saying were. I found that it always helps to have a factual reasoning to why nothing will go wrong. And some positivity that i used to apply in my general thinking like 'Im sure i can do this'(i basically said(forced) that on anything i would be apprehensive(fearful) towards like going on a roller coaster or giving a presentation in uni) helped me through my anxiety aswell. I think it would be a good idea to form your own positive thoughts, because they are more likely to work for you.

Sometimes i also found it helpful to tell myself stuff like ' If i faint, big deal' to sort of ridicule the fear itself.

The technique i talked about in the last post was geared towards increasing your self belief that in the stressful situations you can manage to hold on for as long as you like. And in the end you can deny the fear as untrue, because you will have proof that you can wait, even in stressful situations. The best way, i have found to improve my confidence for anxiety situations is to keep telling myself of the thoughts like 'you walked for hours that day and did not fall over once even though you thought you would'. These thoughts will reassured me that it is infact only fear (negative cycle) and not worth thinking about the next time im out and about.

Hope this makes sense. Takecare and stay positive

haunted5

Good advice - thanks again for taking time out to help.

I have begun to try and think more positively, and not indulge myself in wallowing as I have done in the past. This is a big challenge. Only recently did I realise that prolonged negative thoughts do not provide magical answers, but merely reinforce the general feeling of anxiety, which of course leads to the physical symptoms themselves. Over time, I'm sure this positive change will have an affect on my state of mind. As you rightly say, it is a long-term commitment so we'll see how it goes.

The other tactic you mention - mocking the worst case scenario (ie - "so what if I fall over") is a problem. Personally, when I ask myself "would it really be that bad to have an accident"...the answer, for me, is alway yes. Therefore, my main problem is this underlying fact that I am unable to mock myself and therefore I am not sure how to disarm the main threat. I do not fear falling over, or even death - I guess I fear social embarrassment. So I firmly believe that if I could convince myself that it is socially acceptable to foul one's self in public, I would be cured! Unfortunately, knowing myself as I do, this is highly unlikely.

It's looking more and more like it will be a combination of general positive thinking, positive thinking under stress (for which I will be trying CBT), and continually proving that I am just a perfectly normal person who just got into some bad habits - which can be unlearned.

:)

:) hi all get better rabid badgers theory was put into practice on thursday iflew for the first time, i had loads of juice and water before the plane, and forgot to go to loo. on entering the plane i too felt the urge and panic rising, i said to my husband i need the loo NOW he said you cant something about have to be in flight, i said im going to do it here please i need to go,well the plane took off and landed we were getting our baggage he said to me ithought you was desperate for the loo. see get better its only fear i didnt go until we reached the villa hope this is of some help chrissy:)

Wow Chrissy, I didn't know it was the first time you'd flown.

hi all yes chrisv as i didnt know what to expect i was really nervous and it didnt help on journey out to stop and search little ole me iwas wearing a skirt and although she was a women i found it quite intimadating, there were other they do it randomly.but that unnevered me to start with but hey i survived and im back sorry sounded a bit like gloria gaynor there lol chrissy

Hi Chrissy

It was your guts that got you on that plane. I'm not taking any credit for that :)

Chris x

hi all you gotta be kidding me rabid badger my guts, my first thought after the loo insident was oh my god cant get my rabid badgers tips folder out, so tried in my head to remember some for the 15 mins wait,lol chrissy

Thank you Haunted5 for your great advice. I've been reading your posts and they have helped me very much. I also have realized that positive thinking makes all the difference. I am not putting a time limit on my change. I don't want to stress myself for any reason. I'm just waiting until the positive thoughts actually move from my conscious state to my sub-conscious. That is my goal. So far things are going well. It's only a matter of time before I am doing the things I used to due more freely in the past again.
Getbetter, trust me it works. Just don't forget to reward yourself from time to time. (if not always)
What has also helpled me is that I have dealt with issues in my life that have obviously bothered me for many many years (with the help of a counselor)such as, my upbringing and childhood experiences. This helped smoothen the rough edges in my life and now I am finally ready to deal with my anxiety and panic head-on.