CBT

Looks like its time to get the CBT out again that I have been neglecting for some time. As I type it has just gotten very dark even though its just after noon. The most audible is the driving wind which is even drowning out the sound of the Wii as my son plays away after nursery this morning. Now the rain is battering the pane again. I have been out and its not nice. That wind is like ice and the force of it makes breathing difficult when heading into it. And to top it all off GPS has stopped working on my phone meaning my walk was not even logged.

This though is the hardest time I have experienced for a while. The waters are still rough and choppy. So hard because evidently I have been doing much better without realising it. It just came out the blue. That last post was the start of it and it continues. So I look back at my notes and find it has happened before. It happened in September 2011, out the blue. It stayed for a long time. These notes are important. It quickly let me know what I was experiencing. Its continual panic cycles. It ebbs and flows. When the rush comes though it shudders through me. I feel cold and jittery like buggery and am filled with a fear I cannot locate but just know is there. Each  rush is the point of intensity and then it slowly eases to the point where an hour later I am starting to feel better and then whoosh: another rush. Not nice. My body feels so full of adrenaline and this fuels more rushes. That cold climbing through my veins and the body coming out in a sweat.

I talked to the therapist about this at the time. It actually wasn't the first time. The first time was in April 2011 when I was forced to do the school run up to 3 times a day and was putting myself into panic time after time just gritting my teeth to get through and just about holding on to my sanity. Since then it seems to rear up every time. How it kicks off varies but enough to say mounting anxieties lead to panic. After that point though it is always the same, I am told. After that point of panic I live in fear of the next and it is this fear that slow drips adrenaline inevitably bringing another panic. As a wise old woman once said the way to cure panic is not to stop panic attacks coming but not to care if they do. It is the caring, it is the fearing, that keeps them coming. And this is what I have gotten myself into again. There is no fixed time to it passing. It will only pass when I get my head around it and that is why I have the CBT at hand again to work my way through it and get it all clear in my head again.

This is my own cycle. I do the CBT. It helps. So I stop using it because I am no longer having the same problems (but neither am I anywhere near recovery) and then in time it comes back. This time I must try to stick with it.

Everyone has their own opinion on CBT just as they do with medication when it comes to the treatment of anxiety disorder. What I have found over my time is never re-judge anything until you have tried it yourself. Only then will you know what works best or at least feels right. The thing is everyone reacts different. For some people medication is all the need and good luck to them but it doesn't work for me and I have no desire to start experimenting again. Someone I know of via my wife's family was agoraphobic for years but is now free to walk about thanks to her course of Prozac. For others its Diazapam. Others get by with anti-depressents. For some even beta blockers do the trick. Nothing has worked for me. Diazapam worked best out of the lot but the GP refused to prescribe it because of its addictive qualities. And I am OK with that. To be honest I have never liked taking pills of any sort. I hate the point of no return once taken and this probably comes from bad reactions to things such as paracetamol in the past. So I am quite happy to try going down the non-medicated route.

That does not leave many choices. There are plenty of self help guides claiming to be the only cure and bragging of fantastic success rates but none of that means anything if you try it and it just doesn't work. More so if you do it and come to the conclusion is a bag of brown stuff- how can you stick to something you do not believe in? When it came to CBT I never had any faith in it based on others opinions. A few people I spoke to said either it did not work for them or it only worked for a short spell. Even when I did the ACT workbook the authors said CBT didn't have a long term affect and they are CBT practitioners themselves. But I found CBT workbooks I wanted to try based on lots of positive feedback from real people- not pictures on a webpage with quotes. A few of these people I was even able to talk to to guage their experiences and it was all positive. And on finally getting the workbooks I have to admit they have worked better than anything else I have tried.

These workbooks are more than CBT. They include mindfulness makes a lot of sense to me given how introspective I have become and how I see this is having a negative impact on things- especially when people visit. Through these books I have had some good insights and little flickers of things clicking into place. A great feeling however fleeting. But as I said in time I usually put them to one side because the anxiety at home at least is not as bad and I get bored with the repetitiveness of reading the same things over and over to the point it is not sinking in.

More than even that though I have to say why these workbooks work is in their presentation. They are not pages upon pages of theory and this and that. The are simplistic and straight to the point. They are very easy to read and the illustrations which look childish on first viewing actually help points stick. Even my wife was able to read through the first book and get a clearer understanding of my problem.

This time though I want to stick with it. I don't want to just use it to get out of this bad place at the moment but try to make it work longer term. I have to hold up my hands and say I did not feel confident enough to try the exercises which are recommeded. The author is very contactable and helpful but I have not contacted him since promising to do the exercises and never getting around to doing it. This time I will. This spell aside other things have been improving and if I can add to that and drive on to a higher level then it might just be the break I need.