Empowering Group Program Run-through part4

[forever young 06]

hi all I am a little behind. I went to my daughters yesterday and kept her kids. this keeps me very busy as she went shopping for Christmas and I was there from 8 till 8 along day. but I love those sweet hearts so much and makes me get out. I had some feelings driving out there and was trying to figure out why do I feel this way. I am beginning to believe my physical symptoms are anxiety related. I kept telling my self I was okay. I kept myself from going into total anxiety and panic which I hope I can keep this up when I get into my worst phobic places. after my first rough feelings I felt really good the rest of the day. I was so proud of that.

mike I too would like to go back to work but I feel like I need to work on myself at this time. I also didn't feel like I could work with the spells I have. it is going to take sometime to get better rome was not built in a day. when I wrote about my mom and our relationship I didn't have much of a reaction I have moved on there is nothing else I can do. I am trying to move forward. I don't need to look back.

I guess I need some more time on this lesson too as it is very important one. I also need to go back and review tape 2 also. I am going to busy this week. I am trying to get up decorations for Christmas and then Thanksgiving. I am not fond of the diet and excersice lesson. I am trying but don't do good every day. I am going to have to get busy now and start decorating the tree.

[THH]

I have been practicing having low expectations this week. It is hard, and it also shows how often that I automatically create them. I kind of get this lesson more than 2 & 3.
I have when I feel pretty good, I have probed my feelings to figure out what is troubling me. interesting I have come up with a solution for my anxiety with my mom. I will take control of my panic and if she calls during, I will wait till I am up to returning the call. I also will not involve her with my doctoring or dental. I am grown and I do not need permission, or another source of anxiety on top of what I am dealing with. I have a doctor and a dentist to give me their best care, and the rest is me believing in myself and Gods Blessing. I need to be my comfort to myself. It is part of growing up and winning the war on anxiety. That was one that I have been working on.

Mike,
Yes, lesson 2 really is a very good one. If you trace your thoughts back you can usually uncover where this stress is coming from. Correct those thoughts with correct statements and begin to feel better. It is hard.
I watched a scary show last night and woke up thinking about it. That shows me how we really are connected to our thoughts. Living in the present moment takes lots of practice, and session 2 is a great reminder!

Good idea, I will post as much as I can. I know a couple days will be hard. I at times still have those body symptoms I'm sure we all do as you say we face truths about our selves we don't want to see or confront. But we are strong, were learning, and trying. Taking a break is often just what we need to do too!

[THH]

Forever young!

Good for you!!! It really is a feel good moment when follow these steps and go on to have a beautiful day. Like Ken talked about sabotaging a day from when you get up and start to have negative thoughts and get body symptoms and worry. BUT you can take control and steer away and go ahead and turn things around. Good for you~ To me & my health anxiety, that is exactly what it is. I resisted for many years in disbelief that I was making myself feel this way. I can change this thinking.You did just proved it! It takes awareness, courage & a want to attitude. Sounds simple... LOL... I know... I want my responses to come automatic too.

[MapleLane]

With regards to some posting last week...

Mike: Yes you really had a major impact on my life! I'm glad you appreciated reading that - I hope you realize how important you have been in my life and I hope you feel awesome about that!!

Because you are the person you are - with your unique blend of personality, experiences, knowledge, strengths and weaknesses - you were able to help me in a way the psychologist, psychiatrist, and counsellors over the years did not. So I hope you remember to feel good about who you are because its the reason you made such an impact on me - that's the simple truth of it.
And by the way, my mom still says, 'God Bless Mike!'
I think it would be neat if you two met some day

[Ninjafrodo2]

First of all I just wanted to say Awe!!!! It does make me feel good to hear the impact that I have made on people's lives, yes it does make me feel good MapleLane! I also want to say that I appreciate the support and comfort from both ForeverYoung and THH, you both seem to be really good at being comforting when you responded to me especially with the job situation, what both of you said was not only very thoughtful but it had some really good energy behind it...I also wanted to say that its interesting how before if I heard these kinds of statements, I wouldn't really feel them, it would just feel empty but now I can truely say that yes in fact, I do feel really good about them! I have been trying to cultivate compassion within myself using a meditation where i'm focusing on the positive attributes of myself, the things I really love about myself and then breathing in love to myself whenever I'd breath in and then breath out...sometimes I'd even breath out that same love for 2 specific people that are dealing with serious health issues and could use the healing.

ForeverYoung;
Wow you really do deserve to feel proud of that, you are starting to really recognize the moment you start to feel the body symptoms, you're starting to recognize the anxiety, you were able to calm yourself down and prevent yourself from escalating into a panic attack....that is really amazing, I'm really proud of you too, I know how hard it has been for you, I know you've been struggling awhile with this even with the years you've had the program but you are really finally starting to make real progress, you are starting to become aware, that is wonderful news! And don't worry about being behind, its fine, things happen but you came back and you're still working on this

Also when you said you didn't have much of a reaction, and said there was nothing else you could do...I was wondering if you had ment about the situation or about any possible hurts or carried over feelings on your side about it.

THH;
Yeah I hear you on the automatically creating expectations part, I've noticed that I've been doing that as well. From reading your post I'd say you are starting to become Assertive and building up boundaries (instead of walls) and that is definately healthy! This is part of growing up and if you have healthy boundaries and you enforce them well then you won't have to have those strong expectations in order to protect yourself, you'll have a healthier way to take care of yourself.

Well no expectations from me on you posting every single day...do what you can and yeah the body symptoms are still there but I've reached a revelation today about something which i'll post after this one.

[Ninjafrodo2]

Ok so I have a few great things to share with you today, a couple amazing insights.

One thing that I've found this lesson has done for me is it has made me really question what I believed to be an accomplishment when it comes to goals, specifically goals with the program but it can work with other goals as well. I decided to start to write out a list of the possible other goals than the ones that I've been focusing on (Overcoming the anxiety and feeling good), which have actually lead me to feeling bad when I noticed I had not had them and was still struggling.

So here is a list of what qualifies as accomplishments when it comes to working on the program and working on any skill or task that helps with any of my goals. So I am successful when;

• I am able to think about doing something different from what I habitually do that will make my life better. (I got that one from THH, thank you by the way)
  
  I make an attempt and try to do the activity that'll help me reach the overall goal
  
  If I'm able to do the activity and even do it 10% correctly
  
  If I give the best effort I can in that moment towards the goal
  
  If I'm able to learn from the experience of trial and error
  
  If I come back to the task after taking a break
  
  If I'm making progress and seeing improvement in my ability to do the task/activity
  
  If I become more comfortable and confident in my abilities to do the task or more
  comfortable with the task
  
  If I master the task where i'm doing it correctly at least 80-90% of the time
  
  If my perception of the task is more positive than before
  
  If I get new insights
  
  If I am able to stay in the moment while doing the task
  
  If I achieve the overall goal

We cannot always control the outcome, so why should our ability to succeed only be based on what the outcome is? Why not base our ability to succeed on what we do have control over? Which is the effort we put in, what we learn, our perception, our ability to progress and our ability to stay in the moment while we are doing it?

The more options there are to succeed the easier it will be to succeed and the more likely you'll want to work towards a goal and make it a reality and the more motivated and positive you'll be about the process as well....could you imagine what it would feel like if you knew success was very easy and that it was really hard not to succeed?


Also with lesson 2 it had focused on facing body symptoms...One thought that I didn't really catch until now but finally realize it has been there for a long time (in the other program run throughs even) is that because I was facing my body symptoms, that now I had no excuse but to face my limitations then, I had it, it was a big should for me....I'm starting to see that as an expectation and why its also not a realistic one.

->Right now we are still trying to get comfortable with the body symptoms, facing situations that cause an immense ammount of anxiety right now can be really overbearing...its kind of like when Dr.Fischer was talking about putting someone at the top of an escalator that has a fear of escalators and telling them to get on is not the answer, you have to have the skills first! This is a gradual process to build confidence in the skills and myself in being able to face the anxiety and if I were to do that right now, I could really be putting way too much pressure on myself, it could really discourage my efforts and even be a setback and a setup for more depression and hopelessness.

I also remember a situation way before I got the program and even knew about the anxiety where I went from being agoraphobic, I had also a few months before taking this one job, had to leave my house, leave my family and was going through alot of turmoil and pain....I took this job where I was working with hundreds of people at a ski resort, being a lift operator when I was terrified of being around people and I didn't have good coping skills and each day I had to work, I ended up being so afraid and so anxious that I ended up having cramps and deherria every day of work! I didnm't really have alot of choice at the time but I do now and facing anxiety does not have to be that scary and frightening and with building confidence in gaining the skills it would take aloooooot of the edge off! I know it does that from experience as well with other situations where I've been yelled at by someone and the anxiety spiking up for less than a minute and going away.

So the key now is just to go about my regular business and focus on the day to day anxiety and the body symptoms of that and to get comfortable with those and while I build up my confidence with that, then I can go after the more challenging things, like speaking in front of a crowd of people, going up the CN Tower, Making Videos and Putting them out there on Youtube and starting work again.

Thought replacements;

1)I slept till 1pm, I'm so lazy
Label, Mental filter

No it doesn't make me lazy, it means I went to sleep late and woke up late. I still get a great deal done on a daily basis, I'm still struggling with the sleep, its been a really long standing way of coping with extraordinary stress, it served me and now i'm starting to let it go but it will take time to change this and thats ok.

2)I should be trying harder with my limitations, my sleep, my eating habits, and staying in the moment as well.
Should, Mental Filter

I'm doing a great job as it is right now, I'm making progress and its going to take time to change these behaviors and patterns. Some of these things I've been doing for more than half my life and they aren't things that can just change overnight. Not to mention letting go of alot of these patterns that got me through some really difficult times is very scary. I'm going to be easier on myself, I'm going to allow myself to go through the process however long it takes and that'll help me to feel better and get me to where I want to go.


PS I'm working on turning the things on the accomplishment list into picture quotes as well as the 6 steps and you guys are definately welcome to print them off, cut them out, paste them on a page or something and take them with you in order to remind yourself of them and so you can have them whenever you really need them and to also anchor them in so they become second nature to you.


Mike

[MapleLane]

I appreciated the idea of knocking off some of the 'shoulds' and also of turning some of the 'shoulds' into reasonable goals.

Some of my shoulds are obvious and others are more hidden.

And some of my 'shoulds' are a little ridiculous.
In thinking it over I actually found that quite a number of my 'shoulds' are based on good things that my thinking just takes too far and then it stresses me out.

So I bet with looking at these things in a new way I can lower stress/anxiety, and set and meet some goals.

[MapleLane]

At one point Lucinda mentions a lady that wished she could just go back to the way she was.
That really struck me as I've wished that many times. A lot of the things that are difficult now were things I wouldn't even blink at before.

But it is true that even before the panic attacks started I was slowly and steadily setting myself up for real difficulties because even though I had no limitations from anxiety, I didn't have a particularly healthy way of looking at things.

Obviously I'd have preferred things never got as hard as they did, but I sure have learned and experienced a lot and there absolutely are ways I've become a better, fuller person through it.

It really makes me ask myself whether I'd rather be the me that didn't have panic attacks but had negative unhealthy thinking and low self-esteem and didn't realize it, or the me that has to handle panic/anxiety but has been made aware of the negative unhealthy thinking and has improved her inner self and has way higher self-esteem?
I actually don't know.

[MapleLane]

NinjaFrodo:

That's a bummer about the comment your cousin made. I think sometimes when people say stuff like that they don't realize that it actually makes them look ignorant and unkind (not knowledgable or superior) - certainly to the people who know better and are aware that these situations are not as simple as she'd have it seem.


As for the work situation, I support you going with your intuition as to whether it's a good fit for you and good timing.

I believe you mentioned getting a job as a goal early on in the program? I was going to ask you whether you had considered finding a volunteer opportunity rather than jumping into a full-time job?
It might be a good way to get out there in an area you're interested in and be less intense of a commitment since it could be for a couple hours a week rather than forty.

I'm finding it useful to progressively desensitize myself to anxiety producing situations so I was trying to think of what might be a step between no job and a full-time job.

(Also because you wouldn't be paid you wouldn't have to deal with any complications of payment regarding your disability income).

[MapleLane]

THH: You mentioned watching a scary show. That's something I've learned to be aware of too.
I avoid the more disturbing stuff no matter what since I don't think that sort of thing is conducive to anyone's health. But within the range of what's left I do know that during certain times it's better for me to stick to shows with far more positive in them.

And I enjoyed what you shared about when you looked at your old answer about your expectations of the program


ForeverYoung: That's great you've been working on recognizing those physical feelings and were able to hold panic at bay.
It can take practice, that's for sure.
I still get tricked sometimes when the physical symptoms are a variation on what I'm used to, and I wonder what on earth is going on. And so far each of those times it's ended up that whether its within minutes or hours I recognize that they are panic related. But in that interval before you recognize it, it can be alarming, I know!