Microsoft Word - At Last A Life Final Copy 16-03-09 (10 page)

went into a series of ‘what if’ thoughts.

Following is the dialogue I had in my mind at that time:

“Oh no, I wish I hadn’t seen that”

“Mustn’t look at it as I might pick it up”

“What if I pick it up”

“What if I do something to my baby with it in an irrational

moment”, as I imagined myself doing something terrible.

“What if people knew what I was thinking. They might take

my kids away from me”

“What if I’m like those I see on the news”

“What if I am like this forever and never recover”

I am having heart palpitations by this time and have made

myself scared to death

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“What if they lock me up in a psychiatric ward and I never

come out again”

“What if I never see my kids again”

“I am a waste of space and not fit to be a mother”

Just look at my irrational thought pattern. I don’t remember

the exact thoughts I had during this scenario, but they were

in a similar vein to the ones I have mentioned and in fact lots

of my thoughts contained elements of the above. What I

should have said to myself (with a contemptuous response)

when I saw that knitting needle was “What a load of rubbish,

as if” and I should have walked on. This would have saved

me from spiralling into what was a downward spiral of

continual obsessive thoughts for the rest of the day and

making myself utterly miserable.

I suffered more with paranoid thinking than scary thoughts. I became

a people pleaser, worried about what everyone thought about me. I

may have said something to someone and then I would spend my

day worrying about whether or not I had upset them. Again it was

my anxious state making me think this way. I began to understand

this and let these paranoid thoughts go. They were not real and so

they were getting no respect from me. I stopped being a people

pleaser, stopped worrying about what people thought and stopped

worrying in case I had upset someone. I was back in control and not

my anxious thinking. This helped me so much in the future and

brought some much needed confidence back.

Here is an email I received that I wanted to share with you, again

from someone who suffered after her pregnancy.

Hi Paul, I am suffering from post natal depression according

to my doctors, but I don’t feel depressed. I feel anxious all

the time, my head is racing with scary, irrational, bizarre

thoughts and visions and I got so bad that I couldn’t be on

my own with my children because the thoughts would always

come and scare the hell out of me. Your site and your book,

especially the section about obsessive thoughts, have helped

me so much. I cried when I read it! I seriously thought I was

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going mad or turning into a nasty person thinking such awful

scary things about me and my loved ones. These frightening

thoughts raced around my mind all day and the anxiety and

panic would flare up as soon as I let a thought scare me.

They are still there now and sometimes still do scare me a

little as they seem to come from nowhere at times, but with

your advice I am learning to just let them be and it has

helped me so much. For once I can see light at the end of

the tunnel. I no longer let a thought stop me doing

something; in fact I go against them. If a silly, intrusive

thought comes telling me not to do something, I do it all the

more and I feel I am back in control. This has been a real

insight to me and I can only thank you.

My reply was:

TRUST me with a capital T, that there is absolutely nothing wrong

with you. This is very common with anxiety and it is all the hormones

and stress that cause these thoughts. Anxiety just needs a release

and this manifests itself in strange, scary thoughts. TRUST me

100% and just do as you say. Smile at them if you wish. Say 'yes, as

if' it’s just my anxiety finding an escape route. I had such thoughts

and just paid them no respect. In time, without the fuel of fear, my

anxiety levels dropped and became weaker and weaker. I was so

used to not letting them bother me that they just became a very

slight annoyance and lost their importance.

Regards Paul

In the past I have helped people voluntarily, answered emails and

also run a blog. Below are some of the posts, replies and

conversations from that time which I thought were worth saving. A

lot of the replies are from people who have recovered or were well

on their way to recovery.

A few words from Diane, who started to really understand the

message I was passing on to her. The post comes from my

personal blog.

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I remember a few months back reading a post from a lady

who said something like “today I have done as Paul says and

finally given up the fight” and she mentioned that she was

now ready to let the anxiety be there for as long as it needed

to be. I would read and re-read that post because it gave me

a lot of hope. I can finally say that after two years of suffering

from anxiety, I think I am at that place and truly understand

what this lady was saying. I used to wonder how I would get

there or when I would find peace.

Lately I have been focusing on just living my life for me and

not the anxiety and then the other day as I was walking up to

the front door of my house, I felt this sense of calm and

understanding. The anxiety was still there but I truly felt as

though it was OK. It was there but it meant nothing and it

wasn’t going to hurt me. I have since experienced moments

in the day when I realize I don’t feel it at all and there is a

feeling of space in my chest where there was once a painful

tightening. It really takes practice too to spot when I

automatically start adding fear to my anxiety symptoms, but I

am getting much better at that too.

My mind still churns out some silly thoughts and the sleeping

thing is at times not great, but all of this is starting to not

matter that much. I was making recovery way too important

and just focusing on how to rid myself of how I felt instead of

just living and seeing what came along naturally, I was

definitely trying to fight my way to recovery! I am sure that

there are going to be moments in the future when I will need

to re-learn this, but I have more confidence in my ability to

come through it now.

John’s story, again a post from my blog:

Anxiety just does not seem to matter to me anymore. If, for

whatever reason, I feel a wave of anxiety, I just let ‘whatever’

happen to me and I have definitely had many rewards during

recovery. At the moments when we are feeling at our worst,

we have a choice. We can either (a) make ourselves worse

by worrying, fighting and trying to think our way out, or (b) let

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‘
whatever’ happen to us and with a small amount of time

we’re fine again. It always sorts itself out.

Regarding what Paul said about little things not bothering

him anymore, I have realised how much I have worried in my

life about silly, insignificant things. If somebody spills a pint

down your new jeans - aah, it’s slightly annoying but it really

doesn’t matter. It starts raining as soon as you’ve put the

washing out …bummer, but at the end of the day these

things happen. This is my new attitude to many aspects of

my life, and the best thing is I don’t have to try, it’s coming

naturally!

Another point I’d like to mention is that recently my girlfriend

has been really stressed about exams and revision and has

been losing sleep through stress and worry. One day she

said to me, ‘I’m lost; whatever I try to do I just can’t get to

sleep’. So I said to her, don’t try to get to sleep, just let

everything go and if you sleep well then great and if you

don’t, you don’t. She couldn’t believe that something as

simple as ‘not doing anything’ had eased her sleeping

troubles. It felt strange to be the teacher instead of the pupil

on anxiety, ha ha!

Now that I have finally let go of the battle, I know it is not one

that can be won. It is no longer important to rid myself of the

anxiety. When I have bad thoughts or feel anxious, it’s not

important to me to try to rid myself of them anymore. I don’t

feel the need to repeat sayings in my head, such as ‘I accept

this’, hoping that if I believed it enough this awful thing would

go away. I can’t explain it so I won’t try, but I am feeling

positive. I have finally let go of the battle and found peace

regardless of the fact that I still have anxiety. Each day was a

struggle before, wondering when this awful feeling would go

away. Now I couldn’t care less if it takes months or years and

I truly mean that.

I know 100% and believe this thing will pass in its own time

when my body has recovered. Anxiety may have filled the

past few years with fear, but the future is mine now and I am

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not going to spend a single day worrying whether or not it is

going to be there.

I also believe that striving for acceptance of this condition

can become a battle in itself. As soon as I let go and started

to live anyway with this thing beside me, the acceptance of

my condition came to me automatically.

Below is an email from Jeff, someone that was almost housebound

when he first read my book and landed on my site.

This e-mail is not to question anything. This e-mail is not to

try to figure anything out. This e-mail is just a response to

everything you have been helping me with. Paul, you have

saved my life and helped me begin to recover. The physical

feelings of anxiety are SLOWLY beginning to subside.

Believe me when I say it is slow, but I cannot explain it, I just

feel different, and a good different at that. I have faith in

myself now.

It's crazy; it's very difficult at first. How in the hell am I

supposed to get through the day with how I feel? If I just

accept it and go on with my day, this will overtake me. I must

try to control it so that it does not do that! That is the attitude

I used to have. I was just stressing my tired body out more!

So I finally said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I woke up this past

Monday morning and I said to myself, "Okay Jeff, you may

feel crappy today, but you have these things you need to do

at work. You need to get the binders done, you have to

make all these copies, you have XYZ projects to work on, get

these things done and don't just sit at your desk all day and

worry about the way you are feeling". My goodness was it

hard to do that. It was so hard because I have being doing

the opposite for so long. Then I did it on Tuesday, and

Wednesday, and Thursday, and today! I went out with my

roommates on Wednesday and Thursday night, and not

because I

floated there, but because I actually WANTED to! And

tonight I look

forward to the same. Paul, the hardest part of allowing

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yourself to feel like this, is at the beginning, doing things

anyway even though the "Devil" inside of you is screaming

STAY HOME!! IT'S EASIER! SIT AT YOUR DESK, IT'S

EASIER! Practicing what you preach is very difficult at

first. It just does not feel right, it feels gross, and my body

feels like absolute garbage. I felt like my entire body was

rotting or something. I never knew anxiety could feel so

crappy. I thought it was just something that people get when

they are stressed, and then it goes away. But this is a

snowball affect. Once you learn the correct method towards

recovery, it gets easier to accept, and then the feelings don't

come quite as strong or as often. Your personality comes

back and then it gets even easier. Then the feelings come

less often and more of your personality returns. Eventually it