Stress Center Peer Support

Hi all,

I haven't posted here in a while - it's been over a year! I had a really rough winter last year, but I was finally able to overcome anxiety and get off meds that I had been on for about 10 years. - So praise God for that! -
But just like the winter quickly crept up on us, so did my anxiety this month. It seems almost automatic - Winter means anxiety and stress. It's happened the last 3 years in a row now.
Basically, I'm super hard on myself - to the point where I lose sleep at night and am usually sick for half of the day. I've been spending a good portion of the day today reading various posts and being encouraged, and trying to go back through some of the old techniques I learned to help me.
I can (and do) beat up on myself all day and I've really been trying to turn that around for the last day or two - replacing the negative voices in my head with positive ones. I'm make a few strides forward (my defense attorney reassuring me), by combating the lies with phrases like "no, you're not the stupidest person in the world", "you aren't the most incredibly awkward person ever", or "a 10 yr old does not have more common sense than you!" But then the negative voices in my head have a much stronger rebuttle for my previous argument like "remember that thing you did? No one is that stupid!" I have gotten so used to negative self talk that my conscious actually hires a stonger prosecution attorney to convince myself it's all true.
Does anyone else experience this and have any useful tips to combat these attacks?

I'd recommend you go buy the book "What to Say When You Talk To Yourself" by Shad Helmstetter. It's all about reprogramming your brain to think positively instead of negatively. I have this problem too and reading this book always makes me feel better.

It is normal to feel more anxious and stressed in winter. It is a proven fact that generally people are happier on sunny, bright and warm days as compared to foggy, dark, colder days.

Secondly my approach to the voices you talk about has been very different than just self-talk. Back when I had panic attacks positive self-talk made me feel like I'm abnormal and need to be helped. In a nutshell it made me feel miserable.

What I did instead was two things. 1) I did things that kept me and my active mind busy so negatice thoughts couldn't come to me 2) I did things that made me feel good about myself.

Anothony Robbins rightfully states that your motions and emotions are inter-related. If you don't change your life-style then you are going to have to go through hours of positive self-talk every day. Positive self-talk DOES help to get your inner game together but you need to get the outside world on the positive side as well.

You need to DO things to change your outside world and therefore feel good about yourself. Whether it's your job that could be different, your lifestyle and eating and exercise habits etc...

For me, my goals make me feel good about myself. I want to become wealthy and thats where my focus is and every chunk of money I save and invest give me added confidence points. Also my training, losing weight etc make me feel good about myself. Helping people on this forum makes me feel good about myself. Giving money to charity makes me feel good about myself. In addition playing games and watching movies and playing video games, reading books and solcializing with friends eat up my time so much that I barely get time to rest.

With that lifestyle not only negative thoughts dont's stand a chance but also positive selftalk happens on its own. You need to change both inner and outside world.

Trust me you will be fine.