Dear CW21,

I have just finished a bout of councelling. Her last words to me were obvious but potent. I think they may help you.....

"Every thought we have results in a physical reaction".

The trouble is, yes you can control these thoughts to a point but then the subconscious takes over and we start to experience symptoms with no seeming connection to thoughts.

Please practice for a few mins a day concerntrating on your breathing, become aware of how you feel when you think.
You have gone past the point of control over your body temporarily but you will get it back. For now deal with your physical horrid symptoms and remember what you have been through already.
Your body does not need to experience any more disturbing thoughts.

Take care

You cannot "stop" or "control" intrusive thoughts; trying to do so only makes them much stronger. The stronger your reaction to a thought, the more like it is to magnify in power and stay with you.

Let's say an intrusive thought pops up. Now you have a choice. You can treat the thought as if it is a real concern--that you have disease x--and surf the internet in an effort to reassure yourself that you don't have disease x. This is obsessive-compulsive behavior and will almost certainly make your anxiety worse--not better--because you will not be able to definitively convince yourself that you do NOT have disease x.

As an alternative, you can treat the intrusive thought as exactly what it is--an intrusive thought. I like to think of these thoughts as "mental noise" or "mental static." ACCEPT the thought and ACCEPT the possibility that you DO have disease x and that there is nothing you can do about it. Find an activity to distract yourself, but whatever you do, don't try to stop or control the thought. You'll end up spiraling downward.

This isn't easy and it takes practice, which is why I recommend in another post that you make an appointment with a psychologist who specializes in anxiety disorders.

I reread my previous post and it sounds harsher than I meant it. I try to be firm on this issue because I had years of my life destroyed by panic and OCD before I learned how to treat it. And the longer one waits to treat an anxiety disorder, the more difficult it becomes.

Check out this site. It may be helpful:

http://www.ocfoundation.org/whatisocd.aspx

Maybe you just need to really accept, I mean really accept, that the anxiety disorder itself is not your fault.

You're not choosing to feel this anxiety. Whenever someone tells me I'm being anxious I feel like part of that sentence includes blame, so I tend to disregard what they're saying. I feel like shouting, "I'm not choosing to make myself crazy, thank you very much! This could be REAL you know!" And then I'm stuck on a train of proving my anxiety is justified. Not a good focus.

So remove the blame and accept that for whatever reason (I'd guess PCS obviously) your brain is wired on some high voltage anxiety setting. Fact.

That is not your fault. And when people notice your anxiety they are not telling you something you don't know, deep down. And they're not blaming you either. It's just a fact, like I have brown hair. Or I have brown eyes. I have an anxiety disorder. No one can reset that for you, so think of it as a factory setting. At least for now.

So what is your job? Your job is to learn how to accept this high voltage anxiety setting in a way that no longer disrupts your quality of life. That job is something you CAN control. Does that make sense?

You don't get to control when the anxiety hits. You control the response, that's all. It may never totally eradicate the anxiety attacks but you'll notice it builds your confidence. In turn, the attacks should become less bothersome because you're not fueling the adrenal furnace that keeps them coming.

Look up PMR (progressive muscular relaxation) or do deep breathing, until you can calm enough to rest. When settled down sometime tomorrow, see if you can get your wife to call around to find a counsellor who does CBT (Cognitive behavioural therapy, which is what I went through years and years before this injury of mine and I still use the techniques to this day, drug free so far. I had gone through PTSD as a young woman)

Incidentally what Mark said to you was a form of CBT... Going through the least to most likely scenarios and letting you choose what's most logical. It isn't fluffy, it sounds uncaring at times, but it works. It disengages my "chicken little" tendencies to have a firm, fact finding talk with myself.

Here's a glimpse of what I was like:
Phoning husband. He doesn't answer.
Phone again. No answer
No answer on 3rd try
Hands sweating, throat dry, heart hammering
Try again no answer
What if something happened
No answer
Omg something happened to him
Heart racing legs weak body shivering stomach cramping
No answer
He's hurt! He's been in an accident! Or he's mad! Why would he be mad at me?
Etc etc etc until I was sick and couldn't be talked out of it.

So irrational, right? Ok so the CBT would take me though scenarios. All scenarios of why the phone was unanswered. Then I had to rate them. What is the most likely reason husband didn't answer? He was with a client.

I liken anxiety attacks to lions, and we're the lion tamers.

Sometimes medicine helps to get us over the humps while we learn the techniques, so you may benefit from medication... but NOT learning the techniques is just not an option. The work must be done to deprogram that level of anxiety, in my experience. I'm no expert, I'm just sharing what I've observed.

Very good MsRrio.

I'll add a simple bit. Many times the anxiety is the result of simple triggers. Learning to recognize these triggers so they can be avoided is important. I have never found a way to over-rule the trigger. That is why they are called triggers. They let go on your anxiety system very quickly.

The most common trigger is auditory. Next would likely be visual. Either of these make other anxieties take over, like worry etc.

So, even though a auditory trigger seems to not be connected to a worry or obsessing anxiety, all the brain needs is a little auditory trigger to push you over the edge to get consumed by the other anxieties.

A seldom mentioned trigger is ill fitting clothes or scratchy tags, etc. They are like that dripping faucet that never lets you relax. Others in your family or environment are rarely supportive of reducing these triggers. They just seem so far fetched. You try to explain them and they say you are making things up.

I have found some ways to explain most of my triggers. If anybody has a trigger they are struggling to understand so they can explain them to friends and family, post them here. We can try to help with explanations.

Biy, that was not as simple as I thought it would be. I guess I am obsessing. LOL

My best to you all.

Well, for me the answer was medication. So I would say, get thee to a psychiatrist.

I had a Dr. tell me I haven't dealt with my own humanity. I am just human. Things will happen to me that I can't control, that aren't my fault, and the effects of the situation aren't my fault either.
He was right. Ask for help, talk to others that get it, and that can help keep your feet on the ground. Family, although they love us, they don't get it all the time. Many people here get it.

I am learning much more about myself everyday here and i attribute some of these moments to my Neurofam-

I am still in denial (working on acceptance) on how these physical symptoms can be caused by anxiety.

I am now realizing that i do have a big anxiety problem........keep in mind that i was always the guy who felt like i was in control of everything.

I am slowly realizing that my anxiety is most likely the cause of the majority of my "new" symptoms"! Even though its so hard to wrap my mind around the thought of anxiety causing swallowing difficulties.

For example:
I am a really good "worse case scenerio" person. I think in the Anxiety world its called Catastrophizing! Before my concussion i had no idea about MS or ALS but when i heard on the news that a Hockey player got MS, i started googling the symptoms.

Prior to googling, i had no unusual symptoms. SHortly after, my skin was itching and some if not all of the MS symptoms started showing up. Same happened with ALS.

Currenty i have difficulty swalloing and ironicly enough, i jsut read about that sypmtom two days before i got it.

If this is......sorry, Since this IS anxiety causing or exaserbating most of my sysmptoms i am amazed at how powerful anxiety can be.

Is the Mind really that powerful that it can manifest symptoms?

Yes.

Go easy on yourself and don't feel guilty that you're in a bit of denial or having trouble wrapping your head around this. Anxiety is calling the shots right now and you can't be expected to catch up so quickly. So it's ok and it's normal to question just how much physicality that anxiety can cause.

But yes it can cause physical symptoms. Check out your PM's for my heart problem story. (All caused by anxiety)

Having anxiety doesn't mean every single thing under the sun is caused by it either, but it merely should be on the list of causes and considered a strong probable cause for most new and especially "hard to describe" or "weird" symptoms.

Be kind to yourself. You like to be in control as you say, so it's no wonder this is really difficult on you. That's ok. We're all trying to help and no one will lose patience that you haven't instantly been converted or cured be good to yourself, distract yourself with something that relaxes you and invest in some deep breathing time ok? Take care... Be patient with that lion, takes a while to tame them...

Some time ago I came across a line of videos made by Ajahn Brahm a Buddhist monk. Now, as an atheist, I was sceptical at first. But it seems like Buddhist psychology actually have a place in western medicine. Now I couldn't find the exact video I wanted, but take a look a this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpFPVYP92CM

It teaches you how to create some space between you and your thoughts. This will help with your anxiety as it prevents the sympathetic nervous system from reacting. Its really not a problem with your thoughts, rather its your reaction to your thoughts.
Give it a good chance. Sometimes he tend to speak in metaphors so don't take everything he says literally