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I've been a neurotic ,anxiety riddled individual for many decades and self medicated with alcohol which I've documented in the past on here iirc, but stopped that nearly five years ago after it nearly killing me.
Anyhow ...I have tried most therapies, take meds, exercise a lot and have meditated every day for a long time now.
Despite all that I still experience or get "hijacked" by anxiety on a regular basis.
I am doing better at the moment but for a while now another frustrating issue has reared it's ugly head and I wondered if anyone had any advice .
When I am in social situations ..even with people I feel relaxed with ( tbh I don't socialize much ) I regularly experience a horrible feeling in the background . It's a combination of feeling ill at ease and slight dizziness . It appears without any conscious cognitive anxiety and as you would expect gets worse as I notice it .
Yesterday a friend came round for a tea in the garden . All the time we were talking I had the experience described above and it is not nice .
WTF is going on and what can I do.
We all have our crosses to bear and health challenges as we get older and I am grateful it is nothing serious but it does, and has affected my life quite badly.
Thanks in advance.
Bill
I get that feeling loads.
It's the slightest flicker of a sensation that rapidly becomes extremely uncomfortable once we notice it. It then becomes more intense and ruins the experience of, what should be, a pleasant interaction.
I've been through all the treatments; even practicing them with my own patients. Nothing really worked.
Then I developed the "F*ck it" technique. I've also developed my own "F*ck you" technique, and a "F*ck right off" technique too. Generally, the first one is highly effective.
How it works is this: When I notice those sensations creeping in, I internally address them. I take on a super-assertive/aggressive manner (Think Trainspotting 1 Begbie) and shout "F*ck you". I've decided that the negative consequences of the unpleasant feeling don't matter. I don't care how they affect me. I overpower the negative feeling and render it useless. I then carry on and generally feel fine.
The trick is that the shout needs to be internal... unless you are alone maybe. This works for me in milliseconds. Pretty much 100% of situations too.
I've used this technique to conquer many, many fears too. No longer do I feel the irrational urge to jump off high buildings, I don't feel like I'm going to faint all the time, and I don't get a mad urge to punch people that I shouldn't. (For the record, I don't feel suicidal and some people probably should be punched!). This simple technique has enabled me to enjoy a "normal" life and achieve lots of things that I would have avoided in the past.
I've always been like this since my earliest memories as a child. I'm not sure there's really a way to get rid of it for good, but medication has genuinely helped. There is a stigma against it sure, but **** it if it helps it helps.
My only thought is have you had wider mindfulness training beyond daily meditation. I read book about consciousness recently and realised that I need to do more specific brain training. So far I've not actioned this much it's an area I haven't really considered before. Bill all the best progress on this
I have anxiety that’s the reverse of most people in that, instead of going into fight or flight, I do the opposite and go into a playing dead/dissociating state. So I don’t actually look anxious, I go quiet, it looks like I’m chilled, but it’s actually a bit locked in.
The two things I’ve been doing recently are EMDR and TRE. Both of them sound a bit crazy, but have grown out of people treating PTSD. EMDR is currently used by the LAPD and involves stimulating the different hemispheres of your brain in a way that gets them to chill out (obvs not the medical explanation, but that’s my sense of the experience) TRE takes the body’s natural unconscious anxiety processing (shaking essentially) and teaches you how to use it consciously. They’ve both had a profound effect on my life and would recommend them to anyone.
Some fantastic replies that give me hope despite all the years of battling various related troubles. Really, really appreciate it and the well wishing too. Life is difficult when you have a mysterious hijacker . God knows how some people cope and many don't I know. I've had a privileged life just the mental health has been a pain but many things to be grateful for.
Hearing others can relate makes me feel less alone . I always blamed myself for this problem ..thinking the drinking caused it but that was really just 35 yrs of self medicating for a trauma I hadn't even realized had happened until a very expensive and respected therapist pointed out it probably all started as a baby ( I won't go in to great detail) but she made total sense . She also used EMDR like Prince Harry has been having . I don't think it helped me much because I couldn't recall any specific thing that happened but my mother suffered terribly from anxiety and lost 2 children before me so it seems she passed her intense worry on to me although I didn't know it.I also nearly died soon after birth which can't have helped. I never realized the effect such things could have nearly 60 yrs later.
Oh and I will give the Fxxx it etc techniques a try ...Good stuff! I never heard of TRE before so will look at that too.I have tried many things over the years and also been through a mindfulness based stress reduction course on the NHS but as was mentioned perhaps need something more specific .
Doctors have little to offer me and I tend to know more than they do having been a sufferer and determined to sort it out. Even the expensive therapist said "Bill ..you know so much " She said I need to use my prefrontal cortex more . I think my amygdala has shrunk tbh after practicing meditation more regularly as I react less but I would really like what's left to F*** off and leave me alone!
Sanername, that sounds like a genuine response to the situation
Anxiety is normal, historically it would have been quite useful to be worried and stressed to stop you getting killed and motivate you to do things. Now it's just a pain in the arse when you worry about things you don't need to. I think more people struggle with this than let on. You can self medicate with drink, drugs even food. All those angry people you meet are probably fighting a battle in their heads that you walked in on. If you look for statistics on people who've admitted to feel suicidal, the numbers are staggering! I saw one that was 1 in 2 people during their life will think about it at some point (although not necessarily take any actions).
I can believe the F*** Technique works. If you do some reading around ACT there are a couple of techniques. One is that when you notice you are starting to enter a negative thought pattern to do something positive. So if you have strong connections to friends and family, give someone a call and say hello to break the cycle in a positive way. The other is to acknowledge the negative thought and label it as that. There's a whole bit about "Oh, that's just a worry" - don't fight it, accept it's normal and don't get hung up on it and concentrate on it.
Oh yeah, totally a normal response to a situation... now that I know about it! 🙂 it’s just not the way people normally think about it. It was only the TRE classes that got me thinking about it in that way.