Ups and downs.

Well, start of the week was a bad one. My anxiety was really bad for three days and I couldn't stop myself thinking I was having a heart attack or something. Went to the doctors and upped my dose a little, but I don't want to stay on a higher dose so I'm using this time to read my Worry Cure by DR Robert Leahy book. It's basically cognitive therapy in a book and is really helping me at the moment.

It explains everything to you very simply and can give you some real insight into how the brain works and how a worrier's brain can go from a simple worry to a devastating one in seconds. I recommend it to anyone who is struggling to understand their anxiety.

Mine apparently comes from my inferiority complex and also because I tend to do the worst things you can do when you're anxious, catastrophize everything that comes into your head. Which I do, a lot. Those little aches and pains or worries get catapulted into the worst possible scenario and instead of your brain telling you that it's very unlikely, like a normal person's brain would, it tells you that for you, it's extremely likely.

The journey is getting back to reality, stop yourself looking through your 'disaster lenses' and see the world how it really is, also seeing yourself as you really are. A normal person with the same chances as everyone else. There is nothing about me that makes me more likely to have something devastatingly bad happen to me over and over again. I will go through the same pains as everyone else, but also the same happy moments. Which I'm trying to concentrate on at the moment.

It's not positive thinking that I'm trying to do, it's rational thinking. Good things are as likely to happen to you as bad ones. It's just hard to see that way after something so horrible as your mother dying. But I will get there. It will be a long journey and the next few weeks/months might be hard but I have been through worse than panic attacks.

I recommend reading a little of the book a day, maybe at night like me and using the tables and charts in the book whenever you can. It gives you a better sense of reality and a good idea of your own weaknesses; which part of you needs the most work and which doesn't.

But, you have to want it. You have to have the willpower to pull yourself out of the black hole that anxiety puts you in, it's hard and extremely tiring but you can do it. If I can, anyone can.

NX