Things out of my control
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Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 1,295
Things out of my control
I have been separated again from exah two months, so this is not about him anymore, it is about me.
Over the past decade + I have formed anxiety that causes me to be paralyzed. When anything important is out of my control, I freeze and am riddled with anxiety for days.
I didn't used to be this way...I don't think. Maybe on a much smaller scale, but not like this, or, living with an alcoholic brought it to light. I could have been simply unaware.
Either way, I have ended up here. Sometimes I am able to snap out of it, but not nearly often enough. Other times I am obsessed with whatever the thing is, and everything else stops until it is taken care of.
Recently something happened that was completely out of my control. I had to wait a few weeks for it to be sorted out, and in the end it worked out fine, in fact had a pleasant twist that will bring me some good money. The problem is that it takes me days to recover.
I also suffer from some 'good girl' 'bad girl' thing where I cannot be in anyway in TROUBLE.
I was exonerated from this recent thing today. But it left me paralyzed for days, and I feel like I have been holding my breath, and am finally relaxing a little.
Has anyone, or does anyone, suffer from paralyzing inability to act when anxiety ridden, and just what are your coping methods to bring yourself out of it?
If you have examples that don't involve the alcoholic in your life, I would prefer them because I need to detach that aspect as much as possible to avoid mental confusion.
Over the past decade + I have formed anxiety that causes me to be paralyzed. When anything important is out of my control, I freeze and am riddled with anxiety for days.
I didn't used to be this way...I don't think. Maybe on a much smaller scale, but not like this, or, living with an alcoholic brought it to light. I could have been simply unaware.
Either way, I have ended up here. Sometimes I am able to snap out of it, but not nearly often enough. Other times I am obsessed with whatever the thing is, and everything else stops until it is taken care of.
Recently something happened that was completely out of my control. I had to wait a few weeks for it to be sorted out, and in the end it worked out fine, in fact had a pleasant twist that will bring me some good money. The problem is that it takes me days to recover.
I also suffer from some 'good girl' 'bad girl' thing where I cannot be in anyway in TROUBLE.
I was exonerated from this recent thing today. But it left me paralyzed for days, and I feel like I have been holding my breath, and am finally relaxing a little.
Has anyone, or does anyone, suffer from paralyzing inability to act when anxiety ridden, and just what are your coping methods to bring yourself out of it?
If you have examples that don't involve the alcoholic in your life, I would prefer them because I need to detach that aspect as much as possible to avoid mental confusion.
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I don't have any direct experience like your story, but I have lived with anxiety a long time.
Therapy made a huge difference for me, a type especially that worked on old stuff. My anxiety was brought about from some PTSD type stuff (and I really thought that it was about the stuff in the moment). When you have trauma in your life it often does not have a time stamp attached to it, so it you feel similar to something that happened years ago you relive it, sometimes again, and again, and again.
Learning about meditation really helped too.
Therapy made a huge difference for me, a type especially that worked on old stuff. My anxiety was brought about from some PTSD type stuff (and I really thought that it was about the stuff in the moment). When you have trauma in your life it often does not have a time stamp attached to it, so it you feel similar to something that happened years ago you relive it, sometimes again, and again, and again.
Learning about meditation really helped too.
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Join Date: Jul 2012
Posts: 44
I can identify with the paralysis and inability to make a decision (even a simple decision) for fear of making the wrong decision.
I came across this quote in another thread recently:
"Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgement that something else is more important than fear."
It's helped me make (and in some cases, stick with) a few decisions lately.
Take care
SG
I came across this quote in another thread recently:
"Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgement that something else is more important than fear."
It's helped me make (and in some cases, stick with) a few decisions lately.
Take care
SG
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Posts: 10,944
For me, when I feel like that, it all boils down to my self-esteem. I doubt my ability to be able to handle whatever it is, so I fret and worry. I have suffered from the thinking I'm "in trouble" over the smallest things. As my self-esteem has improved, these doubts and paraylsis have improved, too.
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Join Date: Jul 2012
Posts: 490
I went through a period of suffering overwhelming anxiety and panic attacks. With some counselling I worked out that it was my fear of ill health. I had, at that time, a long term illness which I have since recovered from and my mother was undergoing treatment for cancer and it looked like she wouldn't make it.
My brother finally told me that he had panic attacks and anxiety too. His method of dealing with panic attacks and anxiety was to "speak to" the attack and the anxiety. He dares them to "Come on, kill me now!" because they can't and they don't. I tried it and it works for me too.
My brother finally told me that he had panic attacks and anxiety too. His method of dealing with panic attacks and anxiety was to "speak to" the attack and the anxiety. He dares them to "Come on, kill me now!" because they can't and they don't. I tried it and it works for me too.
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 1,452
There is a saying, Buddhist I think, about what to do when anxiety comes your way that goes something like this:
"Acknowledge your feelings, but don't invite them to tea".
It just gives me such a wonderful image, and the humor of it often makes me step back from my intense, almost obsessive anxiety at that moment, and get some perspective.
There is another spiritual image that helps me. It is an image of a beautiful house, almost a temple, with a path leading up to the front door. And at the porch guarding the door are two spiritual beings - maybe angels if you like, or maybe fierce protective dogs or dragons who won't let anyone who doesn't belong or is hurtful into the temple.
The temple is your sacred being, your inner health and peace. The dragons are the self-protective part of you that has the right - almost the obligation -to screen the thoughts and feelings and ideas that want to enter the temple and turn away those that are not worthy.
This image helps me stop the anxious fearful thoughts for a moment and reflect on their nature. If the thoughts are getting me more and more stirred up or paralyzed, then this moment of reflection takes me out of their obsessive handcuffs and lets me step back and look at the thoughts. Just this amount of emotional/intellectual distance diminishes the power of those crazed emotions, and that alone can break the anxiety cycle.
In other words, you have to find ways to jolt yourself into remembering that the totality of YOU is much more than the control of those disturbing thoughts and emotions. Once you do that, you can begin to make choices about what you WANT to think about. It breaks the compulsion.
Another thing I used to do for my kids when they were teenagers and terrible worriers
was to give them a rubber band or hair elastic to put on their wrist. Then I would say, now we're going to schedule worry time and when you have a worried or anxious thought, look at this elastic and then look at your watch. If it is not worry time yet, well just put another elastic on your wrist so you won't forget what you need to worry about, and wait until the right time and you can worry about everything at once. That will save you a lot of time. It was so silly that I'd hear that "mo-OM -om" voice - you know the one that teenagers have when they think you couldn't have said ANYTHING more STUPID than what you just said. And then they'd be laughing and into a different mood.
Meditation helps me greatly. To do it, you have to clear those anxious thoughts that run around wildly like chickens with their heads cut off, and get to a deeper more peaceful place. You are moving from the place of fear and obsessive repetition of ideas to a place of peace, of respite, of renewal. That is where I find God, where I find my inner resilience and strength.
There are many tapes that you can buy or get from the library with guided meditations. That may be a good place to start, if you don't have a religious or spiritual tradition that practices prayer or meditation.
What the guided meditations do - or using a mantra - is to give the brain, (the "thought police" that keep that anxiety going) a word or image to focus on and keep busy with. ( It's kind of like giving the dog - or the boss! - a bone to worry about so that they quit bugging you and let you get on with what you need to do.) That allows the spiritual part of you to bypass the anxiety or fear and start to find some peace in a totally different part of your being. And in that place, I find peace, I find calm, I am renewed and relieved of the anxiety.
I often recite the 23rd Psalm to myself; it comforts me.
Hope this helps, I am really thinking of you, with you, praying for you.
BothSidesNow
"Acknowledge your feelings, but don't invite them to tea".
It just gives me such a wonderful image, and the humor of it often makes me step back from my intense, almost obsessive anxiety at that moment, and get some perspective.
There is another spiritual image that helps me. It is an image of a beautiful house, almost a temple, with a path leading up to the front door. And at the porch guarding the door are two spiritual beings - maybe angels if you like, or maybe fierce protective dogs or dragons who won't let anyone who doesn't belong or is hurtful into the temple.
The temple is your sacred being, your inner health and peace. The dragons are the self-protective part of you that has the right - almost the obligation -to screen the thoughts and feelings and ideas that want to enter the temple and turn away those that are not worthy.
This image helps me stop the anxious fearful thoughts for a moment and reflect on their nature. If the thoughts are getting me more and more stirred up or paralyzed, then this moment of reflection takes me out of their obsessive handcuffs and lets me step back and look at the thoughts. Just this amount of emotional/intellectual distance diminishes the power of those crazed emotions, and that alone can break the anxiety cycle.
In other words, you have to find ways to jolt yourself into remembering that the totality of YOU is much more than the control of those disturbing thoughts and emotions. Once you do that, you can begin to make choices about what you WANT to think about. It breaks the compulsion.
Another thing I used to do for my kids when they were teenagers and terrible worriers
was to give them a rubber band or hair elastic to put on their wrist. Then I would say, now we're going to schedule worry time and when you have a worried or anxious thought, look at this elastic and then look at your watch. If it is not worry time yet, well just put another elastic on your wrist so you won't forget what you need to worry about, and wait until the right time and you can worry about everything at once. That will save you a lot of time. It was so silly that I'd hear that "mo-OM -om" voice - you know the one that teenagers have when they think you couldn't have said ANYTHING more STUPID than what you just said. And then they'd be laughing and into a different mood.
Meditation helps me greatly. To do it, you have to clear those anxious thoughts that run around wildly like chickens with their heads cut off, and get to a deeper more peaceful place. You are moving from the place of fear and obsessive repetition of ideas to a place of peace, of respite, of renewal. That is where I find God, where I find my inner resilience and strength.
There are many tapes that you can buy or get from the library with guided meditations. That may be a good place to start, if you don't have a religious or spiritual tradition that practices prayer or meditation.
What the guided meditations do - or using a mantra - is to give the brain, (the "thought police" that keep that anxiety going) a word or image to focus on and keep busy with. ( It's kind of like giving the dog - or the boss! - a bone to worry about so that they quit bugging you and let you get on with what you need to do.) That allows the spiritual part of you to bypass the anxiety or fear and start to find some peace in a totally different part of your being. And in that place, I find peace, I find calm, I am renewed and relieved of the anxiety.
I often recite the 23rd Psalm to myself; it comforts me.
Hope this helps, I am really thinking of you, with you, praying for you.
BothSidesNow
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