Microsoft Word - At Last A Life Final Copy 16-03-09 (8 page)

I took some convincing of this when I was anxious and this feeling of

strangeness was the last thing to disappear. Now I know that it was

caused by nothing more than a tired mind because I am living proof.

I felt so detached that I could not read a book or follow a

conversation. I felt as if I was taking part in some sort of movie,

having to act my way through the day. I just could not connect with

people or anything outside of my own little world. I now know that I

was just in the habit of watching myself all day and was so

concerned about how I felt and how I could get better, that I had no

interest in the outside world. My anxiety consumed me. I was living

my life, while at the same time watching myself and doing neither

very well. When I was talking to people, my thoughts were

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constantly on myself and I found it hard to listen to, or concentrate

on, the other person’s conversation.

Is it any wonder we can’t follow a conversation when we are so

concerned about how we feel? We have become withdrawn into

ourselves and our mind becomes worn out and tired with all the

ceaseless pondering about how we feel, day in day out. Everything

feels grey and muzzy, our mind becomes less resilient and

concentration can be so hard to achieve. The more we brood about

our feelings, the more tired our mind becomes, continuing this cycle.

A person who has suffered may have spent months, even years,

studying the problem. Is it any wonder their mind feels dull,

unresponsive and so very tired? Even someone with a healthy mind

would struggle with this, yet we keep on thrashing our already tired

mind, day in day out. Just as your arms and legs can tire with over-

use, so can your mind. Sometimes you feel so tired and spent that

you have to drag your weary body around with you. This is as much

a tiredness of the mind as it is a tiredness of the body. If we over

exert ourselves, we rest our arms and legs. Imagine how weary they

would get if we just kept on going, as tired as our mind is now

perhaps.

You only have to go on a forum on the subject to see the many

posts nearly all stemming from people worrying about their

symptoms. Questions that regularly appear are:

Am I going mad?

Is this more than just anxiety?

When will this ever end?

Why do I seem to be getting worse and not better?

It really pains me to see people suffer in this way, as they just crave

for answers to their condition and are unable to find them. This in

turn sets them on the worry merry-go-round that continues the cycle

of anxiety. I will give you one vital piece of advice: YOU MUST NOT

WASTE ANYTIME TRYING TO WORK ANY OF IT OUT. This helps

to make your mind so much more flexible and gives it the breaks it

needs. There is nothing to work out. If you do what I say and just

carry on with your day however you feel, allowing yourself to feel

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anxious if need be, then what is there to say? You may feel your

mind chatter away but that’s fine, this is only habit. Let it ramble on.

With time this subsides when we stop all the constant worrying and

questioning about how we feel.

An explanation like this helped me to recover from this habit. I knew

that I did not have to keep running around in my mind all day,

looking for answers, questioning every feeling I felt. This is one thing

that I constantly have to reassure people about as they are

convinced it has to be more than this. The main reason people want

an answer is because they find this one of the hardest things to

accept. They believe there must be an immediate answer for them.

But, remember this: A healthy mind would not be able to feel like

you do in one day and neither can your tired mind recover in a day.

You did not start to feel like this overnight. It may have taken you

months, or even years, to reach the dull, unresponsive mind you

have now, so don’t expect it to be responsive and clear overnight.

Someone who came to me who is now fully recovered said ‘I did not

wake one day recovered, it was a transition’, and this is exactly what

it is - the old you comes back in layers. So don’t despair, in time it

can and will return to the normal clear mind you once had as long as

you step out of the way and give it a rest from all this worrying

introspection.

I have said all the things you are probably saying, e.g. “It won’t. I

know nothing else but this now. This is me”. Yes, and at one point,

you could probably never imagine feeling like you do now. I will not

lie to you and tell you that if you accept this strangeness for two

weeks, it will go! Never, ever put a time limit on how long it will take

for the feelings to go away. It took me a few months before I was

totally back to normal and achieved the clear mind I have now, a

mind that allows me to think and function just like I could before I

developed a tired mind (notice I say this often because that’s what it

is). Recovery comes at its own pace, but I did notice myself

gradually improving and becoming more alert, less clogged up.

Recovering can be just as rewarding as the actual recovery and the

little improvements that you will begin to notice help to build up your

confidence.

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All those treatments that promise to make you feel better within two

weeks, offering the new miracle cure, just give false hope. It just

can’t happen because it takes time to recover, to thaw out and feel

emotions again. If there were a miracle cure out there, we would all

know about it and someone would be very rich!! What you must do,

for the time being, is accept this muzzy head and the feelings of

strangeness. Do not question them, but accept their true cause

which is the constant worrying about the very symptom itself. The

less we concern ourselves with how we feel, the more we let other

things into our day. This is how to integrate back into normal living,

which is impossible while you spend all of your day worrying and

obsessing about how you feel. You need to care less about how you

are feeling and the more you do this, the more you allow other good

things in. At first you may still find your attention reverting back to

you and how you are feeling. It will do through memory and habit,

but the more you involve yourself with other things, the more

outward looking you will become and the cloud will begin to lift. It

may only be for a few fleeting moments at first, but in time it will

begin to lift more and more.

In my case, I began to understand why I felt this detachment from

people. I believed what I was told and then I stopped worrying about

feeling strange. I went into difficult situations, which meant talking to

people and friends, expecting to feel strange and detached. My

motto was: “If I feel strange, I feel strange”. I stopped worrying

about it and trying to analyse the feelings. I still felt them, but I

stopped worrying about them, and because I stopped anxiously

watching myself, I found I could follow a bit more of people’s

conversation. As time went by, I started to become more interested

in what they were saying, rather than worrying about myself. I had

started to connect with the outside world again. Can you see how

this happened? My habit of watching myself in these situations

lessened and not worrying about how strange I felt replaced the

habit of worrying about how I felt
. It became my new habit
. If you are

in similar situations, truly accept the strangeness you feel and do not

question any of it. It is temporary and not important. Even if you

have not felt like that for a while and it returns – don’t worry about it.

Memory alone can bring it back, but just live with it for now and, in

time, the accepting gives your mind the rest it needs and enables it

to become clearer and more responsive.

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What you must not do is try and force normal feelings. You must

wait for normal feeling to return of their own accord, which, in time,

they will. In your efforts not to feel the way you do and by

questioning why you do, day in, day out, you have been burdening

yourself with more thoughts and putting more pressure on your

already tired mind. I used to say, “My mind is a little tired at the

moment, there is nothing I can do about it and worrying about it

does not help. Anyway, it will not be there when I recover”.

The mere acceptance of this condition can bring with it a mind that

feels clearer than it has done in months. You may feel normal for a

while and believe that you are fully recovered, only to suddenly feel

engulfed again by feelings of detachment and disorientation. This is

normal; it takes time for your mind to adjust. Just experiencing a

brief moment of clear thinking is enough for you to know that you are

on the right path.

To sum up this chapter, accepting feeling strange means not trying

to work out why you feel like you do, not trying to get rid of these

feelings and not running away from them. It’s about being prepared

to carry on with your life despite them and understanding that it’s

totally normal in the circumstances to feel this way.

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SCARY/IRRATIONAL THOUGHTS

This is another symptom of anxiety that crops up quite often, so let

me try to give you an explanation.

"Why do I seem to have so many thoughts in a day and why are my

thoughts so irrational and scary?” you may ask. Well, don’t worry,

you are not ‘losing it’ or going insane, this is just another off-shoot of

anxiety.

The reason you seem to have your attention on yourself all day and

it feels like there are endless thoughts running through your mind is

twofold.

1. It is all the confusion about how you feel. Your mind spends

all day looking for answers and trying to find a way out of this

hell. Some people may even stay up all night, reflecting on

the whole day and trying to figure everything out. Eventually,

thinking just becomes automatic; it becomes a habit. All day,

every day, these thoughts seem to enter your head before

you even think them. Look at it this way: when people

meditate, they stop thinking for hours on end, until it

becomes a habit and they can go all day without a worrying

thought. This is why they feel so refreshed. Not you, your

thoughts just carry on and on, and when your mind is tired,

as it is now, it grabs hold of every thought, pulling them in

and making them stick.

2. Why are some thoughts so bad? When you are in an anxious

state, emotions seem to be tenfold, everything magnifies and

a little problem becomes massive. Something that you could

dismiss when you were healthy, can stick around all day.

Anxiety is really just caused by adrenalin that needs an outlet, a

release if you like, and this includes manifesting itself into scary,

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strange thoughts. They are not important and should be seen for

what they are - anxiety just playing its tricks.

Below are just some of the irrational thoughts on anxiety that I have

come across. I call them the ‘what ifs’!

What if no one can cure me?

What if it’s not anxiety, but a different mental problem?

What if my old self is lost forever?

What if there is something else wrong with me - brain tumour etc?

What if I lose control?

What if I can't breathe?

What if I have to live like this for the rest of my life?

What if this feeling never goes away?

What if it’s just me that feels like this?

What if I'll never be able to enjoy the things I used to?

What if I have an attack and pass out?

What if I cannot be the person I used to be?

You may have asked some of the above questions or recognise a

fear you have. Well, I did too. It was always ‘yes, but what if?’ Well,

all of these ‘what ifs’ usually amount to nothing. They prove to be

just an overactive mind playing its tricks on you. Thoughts seem to

come uninvited and always hold such power when we are anxious.

Also, a lack of understanding of anxiety can bring these fears. Like

me, you may have suffered for a long time without anyone

explaining to you why you feel like you do and you may not even