I am now thinking that I create all this woe is me panic and fear because I need some sort of drama in my life. Before when I was working or going to school there was always enough new stuff to keep my rain busy but now I am mostly on my own and not working in the real world my brain needs to create drama of some sort and the easiest way to do this is to create illness.
It's pretty straight forward. Find something that doesn't "feel quite right" physically and gnaw on it like a dog with a bone. Look up all the symptoms online and scare myself silly to the point of obsession. Eventually freak out so much that I *have* to go to the doctor because I am convinced I am dying only to be told "you're really quite healthy-stop worrying so much."
The kicker is the ol' brain goes hmmmmmm we don't actually believe this medical professional because the docs in St. John's completely misdiagnosed your dad and he died - right????? ( what was said to be stomach problems turned out to be pancreatic cancer.)
So the brain decides no I am not all healthy and the problem I am experiencing ( in this case anal fissures) is NOT normal and treatable and non life threatening and picks on a billion other things to make it seem worse, and the terrible cycle of panic and fear spirals out of control.
Truth of the matter is I am fine apart from a minor butt issues which are being resolved. Yeah it's painful, a little embaressing and horribly inconvinient. I had a very bad week last week but it's way better now and will continue to improve as the days go forward.
So what is the trick to turning this around...well I am trying positive thinking and reaffirmations every day. Like some sort of mantra I tell myself I am fine, happy and healthy every time I get scared or think something bad is going on. A relaxation technique that seems to be helping.
The brain is a powerful thing. And mine is definately showing me that when it comes to creating drama it rules!
I'm trying to get past myself but is hard to undo bad habits. It's hard to say wow, I'm happy and healthy and I like my life a lot. ( there is some guilt tied up in this I think) It's a long frigging hard road but the truth is I am tired of being so wrapped up in fear of ***something what ever no clues but it must be bad** that now I need and want to change. This is not how I want to live my life, and I wasn't always like this.
I'm 42, going through a mid life crisis but not dead, and according to all the tests so far I am healthy and there is nothing to freak out about. ( sorry but a sore ass doesn't really count as anything more than very annoying)
*sigh....
oh and this weekend my hard drive crashed. So am working on a secondary system at the moment ( an old hard drive that at least functions) My husband is a god when it comes to computer stuff and has successfully managed to rescue most of the data from the not so bad sectors of the HDD. ( that and some help from a nifty programe) Oddly enough he was surprised at how calm I was about the whole deal but A: it's hard to freak out about the HDD crash when one is freaking out about everything else- I can only do one item of drama at a time and B: I had absolute faith that he would be able to fix at least some of it.
This weekend was a bit of a washout because instead of going to the Shire party like we had planned I spent most of Saturday on the couch feeling pretty awful. Saturday evening noticed the dreaded death script of failure to read drive C etc... and mostly spent the evening watching tv.
Sunday was better, M'y folks came over for tea and cake and it was nice except I just couldn't sit a whole lot so I kept getting up. Then after they left M went back to the task of reconstructing me data and in between we continued to watch battlestar galactic ( the new one) and were pleasantly surprised to discover that while the pilot was a bit sucky the series was actuallyl pretty good.
M is very good at calming me down and keeping my freak out sessions to minimal. I am not quite sure how he puts up with me but he says I am not as bad as I think or feel I am...
yeah... it's all about the melodrama.
until then, be excellent to each other.
I'm with Marcus on that one. You feel worse than you display. I'm going to try and find a stress-reducing (more anxiety reducing) tapping exercise on-line that I use and send it to you. It helps. It got me through that horrible period when P was really ill when I spent time alternately shaking and coping. It helped with reducing the amount of time I spent spinning my wheels because I felt like I couldn't do anything or that everything was my fault. Hugs, L
ReplyDeleteLook up a book by Echart Tolle called "The Power of Now". I would describe it as an exercise in explaining what happens when a lost German depressive reinvents Zen for John Q Public.
ReplyDeleteVery good read, interesting ideas and certainly some of it sounds like it would be applicable to your situation.