How you developed this habit and condition

Depressed teenager from Panic or Anxiety

First of all although you may not believe this, but it’s hard tell that you look any more anxious than the next person, even when you’re having a full blown Panic Attack. Your mind, however has created the illusion that people will sense when you’re having a Panic Attack and you’d better not make eye contact. 

You may feel so distracted that you think you are incapable of being around other people for fear of being embarrassed.  Why is that ? Is it  just that you’re so distracted with your internal battle (trying to control something you can’t, e.g. thoughts, feelings, emotions and bodily sensations) that you can’t focus on the present moment, and you’re afraid people will will think there is something different and wrong about you. 

It’s like you’re torn trying to do two things, when one is hard enough.  Are you too sensitive ? Are you too concerned with what people think about you ? Do you feel a need to always be liked and engaging,  the life of the party ? Are you a people pleaser by nature or did you learn this behavior ?

Perhaps it is a defense mechanism ? If it is, it turns out it’s not really defensive but offensive to you. So why should that be ? Why do you think it ? Why should you believe is really more the question.

To imply why any person should develop an Anxiety disorder and others don’t is debatable. Below I’m making my own hypothesis of why it happened to me, and you may see similarities in yourself. You may also want to check your children for any of these tendencies.  

At some point people with Anxiety had that first moment where they thought something is wrong with me. Why do I feel this way, so much adrenalin, so much bodily discomfort ? and then my mind came up with evaluations and I bought into them.

“It”, those bothersome feelings and thoughts became the real problem, which had to be solved at all costs. My mind was out to fix the problem but didn’t it just start it ?  My mind now had something to constantly work on in an effort to protect.  Two things it was created to do. 

As time and the confusion about what’s going on inside me grew, the bodily sensations got stronger, and the time spent obsessing about this increased.   

Feeling strange like that is not something anyone wants to profess. There is the belief that mental illnesses are taboo and should never be brought up so people keep it to themselves. This in part explains why people don’t seek help and by the time they do, the habit of anxiety is so entrenched.

For those who do seek help, the person is in the hands of the therapist and there are good and not so good therapists. Maybe the prescribed treatment is just helping the person cope and not get better, not fixing the root of the problem.

For a problem usually to be fixed, it needs to be identified, understood and then help provided to eliminate the problem. Treatment for help for Anxiety should not be addressing a confidence or ego problem of the person.  Maybe what led up to it was, but the actual avoidance behavior and how to get the patient to adopt new behavior needs to be emphasized at the moment of panic, while in a setback, even while in a good period.

There is more than just the doing when it comes to the tactics of developing new behavior to treat Anxiety. It is the how and why specifically this condition is occurring and how to think and behave towards it. “It” is really just you struggling with your mind’s thoughts normally triggered by bodily sensations or other thoughts. 

Explaining how to make these thoughts and feelings easier to move with is the key.   This is what Acceptance and Commitment therapy does.  This is what I wished I knew a long time ago.

In my own circumstance I have seen how I developed the avoidance behavior from the very moment I thought there was something wrong with me. I was seven years old and our family had just moved to a new place, and I just had my first really bothersome Anxiety experience.   

After a while, I thought I need to hide this from other people. Trying to understand that most people observing you don’t think, “there’s something wrong with that guy, he doesn’t seem all there”. If they only knew !

But really it’s just not even that noticeable, but your mind’s perception says it is. If you buy into it, well then, “you’ll get what you always got” to quote an often used Anxiety phrase.

For all you know any number of other people are struggling just like you. You’re not alone.

So what’s happening ? What I have read is my mind and body have created reactions for real Fear when it’s not real Fear, it’s only Anxiety, or false Fear. Somehow my Fear part of my brain is being alerted by false Fear or Anxiety.  

My sub-conscious mind invokes the Fight or Flight reaction impulse to my Nervous system. But who is the threat ? Is it whatever situation I think I’m in or could be in ? but I could be on the couch. Where’s the danger ? I can see it is my mind creating this illusion. 

How I  react to the impulse or thought can cause more adrenalin to be released, e.g. believing the thought to be true. This repetition of fear adrenalin fear cycle was proving to me that there really was something to fear and the the path or habit was getting more entrenched.

I wonder what could have led up to that moment that made me react so strongly to a thought, that may not have bothered someone else ? It’s hard to say, and like most of life, it is probably a combination of things.

When I think about the factors that led to my abnormal reaction to Anxiety and whatever I was thinking about at the time, here is a list of possibilities. I am told I didn’t speak until I was three, which got me off to a late start. I wasn’t all that good at expressing myself or making conversation. From the time I remember at about 5, people would continually make references to how shy I was, like they felt sorry for me.  

Since I realized I didn’t speak that much, and it seemed like I was supposed to, I started feeling self conscious about it.   My mind wanted to find a solution to help me.

Where I grew up the other children could be quite judgmental and critical, and I believe exasperated the judging I was doing against myself. We labeled each other as being stupid, slow or bad, particularly when it came to doing anything.  Having this distraction about thinking there was something handicapping me made life seem more difficult than it should be and it bothered me and became a habit. 

My parents were by nature strict with high expectations, quick to judge, were very protective, well meaning, worriers who suppressed arguing. Without the ability to express myself very well I over compensated by trying to please them through actions. I learned to please my parents and others. 

While I was struggling with my mind telling me there is something wrong with my nerves over reacting to situations, I started to think it was against me. I adopted the belief that sometimes my mind and body were external forces and working against me. 

You wouldn’t think that not knowing how to argue would be missed, but I believe it was. Without good arguing skills and self expression skills, I wasn’t adequately prepared for the world outside my door. 

Confrontation and arguing made me feel nervous and uncomfortable so I avoided those types of situations. I didn’t in my mind think this was natural and thus became more a people pleaser, especially due to the uncomfortable  sensations unless I avoided confrontations. I disliked myself for that.

I also wasn’t too happy with my own personal appearance as a young child and teenager either, being overweight, kind of short, with a big nose, so I thought.  This coupled with my other habits of acquired judging, focusing on the negative, evaluating everything, the strange physical sensations of adrenalin in my body all seemed to occupy my mind a great deal and I became obsessed with it.

I listened to my mind exclusively, since I felt this pressure to have to please everyone. All the obsessing about my condition and struggle, stopped me from focusing on things like school work which I normally could have been really good it. This lowered my self confidence even more.

My mind had created a self label of myself as a quiet, not self confident and underachiever, due to the Anxiety. To my benefit I was a good athlete, had a good sense of humor and was popular despite many of the things my mind was telling me. 

I kept my life somewhat on track, despite the lack of real self confidence, too much nervousness about thinking there was something wrong with me. Why was I so distracted with negative thoughts about myself and how I feel ? Was there enough evidence to support what my mind had created ? Was I right to let my mind be judge, jury and executioner ? That was what was happening in retrospect. 

 It wasn’t until I gained some self confidence in being able to express myself verbally in my freshman year of college that I realized that life was fun. However, my old habits seemed to raise my Anxiety meter to the point of experiencing Panic attacks because of the struggle with my mind’s thoughts.  

I would avoid social situations when I was in a setback following a panic attack, and over compensate socially with excess alcohol to dull the nervous pain. I learned to be afraid of the Anxiety state brought on by fear and my mind’s thoughts.

This continued until recently where after being under a lot of stress, both real and imagined, too much worry and what I thought was normal alcohol consumption for me, along with an energy drink, caused a black out and when I became conscious I thought I was dead. I felt my perception of reality had changed. My mind and body seemed outside of me, as though I had no control over them. I was terrified. Later on I self diagnosed it as Depersonalization. At the time I didn’t know what it was and thought it was brain damage. It wasn’t going away.

After my life started to fall more apart, e.g. I had to quit my job, it was like being in a non-stop full blown panic attack, based on complete belief I had zero control of my mind and body. I believed my future was without hope. My mind was having a field day conjuring up horrific outcomes for me.

I was practically bed ridden and couldn’t sleep at all without sleeping pills. I thought I would die of a heart attack or kill myself due to all the psychological and physical pain. None of my other anti Anxiety coping methods were working. I was making preparations for the end.

Fortunately I did not give up. The support of my family and friends helped me hang in there. I found ACT, Acceptance and Commitment therapy and Faith. It truly was a Godsend!

Since then I have learned much.  Seeing how far my Anxiety could go unchecked was very eye opening.

The greatest lesson was I was taking my mind’s thoughts as the literal truth. I always had and it was a huge life impediment, but not life threatening, like when you find out you want all the pain to stop, from believing you can’t stop beating yourself up.

 Another issue for me was chasing feeling good.  This is especially true when you have an already well developed Panic condition. Trying to fix the Anxiety and uncomfortable bodily sensations had become a habit. Missing out on a lot of life had become the reality. 

 Thanks to ACT I think less from my mind and more from myself. I am becoming a friend to myself, after toning down the battle with my mind and want to live again. I have great hope for a full recovery and possibly more.  I expect to become more comfortable in my own skin. More on this in Tools and Tips.